𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝟒 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐙 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐊𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 ‘𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞’ 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐚𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐡 𝐜𝐨𝐰.

London mayor Sadiq Khan’s planned expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to outer London has been met with an incredible amount of resistance. The objections to the £12.50 per day car tax are legion. 

It punishes the poorest who can’t afford a new low-emission car or van. It hurts the disabled and the elderly who have difficulty using public transport. And all of this pain is amplified in outer London, where train, bus and Tube links are sorely lacking.

Yet the London mayor has consistently waved all these objections aside. If you oppose ULEZ, he says, then you’re on the side of smog, asthma and diseased lungs. Perhaps you’re a far-right conspiracy theorist, too. Most of all, in the eyes of City Hall, to be against ULEZ is to be a denier of science.

Except, over the past week, it has become all too clear that ‘the science’ that’s supposed to be driving the ULEZ expansion is nowhere near as robust as Khan claims. In fact, as two recent reports in the Telegraph make clear, City Hall has applied serious pressure on scientists to toe its pro-ULEZ line. Private emails reveal that Shirley Rodrigues, deputy mayor for environment and energy, has attempted to silence scientific criticism and to rewrite the conclusions of studies that question the utility of the ULEZ.

The main piece of research that Khan uses to defend the ULEZ comes from Imperial College London’s Environmental Research Group, which has received over £800,000 in funding from City Hall since 2021. In that same year, it was paid £45,000 specifically for a report on the ‘future health benefits of mayoral air-quality policies’.

This report gave the mayor all the evidence he needed. It made bold claims about ULEZ’s potential to increase Londoners’ life expectancy, and it warned that pollution deaths were highest in outer London – precisely where the ULEZ was due to expand into. It was not peer reviewed.

See full article, click this link ⬇️

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/08/24/the-lies-driving-sadiq-khans-ulez/

Source: Fraser Myers, Spiked on-line.