London’s Ulez battle: blade runners, dinosaurs and conspiracy theories 

Whatever people's views on pollution, the poor are being hit again, whilst "leaders" continue to travel the world in private jets. Would be nice to see them set an example.

If youre rich, you can pollute, Guardian

They say we must reduce pollution but if you pay them £12.50 you can pollute as much as you like. It’s not about pollution is it?

ULEZ is bizarre. How my 1.2 fiesta can be charged for being too polluting but a 6.3 litre Mercedes with a modified exhaust removing all catalytic converters is fine and free to drive in London is ridiculous.

People in the UK and Ireland need to stop voting for the Major Parties or this will never stop.

Uk almost feels like china in someway. The thirst of control via cameras in insane.

If 95% of vehicles meet the ulez clean air standards - why have this massive expense of a camera network to monitor all the vehicles and to charge the 5% who are unable at this point in time of buying a new car? WHY???

The Guardian really doesn't have the moral authority to comment on what ordinary people feel or do, they are not even what you would call journalists. My advice to the people of London, don't be pushed around by anyone.👍

If my car passed its MOT on emissions but still gets £12.50/day for this ULEZ nonsense, it makes no sense!

Air pollution in London is not a conspiracy theory. It's a disagreement on WHO pays for the cost. The wealthy person who pollutes the most or the people close to poverty who pollutes the least. We live in a world where the wealthy can use a private jet to go right into the centre of London but a pensioner with an old, small vehicle is charged £40. See the problem now? Even at the Teddington Action Group, which Khan used the data from to oppose a third runway at Heathrow, the study showed 50% of NOx was caused by Heathrow.... 10 miles away!

The ULEZ zone completely ignores the environmental impact of huge production of the number of new vehicles needed to replace those that already exist , completely insane

They are going to tax you for breathing one day, and call it “unregistered air consumption” Keep up the good work friends!

ULEZ scam is obvious

A Guardian 'reporter', not biased was he?

We need David Attenborough to narrate the dinosaur humping 😂

This isn’t about air pollution it’s about making money if it was about air pollution they would ban it END OF imagine if everyone paid £12.50 problem of air pollution would still not be solved but financially they have gained

London has more cameras than Beijing.

You can tell this guy works for the Guardian. He is so patronising! Air quality has improved in London as vehicles have become cleaner. Scrapping a million MOtable cars is not environmentally sound. I'm guessing you're not affected by this. Wake up Mr Guardian.

finally people waking up and taking action👏👏👏👏👏👏

It’s good to see the people take action…

ULEZ does not stop old polluting cars driving through London, if this was really about air pollution they would be banned outright, no questions asked.

Ulez is making mega money. People struggling are having debt collectors coming to their place. Shoplifting and crime is going up wonder why.

this guy is such a wipe...but he works for the guardian so im not suprised

While those that make the rules with the global 2030 cities fly in their private jets eating steak telling us we need to cut our CO2 emissions. Blade runners are the real heroes.

Why are the rich kids who run the guardian so hateful of the working class. The guardian is a example of every thing wrong today.

It's amazing how restrictive the UK is.

London needs more Blade runner units. They're doing a great job. Well done.

If they were REALLY worried about air quality, why aren't they tackling the worst place... in the tube stations!

The problem is the governement allowing the sale of certain vehicles and after a few years banning them from the roads due to their harmful emissions. If those cars were not compliant with emission laws, they shouldn't have been sold in the first place. If they were compliant, they should be allowed on the road until the end of their life cycle.

reducing airpollution is the cover story to stop private car ownership. As the world economic Forum says ''you will own nothing and be happy''.

According to WTW, about 40% of all people in the UK already live paycheck to paycheck. It's safe to assume that many of these households own older, less environmentally friendly, but cheaper vehicles. So why tax the poor and risk higher rates of homelessness?

didn't knew Guardian was state controlled like the BBC

more dangerous particles in the underground...

NOBODY VOTED FOR SUNAK AS PM NOBODY

In a MOT the output of a passing car is 0.3 and after fitting s new catalytic converter my car puts out 0.02 which should exempt me from the zone charge however my car is not classed as classic despite being built over 30 years ago! I can't afford to change it even with the scrappage scheme.

I used to travel from the M25 to central london on night shift for a number of year's to work, but if ulez had been operating then I would not have been able to afford the charges and would have had to look elsewhere. But where would I have looked, the simple answer is no where because I would still have to pay the outer london ulez charge of £12.50 everyday and for what work I could get it would not have been worth working. Something needs to change with the political elite and their tyrannical ways.

Buy a compliant car, in a few years the goal post will be moved and that car will no longer be compliant.

