Comment
HOWARD COX

Millions of drivers are having their lives destroyed by virtue-signalling politicians – it’s time to make them pay

MOTORISTS are angry – and the local elections next month might well show our politicians that we aren’t going to take it any more.

I for one am now seeking a party with common sense and vision. A party that is honest, democratic and dumps the virtue-signalling green route that I fear leads to the nation’s economic ruin.

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At the root of most of the misery that’s being heaped on drivers by the likes of London Mayor Sadiq Khan, is the speed of the mad dash to Net ZeroCredit: PA
Motorists are angry – and the local elections next month might well show our politicians that we aren’t going to take it any more.Credit: Alamy

As mini revolts start to surface across the country over everything from Low Traffic Neighbourhoods to ULEZ cameras, it seems I’m not alone, either.

At the root of most of the misery that’s being heaped on drivers is the speed of the mad dash to Net Zero.

A colossal mass hypnotism that will damage all our lives, based on emotion, vitriolic personal attacks and a monumental scientific prejudice.

Ominously, more and more of the Net Zero groupies are in high positions of political influence, aggressively entrancing voters across the country.

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I am appalled, along with millions of others, as to how this insidious political infiltration has happened.

Did you ever see any political manifesto describing in detail: 15-minute zones, LTNs, CAZs, ULEZs, higher congestion charges, an epidemic of dedicated cycle lanes, E10, poor quality roads or increased public transport fares? And did you agree to them? I’d hazard a guess you didn’t!

Among the high-ranking doctrinal elite, maybe you can cite one particular ego-driven politico — who pays lip-service to majority opinion, but has been accused of manipulating a public consultation, then plans to introduce a needless virtue-signalling scheme, citing what some opponents say is misleading data on premature deaths to get it in place.

Blinkered tree huggers

This is a scheme that has the potential to hit those on the lowest incomes hardest, destroy communities and high street businesses, with an outcome that will arguably make no positive difference to saving the planet.

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Then, by using taxpayers’ hard-earned cash to spread a plague of propaganda, this in-cloud-cuckoo-land politician speaks of how, through his unilateral self-declared angelic action, he is saving lives and improving all our collective well-being.

Everyone objecting to his ill-informed creed are pronounced as pariahs, Brexiters, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, right-wing Tories, even fascists.

Along with other local authority leaders across the UK hell-bent on following London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s cash grabbing dogma, these well-financed, blinkered tree huggers all have one simple communication formula. That is, to make us all feel guilty if we dare not to buy into their green fairytale. This one most definitely will not have a happy ending.

And who are the top scapegoats for these so-called guardians of the planet to demonise and persecute? Oh, what a surprise, you’ve guessed it. Drivers. The easiest of targets to tax and control hidden behind a virtuous agenda.

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We are nearly at the point of no return in the lead up to a watershed 2024 general election and whether Londoners continue with Sadiq Khan as London Mayor. Your ballot box decisions in next year’s expected general election are much more important than they have ever been and must not be wasted by abstaining through an understandable apathy and distrust of politicians.

Next month’s local elections will almost certainly give a direction of travel as to how the major parties will perform. But will the results make the big parties change their position on their headlong rush to Net Zero?

Around 30 per cent of FairFuelUK supporters who voted for Boris Johnson in 2019 are now saying they will not vote Tory again. The main reason being; the 2030 ban on the sales of new diesel and petrol cars and being forced into driving EVs, without consultation or any evidence that this edict will make the UK’s air cleaner.

Yet what have Labour got to offer us? It seems exactly the same as the Conservatives. Both parties support Net Zero, the 2030 fossil fuelled car ban and making us all impoverished in pursuit of a modelled but unreal prediction that what we do in Blighty will stop the planet warming by 1.5C.

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Did you ever see any political manifesto describing in detail: 15-minute zones, LTNs, CAZs, ULEZs, higher congestion charges, and an epidemic of dedicated cycle lanes?Credit: PA

I find it amazing that both the major parties have ignored, and made no effort to engage with, the Centre for Economics and Business Research’s independent economic analysis of the first stage of the Government’s unilateral journey to Net Zero.

Namely, that the 2030 diesel/petrol ban will cost at least five times the alleged environmental benefits — with costs equating to just under £1,000 per household per year between 2022 and 2050.

The rest of Europe is now questioning the rationality of their own 2035 bans, some five years later than the UK’s, with more and more EU states saying, ‘let’s stop this insanity’.

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Yet the ridiculously titled Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary Grant Shapps is sticking to his mantra that we will lead the way in removing new and clean-emission internal combustion engine cars for the sake of making Net Zero happen. Where are we “leading the way” to? Economic oblivion?

This deceitful disregard to any sincere and honest challenge to the 2030 ban and Net Zero, by the Government or any party wanting to govern, is worse than dishonest, it is tyrannical and undemocratic.

As a long-time, slightly right of centre voter, I do not doubt climate change.

But I, like many reading this page, am at a loss to know who to vote for, to get honest majority consulted policies that will not bankrupt the nation, reducing our standards of living in the laudable pursuit of clean energy and fuels.

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As for Rishi Sunak and the Tories — why not try truly representing public opinion and common sense by putting the brakes on the 2030 ban?

They are likely to find there are millions of votes in it.

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