The Winter of Discontent #2 Food, energy, transport, jobs, housing etc

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Lots of changes happening in london too with money being wasted as usual. In central london they spent 6 million on the marble arch mound which looks like an absolute eyesore, with cheap plywood and artificial grass stuck to it.

Re traffic- down the other side of park lane they’ve made it from three lanes into two with one just for cyclists and put the speed limit from 40 to 20. To get to St Mary’s hospital my dad had to go through a lot of side roads. Same thing as we drove through Camden yesterday. Lots of diversions and road closures.
The 20mph limits in London are an utter joke. There are some roads in which I seriously question why.

30mph on the A40 westway, a road that at one point in time used to be 70mph - utter madness.

As for the ULEZ, all this will succeed in doing is make the North and South Circular roads continually gridlocked. As if they aren't currently bad enough.

TfL are now mulling over a £3.50/£5.50 a day charge for driving within the M25, this is on top of the ULEZ and congestion charges. Plus a pay per mile driving charge. They are utterly greedy.

If they want transport to pay in London, they need to start enforcing people having tickets. I've been on a few TfL services for which the barriers were open at both ends. No wonder their services lose money.

Instead they find ever more ways to hammer motorists to pay for their failings.
 
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TfL are now mulling over a £3.50/£5.50 a day charge for driving within the M25, this is on top of the ULEZ and congestion charges. Plus a pay per mile driving charge. They are utterly greedy.
My parents live half a mile from the London border where this will apply. If they push it for the M25 I will have to pay to visit my parents. They are insane, they will basically segregated people, they won’t travel to the supermarket they will go to another one. I hope he doesn’t get this passed, I will have to pay to go to work everyday, less than 10 miles down the road.
 
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My parents live half a mile from the London border where this will apply. If they push it for the M25 I will have to pay to visit my parents. They are insane, they will basically segregated people, they won’t travel to the supermarket they will go to another one. I hope he doesn’t get this passed, I will have to pay to go to work everyday, less than 10 miles down the road.
That's crazy!
 
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That's crazy!
People are already leaving London on mass (my office included) and all it will do is push people further out to the cheaper housing. My parents have thought about moving furthe south towards me, this will influence them. The can by 50% more house for the same price.
 
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My parents live half a mile from the London border where this will apply. If they push it for the M25 I will have to pay to visit my parents. They are insane, they will basically segregated people, they won’t travel to the supermarket they will go to another one. I hope he doesn’t get this passed, I will have to pay to go to work everyday, less than 10 miles down the road.
+ also surely this’ll just push even more of us to shopping online only so absolutely kill local high streets? Instead of me nipping to the local highstreet and buying flowers from the florist, some houseplants from a coffee shop, some books from a book store and toys from a kiddy store the faff of calculating all these charges from the base charge to per mile etc I’ll just order it all online and have what, 5/6 different delivery drivers have to do it instead? Drivers getting paid pennies per drop rather than independent shop assistants on the London living wage…?!

Does anyone know if this’ll apply to electric vehicles too? We currently have two cars but I barely use mine so my husband wants to sell it and get a Tesla, if I need to execute a quadratic equation every time I want to drop a friend back home I wonder if there’s any point?!
 
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People are already leaving London on mass (my office included) and all it will do is push people further out to the cheaper housing. My parents have thought about moving furthe south towards me, this will influence them. The can by 50% more house for the same price.
This is what the Government want though, they want to spread the wealth so not everything is London focused, and it reduces over crowding/demands on NHS etc.

Im not saying this is the prime reason for the toll though but it will be a factor in decision making, it’s all “levelling up”.
 
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This is what the Government want though, they want to spread the wealth so not everything is London focused, and it reduces over crowding/demands on NHS etc.

Im not saying this is the prime reason for the toll though but it will be a factor in decision making, it’s all “levelling up”.
reminds me of hunger games. You know you have the capital where all the rich live and the rest of the colonies where the peasants live.
 
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My parents live half a mile from the London border where this will apply. If they push it for the M25 I will have to pay to visit my parents. They are insane, they will basically segregated people, they won’t travel to the supermarket they will go to another one. I hope he doesn’t get this passed, I will have to pay to go to work everyday, less than 10 miles down the road.
Where I usually park my car on a Sunday - then proceed for the rest of the day on foot, public transport, or bicycle - is half a mile within the new ULEZ zone. I'll now have to cough up £12.50 for driving half a mile into the new ULEZ zone. I usually support local businesses in that area with food and drink purchases. All that will now be lost, as I'll have to find somewhere else outside the zone to park, or traverse the ever busy (and expected to be even busier) North and South circular roads.

What will happen when everyone is driving 'green' cars, I'm sure they will then find new ways to tax vehicles.

The whole ULEZ is nothing more than a tax, dressed up as an environmental concern. Why is there no ULEZ in Wembley, Balham, Ealing, Croydon and (most of) Wandsworth for example? Is clean air of no concern to City Hall in those areas?
 
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Where I usually park my car on a Sunday - then proceed for the rest of the day on foot, public transport, or bicycle - is half a mile within the new ULEZ zone. I'll now have to cough up £12.50 for driving half a mile into the new ULEZ zone. I usually support local businesses in that area with food purchases. All that will now be lost, as I'll have to find somewhere else outside the zone to park, or traverse the ever busy (and expected to be even busier) North and South circular roads.

What will happen when everyone is driving 'green' cars, I'm sure they will then find new ways to tax vehicles.

