One of Oxford University’s Famous Feasts. Oxford Trinity College High Table. By Winky from Oxford, …
Oxfordshire Council to Trial a Climate Lockdown Starting 2024
Essay by Eric Worrall
First published ; Imagine if your power mad politicians liked Covid Lockdowns so much, they wanted to continue them indefinitely. This is going to be trialled in Oxfordshire in Britain.
Oxfordshire County Council Pass Climate Lockdown ‘trial’ to Begin in 2024
Oxfordshire County Council yesterday approved plans to lock residents into one of six zones to ‘save the planet’ from global warming. The latest stage in the ’15 minute city’ agenda is to place electronic gates on key roads in and out of the city, confining residents to their own neighbourhoods.
Under the new scheme if residents want to leave their zone they will need permission from the Council who gets to decide who is worthy of freedom and who isn’t. Under the new scheme residents will be allowed to leave their zone a maximum of 100 days per year, but in order to even gain this every resident will have to register their car details with the council who will then track their movements via smart cameras round the city.
Communism will make the weather better.
Oxfordshire County Council, which is run by Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, secretly decided to divide-up the city of Oxford into six ‘15 minute’ districts in 2021 soon after they were elected to office. None of the councillors declared their intention of imprisoning local residents in their manifestos of course, preferring to make vague claims about how they will ‘improve the environment’ instead.
Every resident will be required to register their car with the County Council who will then monitor how many times they leave their district via number plate recognition cameras. And don’t think you can beat the system if you’re a two car household. Those two cars will be counted as one meaning you will have to divide up the journeys between yourselves. 2 cars 50 journeys each; 3 cars 33 journeys each and so on.
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Read more:
This story is so crazy, I wanted corroboration. This is the same story published in the Oxford Mail;
Traffic filters will divide city into six “15 minute” neighbourhoods, agrees highways councillor
25th October
ROAD blocks stopping most motorists from driving through city centre will divide the city into six “15 minute” neighbourhoods, a county council travel chief has said.
And he insisted the controversial plan would go ahead whether people liked it or not.
Duncan Enright, Oxfordshire Council’s cabinet member for travel and development strategy, explained the authority’s traffic filter proposals in an interview in The Sunday Times.
He said the filters would turn Oxford into “a 15-minute city” with local services within a small walking radius.
…
People can drive freely around their own neighbourhood and can apply for a permit to drive through the filters, and into other neighbourhoods, for up to 100 days per year. This equates to an average of two days per week.
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Read more:
Oxfordshire is the home of the , one of Britain’s premier learning institutions.
Communist states like the Soviet Union and China seem to love movement restrictions and internal passports. In my opinion Britain has been edging closer to naked communism for at least half a century, so I guess it was inevitable that an attempt would be made at some point to introduce Chinese style movement restrictions on British people. In my opinion the climate claims are just an excuse, an attempt to deflect criticism of their authoritarianism.
I would love to write that the University of Oxford is up in arms, that Oxford academics are outraged at this attempt to restrict people’s freedom, but so far I have not discovered one utterance of public outrage from university academics.
For almost a thousand years the University of Oxford stood as a beacon of intellectual freedom. . So it seems incredibly sad that the inheritors of that proud tradition seem so willing to turn their backs on those freedoms their predecessors sometimes laid down their lives to defend.
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December 4, 2022 10:09 am
This does look like a parody of power mad greens. Peons have no rights they are obliged to respect.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 10:52 am
Those AI generated pictures are truly sinister.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 1:57 pm
Intellectual freedoms must be held within CC Orthodoxy. Physical Freedoms will be limited to 15 minute intervals
December 4, 2022 10:17 am
I think I woke up on the wrong planet this morning. This is the most dystopian idea I’ve ever encountered. Can someone please direct me back to planet Earth?
Reply to
December 4, 2022 10:42 am
Go right at the first road block and drive like hell.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 1:58 pm
I thought it was…
Second Roadblock to the right and straight on till mourning
December 4, 2022 10:18 am
University terms are 8 weeks in Oxford, therefore their students will be out of the city areas for 27 weeks, will they be penalised? What about people who work at John Radcliffe trauma hospital on the outskirts of the city? Hospital visitors? Workers elsewhere in the city, including shop workers and hospitality. This is poorly thought out to say the least.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:02 am
I predict an enormouse increase in car-rental companies just outside their city limits! Especially for ar rental plans which do not require the vehicle to be returned to base!