I see comments are being pre-moderated...whats the matter Guardian...afraid of real debate?

It’s really comforting to see that so many people are willing to push back against tyranny. If we let this kind of thing slide, where would we be in 50 years? A century? They’d probably be taxing us for the air we breathe.

The problem with getting rid of Khan is the population density in Central London, which trumps the lower density outer area, where nobody votes for him. Why was the Mayor given jurisdiction over the whole of the M25 area? You cannot blame people for protesting.

These are the new turnpikes, not that the guardian would remember anything about those.

Lowering speeds also increases pollution lol

As always the ivory tower guardian journalists are totally out of touch with the normal working public

The last quote said "95% of all vehicles seen driving across London on an average day now meet the ulez clean air standards". Then why is it still necessary?

Ultra low emission zones today, no emission zones tomorrow. That's where this is going. It's just setting the stage for when petrol, diesel and even hybrid vehicles are banned from the roads.

We the most watched country in the world begin controlled

A greater number of drivers are NOT changing to electric vehicles. The whole idea is going belly up !

How are the new all electric buses going? keeping passengers warm are they?

More chance of suffering a mugging or worse than air pollution in London

I'm up for the dinosaur costume part!

We all know who the Guardian guards, and it ain't the little guy! 🎶 "Big Brother getting stomped in Airstrip 1!"🎶

The mayor, the pm and anyone given the job of running a town or country is meant to represent the people, not run along with their own schemes against their wishes.

God bless the BladeRunners

Bring all the cameras down👏👏👏

"Your shitty 2.0 diesel pollutes too much" meanwhile celebrities are taking with private jets flights instead of driving for 20 minutes with their cars

Make no mistake, this IS about movenent control, and its just the thin edge of the wedge.

On 15 minute cities… they existed before they were called villages… vast majority of people want to be able to walk to get groceries or see a doctor. The restrictions about not leaving the area are insane and have no relationship to anything aside from articles that reference their own articles.

The real absurdity of ULEZ, in terms of the pollution claim, is that it covers leafy villages like Hawley's Corner in the North Downs that have little traffic, purely because it is inside Greater London, yet places like Epsom and Ewell that have FAR more traffic and are much closer to central London are excluded because they are not in Greater London. It is farcical that some quiet country village on the Downs gets ULEZ solely because it is inside a certain administrative area.

Go blade runners, thank you for all the hard work👍

If they were worried about NOX emissions take a look at Copenhagen buses! a member of London assembly got it right when he said "It's like banning smoking in a pub unless you buy your cigarettes from me!"

One person dead from pollution in London (per death certificate) since Sadiq took charge. 1000 murders in the same period. Guess which one Sadiq took action on?

We get more pollution from car tyres than what you get from the modern combustion engine car engines. Please can someone take a note of this.

If gov was so worried about cc they would have started with electrifying all public transport and made public transport more affordable.

The Guardian are scared because they have no power over the narrative any more. 😂

Blade runners are the modern day Robin hoods of England 👍👌

People are sick to death of the constant surveillance and constant taxation.

You take a job enforcing this you gotta be prepared for the odd brick

Hypocritically, London allows big black diesel cabs to contine functioning with no charge. They may continue until they are 12 years old. So ditch your efficient petrol car that doesn't quite pass the requirement, and when you are desperate to get somewhere, ride in an old diesel cab instead. This is the message.

5:02 and it's not like a politician has ever lied, have they? 10:30 nice underhand way to discredit and cast doubt, that was really well edited. 10/10

I love seeing ulez cameras that have blown down in the wind 😂

Very bad doc, narrow angled. The meter inside the car is the cherry.

As a firefighter in Devon, I'm disgusted the fire service are going out to remove a bin from one! To be sent 9 hours after an old lady had been pushed to the ground in her home and left in a pile of piss and blood while we slept on station infuriates me that another service will agree to go to that!

Gov just needs leave people alone ... thats what this is all about

10:30 measuring particulate pollution from inside a sealed vehicle with filtered ventilation!?!?!? The results will be meaningless.

Guardians scummy reporting tactics

It's about money and power/control. If we wanted to be really cynical, Khan would be delighted to have nothing BUT 'polluting' vehicles entering the ULEZ zone and each driver paying £12.50 per day...

Agenda 2030, Agenda 2050

Respect to the blade runners.