The whole ULEZ is nothing more than a tax, dressed up as an environmental concern. Why is there no ULEZ in Brixton, Balham, Lewisham for example?
They want the north and south circular roads to be busy, then they can impose a tax on that. Ignoring why it is busy. London is for the elite. Not for us, I feel sorry for businesses. And I would even begrudge paying £2.50 but £12.50 is extortionate, I feel like london is just the beginning it’s like they want to take cars away from us. As well buying houses And then they will have all the control. U can’t decide what boiler to have etc.
 
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This is what the Government want though, they want to spread the wealth so not everything is London focused, and it reduces over crowding/demands on NHS etc.

Im not saying this is the prime reason for the toll though but it will be a factor in decision making, it’s all “levelling up”.
I’m in London & all for the levelling up of the country outside of London to London’s cost/detriment, but surely the remote working revolution is the first steps towards de centralising from city centres & creating walking cities instead where it’s possible to walk to your nearest hospital, doctors, school, etc etc? You can’t implement the punishment without implementing the solution?

Also there’s low income people in London too, arguably living in far worse conditions than they would on min wage elsewhere, these sorts of fixed charged stealth tax are regressive and it would make more sense to band it on income (tho impossible to implement unless you did something like annual passes I guess?).
 
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They want the north and south circular roads to be busy, then they can impose a tax on that. Ignoring why it is busy. London is for the elite. Not for us, I feel sorry for businesses. And I would even begrudge paying £2.50 but £12.50 is extortionate, I feel like london is just the beginning it’s like they want to take cars away from us. As well buying houses And then they will have all the control. U can’t decide what boiler to have etc.
The problem is, other areas are now starting to copy London. One notable example is Bath.

In some cases, when you factor in fuel, parking, plus any congestion/emission charges, it is now cheaper to take the train.
 
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The problem is, other areas are now starting to copy London. One notable example is Bath.
Yes exactly, london is the trial.. I am only 30 and I just miss how we used to feel less controlled and more free. I live near london and they still offer jobs at 18k per annum. How anyone can survive on 18k in london and buy house is impossible. I really think we are going to have a poverty issue soon.
 
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reminds me of hunger games. You know you have the capital where all the rich live and the rest of the colonies where the peasants live.
That’s what it’s like now the north east is district 12 😂

The problem is, other areas are now starting to copy London. One notable example is Bath.

In some cases, when you factor in fuel, parking, plus any congestion/emission charges, it is now cheaper to take the train.
It’s not copying it’s been mandated, there are number of cities the same. It’s legally required due to air quality issues in cities.
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In some cases, when you factor in fuel, parking, plus any congestion/emission charges, it is now cheaper to take the train.
Tbh even getting a cab would make more sense for short journeys - eg a 10 minute drive to my dentist needs me to pay £12.50, park in their tiny car park, and go through the faff of driving. Or I can pay Uber £13-15 and have someone drive me? Like it’s not taking a car off the road it’s just taking mine off the road! I’m not getting a bus during a pandemic for diddly, I’d sooner do the hour walk.
 
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Yes exactly, london is the trial.. I am only 30 and I just miss how we used to feel less controlled and more free. I live near london and they still offer jobs at 18k per annum. How anyone can survive on 18k in london and buy house is impossible. I really think we are going to have a poverty issue soon.
When I first started driving in the 90's I could take my car right into Central London without any additional costs on a Sunday. I used to park in Berkeley Square, just off Regents St. Parking used to be free on a Sunday.

Forward to 2021, parking is no longer free, I would have to stump up a £15 'congestion fee', plus a £12.50 ULEZ charge. £27.50 just for taking my car into the middle of London on a Sunday. That is before I factor in the cost of fuel.

Yet TfL are trying to find yet more ways of extracting money from me, with the examples I listed previously.

I'm not buying into that. It is almost as if they don't want people driving in London anymore - even owners of 'clean' vehicles.

That’s what it’s like now the north east is district 12 😂


It’s not copying it’s been mandated, there are number of cities the same. It’s legally required due to air quality issues in cities.View attachment 814078
Cleaner air will come with time, as people migrate over to cleaner vehicles for their next car.

Taxing the hell out of owners of more polluting vehicles is not the answer. Many of those with more polluting vehicles are the less well off in society, who won't be able to afford a new vehicle even with a subsidy.
 
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TfL are now mulling over a £3.50/£5.50 a day charge for driving within the M25, this is on top of the ULEZ and congestion charges. Plus a pay per mile driving charge. They are utterly greedy.
I'm not sure that is accurate. I live within the M25 but I don't come under TFL. The furthest they could spread I suppose is Greater London
 
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I'm not sure that is accurate. I live within the M25 but I don't come under TFL. The furthest they could spread I suppose is Greater London
As far as I understood Greater London was the plan for this stupid charge. Mind you my parents are technically zone 6 but are not Greater London but can oyster on some services.
 
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Sadiq Khan is from around Balham area of london. I know a family that are related to his wife and they hate him.. genuinely
 
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They're out of Bananas here! Even if I get some tomorrow they'll need a week to ripen enough for a smoothie. I'll be without my coconut, mango and pineapple smoothie for this week 😆

My local superstore is running low on bready things. 2/3rds of the items are gone and they've taken to padding put the shelves with lots of bog standard white rolls and finger rolls.

All this talk about dehumidifiers, and they are a god send but get the more expensive desiccant ones as they work at lower temperatures and the others like it to be 20c+.

If you've ever lived somewhere that gets mould easily the very idea of drying clothes inside is scary!
 
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My local Aldi was completely out of both canned and chopped tomatoes yesterday. None of the mince pies without alcohol left either!

Bottled water was low in the corner Tesco express and the chocolate aisle was noticeably affected today everything else was okay.
 
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