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:39 am
Look at the ever-growing “emissions” zone in London. Not a lot of protests.
It is quite simply a regressive tax, hurting the poor and the low-paid the most, yet there’s not much in the way of outrage. I know a commuter in outer London whose spouse no longer takes the car to meet them at the local railway station on a rainy day, because they live outside the emissions zone and the station is inside. The commuter has to walk the half-mile in all weather. They are outraged at the pettiness and futility of it all, because they know that the entire scheme is simply a regressive tax and has no useful purpose, but they keep their outrage among friends, ie. they don’t organise big protests or flood social media or hammer their MP. Like most citizens, their natural course is to put up with things while they can. When the Ulez (Ultra-Low Emissions Zone) expands to include their home, they will have to buy a new expensive car or move home.
Now I agree that having to walk half a mile in pouring rain occasionally is not that big a deal, but really that’s the point. The marxist Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is simply tightening the screws bit by bit. It’s the death of a thousand cuts for citizens.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:07 pm
Of course these restrictions only apply to the little people. The masters have no restrictions at all.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:41 pm
Is right wing media any better than left wing media?
Or are all our media distorting the facts to earn money?
Geez Mark, you were once one of the more analytical and acerbic minds on WUWT but now just see to unquestioningly regurgitate right wing media.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 3:06 pm
Where did he even come close to mentioning media at all, let alone any wing of it? If his quote
these restrictions only apply to the little people. The masters have no restrictions at all
came from right wing media, that doesn’t make the left wing media look very good.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:36 pm
There are lots of protest’s about ULEZ, not that the MSM let any of us know about them.
I live in Dartford, the ULEZ zone extends to Bexley, a London ‘Borough’ which, to be fair, will increase the value of a house by probably 10% – 20%. It’s border is within half a mile from my house.
As I understand it, ULEZ is designed to penalise the crappy old vehicles, none of us want on the roads, spewing choking clouds of diesel smoke (smoke, not emissions) into the air. Our MOT system (an annual check on cars over 3 years old for road worthiness) should condemn these vehicles but they don’t.
Newer vehicles from 2015 or so constructed to European regulations are exempt, so the future of motoring is not really threatened from that perspective. And I’ll say that from a practical perspective, most European regulations are entirely sensible. Labelling a bag of peanuts as a ‘product that may contain nut residue’ is not an EU imperative, it’s stupid, lazy manufacturers or distributors who don’t understand what they are making and what the laws are who make these ridiculous statements.
I haven’t looked into the Oxford system and probably won’t as I haven’t been in Oxford for the last 15 years or so, but I suspect our right wing media is being as sensationalist about left wing political activities as the left are about right wing political activities.
I get why we make political issues about seemingly excessive political interventions but, if any community in the world needs to analyse the actual substance of the accusations, it needs to be this sceptical community.
I’m not sceptical about climate change issues – I’m sceptical of everything, including our right wing media. They are as bad as left wing media.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 1:15 pm
“As I understand it, ULEZ is designed to penalise the crappy old vehicles, none of us want on the roads, spewing choking clouds of diesel smoke (smoke, not emissions) into the air.“. The information and numbers in the articles I linked do not support this assertion.
“Our MOT system (an annual check on cars over 3 years old for road worthiness) should condemn these vehicles but they don’t.“. The answer is to improve the MOT, not penalise citizens.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 1:24 pm
I read the link. Sounds like London’s version of “cash for clunkers”.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 3:39 pm
As I understand it, ULEZ is designed to penalise the crappy old vehicles, none of us want on the roads, spewing choking clouds of diesel smoke (smoke, not emissions) into the air.
In America the unconstitutional “Cash For Clunkers” law eliminated many cheap cars from the market, which raised the price of all automobiles and made it more difficult for the poor to own a car.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:02 pm
Either walk to work, or take the bus.
If that doesn’t work for you, tough.
December 4, 2022 10:29 am
Communism has so many great ideas. NOT.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:08 am
This council has gone bonkers .
Power crazy ,no council in any democratic country has the power to control peoples movement in or out of any city .
Get some constitutional lawyers to see what a council can and cannot do .
In New Zealand our socialist ( communist ? } government are going to take over all water services from councils forming mega monolithic entities and appointing Co government representatives from our Maori population.
The government passed the law under urgency and the passed another law to Entrench the new law .
Entrenchment means that it would take a 60% majority in either our parliament or in a referendum to change this law .
