A Word To The ULEZ Whiners

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Jul 302023
 

Or perhaps more than just a word given the level of dumbness displayed by the usual ULEZ opponents.

  1. It isn’t solely a Labour policy; the ULEZ zone in central London was first introduced by a Tory major (Boris Johnson) and extended by the current Labour major. The Tory opposition to ULEZ during the Uxbridge by-election was a cheap political stunt to distract from the atrocious record the Tories have in central government. Which seemingly worked on the more gullible.
  2. The penalty charge for the ULEZ zone is only paid by the most polluting vehicles – diesel cars older than 8 years old and petrol cars older than 17 years. Which is a tiny minority of the cars on the road.
  3. This isn’t targeting the poor; the poor in our society can’t afford cars at all. Besides there’s a scrappage scheme which pays people to scrap the smellier cars.
  4. This isn’t about CO2 emissions; it’s about NOx emissions.
  5. And frankly none of the objections (even if real) come close to outweighing the advantages of fewer deaths from pollution.
Ceci n’est pas une cabane de plage

Catastrophic Sense of Humour Failure at Fox News Regarding #foxnewsfacts

 Media  No Responses »
Jan 122015
 

For those who are not aware, Fox News is a cartoonish “news” channel best regarded as a comedy channel. Today they managed to make themselves ridiculous when a so-called “expert” claimed that there are hundreds of “no go” zones across Europe including the whole of Birmingham, and that London had gangs of religious police roaming around beating up anyone without appropriate attire.

In response, there have been thousands of tweets published to a twitter hash tag (#foxnewsfacts) mocking Fox News for this mistake. To be precise they have been posting ridiculously over the top “facts” in the style of Fox News without claiming that they were really statements made by Fox News.

The so-called “expert” has apologised, although after calling Birmingham “beautiful” you do have to wonder about how much research went into his apology. Birmingham is a great city that can be described in many ways, but beautiful isn’t the most obvious adjective to use.

Fox News on the other hand seem to have lost the plot (if they ever had one to begin with), and have been issuing legal threats in response to some of the tweets :-

Epic Idiocy!

Just for the benefit of the idiots at Fox, the Black Country is a long-used phrase used for the region to the north and west of Birmingham. As could be found out with a few clicks of the mouse. And …

Nobody is claiming the ridiculous statements tweeted were made by Fox News; they are merely taking the piss. And by making pointless legal threats, they are prolonging the ridicule.

Or was it all a fake? Perhaps.

Olympic Winners Parade – On A Weekday?

 Politics  No Responses »
Oct 152008
 

Tomorrow (16th October), London will host a parade of the UK’s Olympic Games medal winners. It is not something that personally excites me, and I will not be going. Not that I have any problem with the athletes getting a parade – why not?

But why is it on a weekday? And this does not seem to be an isolated case; there seems to be an assumption that if you really want to go, you will find a way of doing it. But what if you are a weekday worker (and most of us are) who might like to go, but cannot take a day off work to get there ? Why should we be excluded ?

It sometimes seems that there is some sort of conspiracy to keep working people away from certain celebrations. Perhaps we would lower the tone.