If 95% of all vehicles in London are ULEZ compliant, then why the fuck is the government still paying to install ULEZ cameras over and over again?

they say threatening behaviour is unacceptable but there threatening the people driving by making them pay ulez or the fine will keep increasing so who's really threatening who

Conspiracy Theory = something which will soon become an accepted fact

3.7 million cars drive in London every day. In November 2022, the Mayor's office says 90% were compliant before and now this is 96.4%. This suggests 236,800 working and serviceable have either been scrapped or continue to be driven elsewhere. Also, the Mayor's report shows the expanded scheme might achieve a negligible 1.3% reduction increasing the life of an average Londoner by 13 minutes. The previous scheme expected a reduction of 37%, but the results showed a 3% reduction (on report suggests 20%), but air quality is improving annually across the UK due to other measures, such as improved car technology, so it is impossible to attribute the reductions to ULEZ.

naturally the guardian has to make everyone out to be nutters for not wanting to be criminalized for MOVING

The camras are all joined to a main computer, so it also a tracking device and can follow you . Big brother next expansion.

When i see king Charles, the crime minister and the houses of conmens using buses on a daily basis i will as well or if buses and the tube cost 25 pence a trip ...

This issue doesn't affect me directly, I am not English nor do I live there, but it really honestly gets tiresome when the solution to public health problems and the like is to tax the average person and heap financial disincentives on average people instead of asking the corporate giants to shoulder the responsibility. Like tobacco and sugar taxes, it has (partially) achieved the desired effect only while dealing heavy financial injuries to the addicted, i.e. people who cannot make the choice to change or have extreme difficulty in doing so. Instead of barring the import of large German and American petrol-fueled vehicles or assigning large penalties to importers and dealers who traffick in such vehicles, instead of heaping financial disincentives on oil companies, the governors know that those powerful entities will engage in a drawn-out, expensive struggle against those measures which will also be hidden in large part from the media. Alternatively, they could tax the ever-living piss out of average citizens knowing they haven't got the means, time, or organization to resist through official channels, meaning they have to engage in extralegal resistance, and we have to be tough on crime, don't we? Today they're cutting down cameras, tomorrow they'll be setting fire to the houses of Parliament, right? And another thing, I'm as disgusted by climate change/global warming deniers as most Guardian readers, but you have to admit Nick's got a point there. The guys up top, from the MPs to BP to the BBC, have been knee deep in so much shady shit so many times that skepticism is the intelligent approach. The public's trust in authority figures is eroded, and reasonably so. They don't need to have a formal conspiracy, they don't need a villain's board meeting like in some comic book. They have all gone to school together, learning the same shit from the same people for hundreds of years or longer, and so they all have the same goals and principles, to consolidate wealth and have an exclusive club AND YOU AIN'T IN IT, and if it all possible they're gonna find a way to make the little guy either build it or clean it or pay for it. Anyone who blindly trusts authority figures is either stupid, naïve, or is burying their head in the sand because the truth is just too much to bear.

If there was a toxic air problem Every taxi driver in London would be suffering from some form of Respiratory disease

I live in London, thanks to ulez the air me and my children breathe is cleaner.😮

Thought RU-vid content makers had to declare sponsored content? This rather blinkered reporter is likely sponsored by TFL or Khan.

I get it if everyone paid £12-50 that would stop the pollution dead.

This has nothing to do with pollution and everything to do with Tfl nearly going bankrupt during Covid. It is obliged to recover the money. The shameful thing is they are going for the poorest people. I support all those involved in the civil disobedience and hope they elect someone who will remove these monstrosities.

Went to Chessington last week, all the cameras were down. Thanks lads saved me 12.50.

At one point the journalist claims that ULEZ helps with climate change. It doesn't. The emissions in question are not CO2 but other directly toxic gasses which are produced in much smaller quantities and do not contribute to global warming. It's really important to understand this fundamental difference. In fact replacing dirty diesels with cleaner petrol vehicles will increase CO2 output because diesel engines are more efficient and therefore emit less CO2. ULEZ is not a bad idea. We all want less toxic pollution. But the interviewee is right when he says that the effect of ULEZ is marginal and hit's the poor hardest. That's the problem. Khan rushed this through because he wanted it to be his "legacy" without properly consulting with people. He arrogantly assumed that Labour owned London so he could do whatever he likes. Given the current state of the Tory party he will get away with this. But he has created a lot of angry people in the process.

This reporter, is a pretty naive chap!

As a staunch American libertarian, I appreciate these bladerunner Brits.

Ice ages and global tropical climates have happened BEFORE man even learned of Fire. Even if man COULD do anything about "the environment" it would be less than a you spitting in the ocean, man can't stand on the beach and demand the sea turn back.

I live on a narrow street with no off-street parking. Unless an electric car can be charged in 5 minutes, I can't plug in at home without running an extension cable to wherever I can get parked, so how do I get away from ICE?

No. Ulez itself is the Conspiracy.

What a surprise the Guardian are beating the WEF drum of 'climate change'

5% of cars isn’t a problem unless you are sneaking something through the back door