Only this weekend the government has backed down and reversed this entrenchment provision because constitutional lawyers have said this is unconstitutional and that governments cannot use this law in this way .
Democracy does not work like that, a governments can not enshrine laws to stop the next government from changing them .
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:24 am
“Democracy does not work like that…”
A Democracy, as a distinct form of government, does not work. Not for very long, anyway.
A Republic, as a distinct form of government, is the form of most “Western” governments.
The leftists want the Republics to devolve into Democracy’s. The reason? The Democracy’s will fail, quickly, and turn into Tyranny’s.
The end goal of the Leftist’s is to bring about a Communist Utopia, Tyranny.
I wish we would stop conflating Democracy with Republic.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:49 pm
Marx said regligion is the opiate of the masses. That comment of course wasn’t about communism other than as a factoid helpful to his other beliefs. I don’t agree with his other beliefs but I do agree with this one.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 2:29 pm
Marx said, “Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
Marx was a narcissist and a grifter. This metaphor, and much of his philosophy, was used to justify his useless existence and minimize the existence of those around him. It is nothing more than an attempt to dehumanize people.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 2:59 pm
SMC,
What ever do you mean!? Communism works great for ants and termites and bees; especially the colony queen!
To make it work properly for humans you just have to educate them to the level of the insect workers; that is the high mark that Western educators are attempting to achieve!
In speaking of Marx, one should never forget to acknowledge his world class misogyny. Perhaps that is why when his philosophy is instituted women and children suffer the most!
Reply to
December 4, 2022 3:05 pm
You should review Poe’s Law.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 2:02 pm
Communism does have many great ideas, problem is no-one ever gets to know what they are
Reply to
December 4, 2022 2:30 pm
It has great ideas for dehumanizing and destroying humanity. Communism is a plague on the world.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 3:41 pm
You misspelled “slavery.”
December 4, 2022 10:38 am
Not a UK law expert, but I did a quick search and found nothing that would grant the city authority to so restrict vehicular travel. I expect it will be challenged in court. The UK COVID 19 lockdown legislation plainly does NOT apply.
This proposal would be unconstitutional in the US via the 1st and 14th amendments.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 10:43 am
And the Second Amendment.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:40 am
The UK doesn’t have a Bill of Rights, much less a Second Amendment.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 1:45 pm
The US Constitution is, I understand, founded on the Magna Carta. An entirely sensible document which is no longer a legal precedent in the UK.
The US Constitution is under relentless attack from the left which makes me wonder why the Magna Carta evolved into a far more fluid constitution (small ‘c’) which rolls with the punches.
It seems to me that, as with any statutory document written into stone, it’s subject to legal challenge as society evolves.
On that basis I think the 2nd amendment is more important than the 1st Amendment.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 2:41 pm
The Magna Carta is one of the inspirations for the US Constitution.
The US Constitution is under relentless attack because it doesn’t allow for a permanent elite class of people. One of the many things the Leftists have done is to try and reinterpret and conflate words and ideas to render the Constitution meaningless. A classic example is conflating the two distinct types of government Democracy and Republic. You are watching the application of Critical Theory when the Leftists do this.
The US Constitution is not set in stone. There are mechanisms to change/amend or even rewrite the Constitution, see Article V.
The First Amendment is the most critical. The Second Amendment is there to protect the First,
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:01 am
I wouldn’t jump the gun on the unconstitutionality of arbitrary lock downs. Rights that are not enumerated in the Bill of Rights are incorporated under the 14th Amendment’s “due process of law” clause but in an inconsistent way. The right to marry is incorporated but the right of free association has not, nor has any economic right been incorporated that was not subsequently de-incorporated like the right to contract.
Interstate travel has been acknowledged but intrastate travel has not. The right to travel interstate was accepted by the Supreme Court in an otherwise horrible ruling that effectively eliminated an entire clause of the 14th Amendment – the “Privileges or Immunities” clause.
While I completely agree with you that there is a right to travel and a right to be free from forced restraint of action, I don’t know that this Supreme Court would uphold these rights and if the court is packed, all rights might disappear.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:42 am
“found nothing that would grant the city authority to so restrict vehicular travel”
Of course cities can restrict travel, and very frequently do. It basically just blocks off certain streets with bollards. A conventional traffic management scheme, as in most older cities, and nothing whatever to do with climate.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:27 pm
In your “mind”, the ability to temporarily block a road for a festival or road work, is the equivalent to requiring people to stay in their neighborhood unless they get permission from government to leave?
