THE Mayor of London (and ULEZ crusader) Sadiq Khan has just returned from a climate change summit in Buenos Aires in South America. He was joined by five members of staff and that trip alone, just one of the many the Mayor of London has made, is calculated to have created three tons of Carbon Dioxide.
Ironic then, that on Khan's return to the UK, he rubber-stamped his latest move to expand the London low emissions zone, with the new low zone set to cover much more of the capital that sits within the M25.
Even more ironic is that event he has just returned from was described as "hybrid in-person and virtual" making us wonder why he had to travel there at all.
The current zone is shown on the inside, with the new area around the outer
ULEZ expansion for 2023
Hypocrisy aside, the plans are to go ahead, and the London Mayors war on private vehicle owners, well, ones that drive petrol-powered vehicles anyway, is to wage on. The news flies in the face of public opposition to the plans, with both Londoners and those that must commute into the capital calling for the mayor to stand down on his plan. Khan’s counterargument was that the changes would benefit the air quality of those living in the capital, despite recent findings pointing to no significant improvements as a result of some of his other countermeasures.
The latest expansion comes a little over a year since the zone moved out of central London and covered much of the north and south circular roads. If Mr Khan keeps going like this, you’ll soon be paying for the price right the way up to Birmingham.
Speaking of the change, Mr Khan said:
"The ULEZ so far has been transformational, reducing harmful pollution levels by almost half in central London.
"But there is still far too much toxic air pollution permanently damaging the health of young Londoners and leading to thousands of early deaths every year, with the greatest number of deaths in the outer London boroughs."
The proposed changes to the ultra low emission zone come into force on August the 29th 2023.