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:40 pm
That is arrant nonsense. There are no restrictions on personal movement. There are restrictions on vehicular movement, such as you will find in any European city. We have plenty in Melbourne, Australia.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:35 pm
There’s a qualitative difference between blocking the occasional, pedestrianised street and splitting an entire city into rightly controlled zones that can only be accessed by a special permit. Manchester, as an example, has several of the former. No town or city in the country has any example of the latter, because it’s a minumentally stupid idea.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:46 pm
I don’t know whether it is a good scheme. But it has nothing to do with climate. It is a response to a critical traffic congestion issue.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 1:10 pm
They don’t have to say the word “climate” for it to be about climate change policies. The proposals were crafted under the umbrella of “sustainable transport”, which is a euphemism employed for anything that is meant to “fight” climate change. If you think this isn’t meant to be teh outcome of the government’s overall sustainability and environmental governance policy, then you’re not paying attention.
And y es, the policy is stupid. It’s breathtakingly stupid. They aren’t merely preventing people transiting from their “zone” to the city centre, they’re preventing them from traversing between “zones” as well.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:46 pm
Shut up Nick. You know as much about local UK laws and issues as you do about climate science.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 1:36 pm
Local councils in the UK have certain rights to do what they want within a framework of national legislation.
We moved from centralised, Westminster authority over basically everything in the 60’s and 70’s to more devolved local power in the following decades. It’s more complicated than that but I’m not going into any of it here.
The argument was rightly made that Westminster could’t possibly understand what was going on in rural Oxford or Cambridge so local councils should have more control over the circumstances in their regions.
A bit like it’s accepted that US states are entities unto themselves within a national framework. Except we are talking millions of people in Texas Vs. a few hundred thousand in Oxfordshire.
Then Scotland, Wales and NI were awarded devolved government in the 90’s, and since then local English councils have treated their regions as their own personal fiefdoms. Everything is based on a ‘London’ model – A city of millions of people (London) is rightly concerned about air quality, so of course a rural city of a few hundred thousand should have the right to strangle traffic, whilst public transport is woeful even by London standards as a major conurbation, in a futile and deceptive excuse as a power grab by local officials who are no more qualified than I am to run a national profit centre, on the basis of air quality.
Local councillors are mad with power. This will seem a tad remote but, I despised Trump when he ran in 2016 because of media hype. However, I recognised what he was, a businessman running a business organisation, the United States of America, a local profit centre in global terms. I changed my mind very quickly. He ran America as a business, not an imperial hegemony.
In contrast we have Devolved governments, not just in Scotland, Wales and NI, but in major cities with their Mayors now running them to their personal desires, not least the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who is running the city as his personal fiefdom, and considering his Islamic heritage and his left wing predisposition, the outcome is not surprising.
Sadiq covertly condemns car drivers; has introduced innumerable cycle schemes in the city; is a trans, rainbow advocate, as woke as they come; and a dyed in the wool climate fanatic – yet has at least four gas guzzling Range Rovers for his motorcade across London whenever he see’s fit, and his regular jet powered excursions overseas. His history as a human rights lawyer extends to fleecing the taxpayer for every penny he could get, as most human rights lawyers seem to do (and I accept there are some good ones out there).
Given a change in political wind, he, and all the other woke local authority leaders would change in an instant rather than resign.
I used to believe that the route of an American style Constitution was sensible for any functional society however, it’s recently been revealed even that is worthless against political chicanery.
I don’t agree with antifa, but I’m beginning to understand why they see anarchy as the way forward. Yes they are Marxist’s, I get that. That’s not the point I’m making.
December 4, 2022 10:51 am
cant see anny reference to this on search engines so maybe a hoax story?
Reply to
December 4, 2022 10:56 am
Either that or possibly super cereal.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:03 am
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:44 pm
From that site:
“Traffic filters are designed to reduce traffic levels across the city, making bus journeys quicker and more reliable and walking and cycling safer and more attractive. When they are operating, private cars will not be allowed through without a permit. All other vehicles including buses, coaches, taxis, vans, mopeds, motorbikes and HGVs will be allowed at all times. Residents in Oxford and some areas just outside the city will be able to apply for a permit allowing them to drive through the traffic filters on up to 100 days per year.”
Nothing whatever about climate.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:05 am
Do a Google search for “Oxford travel restrictions” and you will find numerous references.
December 4, 2022 10:54 am
I have actually encountered this scheme. It is not a “climate lockdown”. It is a conventional traffic control scheme in a congested city. People wanted to keep local residential streets free of through traffic. Of course, not everyone likes it.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:30 am
For once, I agree with Nick. Nowhere in the article does it mention climate. Darren Birks is a conspiracy theorist idiot who is taking this way too out of context. Endorsement of this article is a disgrace to the climate realist community. This turns away people who think independently. I want to refer this to my friends but its pieces like these that make me reluctant to do so.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:38 am
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:49 am
That academic article has nothing to do with this Oxford scheme. I know the scheme very well. My son lives in Oxford, and has bollards at one end of his street. It is entirely to do with the problem of managing traffic in a busy city with ancient narrow streets, and nothing whatever to do with climate.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:56 pm
As soon as I got to the sentence “…and that of building safer, more resilient, sustainable and inclusive cities, as depicted in the Sustainable Development Goal 11 of the United Nations…” it was pretty obvious where they were going with this.
Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates and Larry Fink are gonna love this.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:46 am
From the article:
“Oxfordshire County Council yesterday approved plans to lock residents into one of six zones to ‘save the planet’ from global warming.”
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:56 am
Also from the article
“A single person’s life will be at the mercy of Communists in central office, dictating the same type of draconian rules we had to avert the last crisis, a mild flu virus so deadly 80% of people didn’t even know they had it. “
As Walter says above, Birks is a conspiracy theorist idiot. You won’t find and of that in the more sober account in the Oxford mail.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:39 pm
Today’s conspiracy theory is tomorrow’s news.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:12 pm
“conventional traffic control scheme….”
I’m not familiar with this convention. Where else is something similar implemented?
December 4, 2022 10:59 am
This can’t be real. No citizen would accept this.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 11:43 am
Oh yes it is real. See my comment December 4, 2022 11:39 am ‘Reply to JohnC’.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:01 pm
When is the Oxfordshire County Council up for reelection?
December 4, 2022 11:00 am
More confirmation for me that University study is NOT the best way to advance your education. To think that our old family home city of Oxford intends to promote this appalling circumvention of personal freedom just emphasises the point. Mao would be proud of these presumably-elected morons! Have they become so used to seeing the city traffic at a complete standstill that they wish to enforce a never-ending repetition of that?
December 4, 2022 11:12 am
Why the shock horror surprise – it’s what Electric Cars were/are all about.
They’ll be perfectly able to divide the entire country into x-minute zones , be able to do so remotely, in real time and enforce it remotely. In real time.
what is not to like
December 4, 2022 11:31 am
December 4, 2022 11:34 am
So what happens if people don’t comply? Do they hand out fines, or are they just hoping that people will abide by the restrictions?
Reply to
December 4, 2022 12:48 pm
In Canada if you support the wrong thing, they freeze your assets and make it impossible to do business or even buy food and pay rent.
December 4, 2022 11:39 am
That is truly bonkers.
I won’t say it can’t happen here, but, thank God, Americans are contentious and heavily armed.
December 4, 2022 12:01 pm
Remember in the years following WW II how often the mantra was trotted out ‘Just think, if we hadn’t won the war you’d all be speaking German by now’?
One year away from ‘Papers?’
And remember it’s not a conspiracy if they tell you they’re going to do it.
December 4, 2022 12:08 pm
This will work a treat with the Oxford university types until a pipe gets blocked up somewhere and the plumber’s response will be “can’t fix it until next month mate, run out of car journeys for me work van.
it was the academic fools that world that has undermined democracy and created these controls, but it will be the working class that stops the BS because they can’t limit themselves to 15 minutes around the centre of town and earn their living. Rather like at the moment when motorists are starting to drag climate fools off the road because the police won’t do their job.
We are still working towards peak insanity. it is the democracies that have largely created the wealthy world we live in where there is money for foreign aid, help for the poor etc. This will dry up completely when we are shut down by our own quislings. At which point, light may dawn even on those closed minds.
December 4, 2022 12:47 pm
This wouldn’t be tolerated in America.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 1:10 pm
I sure hope that you’re right but seeing rampant criminality with no bystanders interfering, I’m skeptical.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 1:36 pm
I don’t even think this would work in many large blue cities….take Baltimore for instance, as it is the closest to me. Dirt bikes are illegal in Baltimore, and yet there are thousands of bikes ridden by thousands of teens and young adults. Despite the fact that they are illegal to ride on public streets, riders do so all of the time and few if any get caught. They ride where they want and when they want. Lots of complaints, but policing in these blue cities is poor to non-existent at times.
I can just see it now – if Baltimore were to institute such a plan, many if not most residents would simply go about their business and drive wherever the heck they wanted to go. Unless there was a physical blockade cordoning off certain streets, it would not work.
December 4, 2022 1:15 pm
I can guarantee this won’t happen
December 4, 2022 1:31 pm
Frankly, I don’t believe this tall tale. Firstly : How can a council decision, properly conducted, ever be secret?
It is probably all just a private discussion between a few like-minded fanatic councilors.
Andy Espersen.
December 4, 2022 1:38 pm
Oxgulag?
Gulagford?
December 4, 2022 1:54 pm
Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council are mixed up here. The City Council covers the “dreaming spires and lost causes” part (which is obviously still dreaming and lost), ~140,000 population, Oxfordshire County is the surrounding area, ~600,000. When I worked at Oxford City Planning (1971 – 74) we had some workable ideas, such as out-of-town parking, not free but secure, price included bus ride into the centre on bus-only lanes. Unwise to argue with those big red double-deckers anyway. The 1 lane/2 lane “tidal wave” bollard moving system on the Magdalen Bridge route sort-of worked.
This wacky idea has no chance. Plenty of ways to circumvent it.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 3:14 pm
“Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council are mixed up here.”
No, that is the one thing it gets right. . From it
“Six traffic filters – designed to reduce traffic, make bus journeys faster and make walking and cycling safer – will be trialled in Oxford after improvement works to Oxford railway station are complete.
The decision was made by the county council’s cabinet on 29 November 2022.”
December 4, 2022 2:00 pm
I really see that working for tradesmen. Put all those councilors on a list of NO TRADESMEN available until they withdraw. No fridge, no hot water, no washing machine, what about dripping taps, or even worse leaking roof repairs. Add to the list of tradesmen and their vehicles where they need to carry tools, spare parts.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 2:17 pm
Its just making ‘through traffic’ more difficult – thats all, not “lockdowns”
“People can drive freely around their own neighbourhood and can apply for a permit to drive through the filters, and into other neighbourhoods, for up to 100 days per year. This equates to an average of two days per week.
The alternative is to drive out on to the ring road and then back in to the destination.- Oxford Mail
The story has just mixed up Oxford County and Oxford City ( who are doing this ) and mixed up annoying traffic restrictions with alternative routes, to actual lockdowns where you cannot leave
December 4, 2022 2:52 pm
How accurate this article is I don’t know. But the idea that this can’t happen in the US? The information is just pouring out now on ( documentable verifiable evidence – Twitter) on the extent of collusion with big tech to de platform, censor, and destroy credibility of those simply trying to voice an informed opinion. By who?- our government. We barely have a functioning 1st amendment anymore in the US. And yes I do believe the COVID lockdowns made many left wing (corrupt) politicians and agency heads absolutely drunk with power.
December 4, 2022 3:01 pm
I wonder how long the locals would take to pair up and swap cars at gates. One envisions a more local version of an Uber/Lyft app. One also envisions the government would take far longer to recognize and ban it.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 3:56 pm
Howdy Scarecrow Repair. How are you on this fine day?
December 4, 2022 3:09 pm
I hope the citizens of Oxfordshire have a means to reverse their inane council muy pronto!
December 4, 2022 3:17 pm
“Communist states like the Soviet Union and China seem to love movement restrictions and internal passports. In my opinion Britain has been edging closer to naked communism for at least half a century..”
Comparing Green lunacy to communism lends it a credibility it doesn’t deserve. China loves movement restrictions so much it’s just built 25,000 miles of high speed rail track.
Reply to
December 4, 2022 3:38 pm
Ask the Chinese people right now about their access to those 25000 miles of high speed rail, they can’t even leave their apartment buildings or work sites. How many transportation systems they build has nothing to do with individual liberty.
December 4, 2022 3:31 pm
I remember the good old days when we used to wonder which dystopia we were headed for: 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 or Mad Max. As if we could only have one.
December 4, 2022 4:09 pm
April 1st already?
I currently live in a town less than 40 miles from Oxford. The local council recently changed a two lane road into the town center to single carriageway, making the time-limited bus lane permanent. Twenty four hours a day, even though the buses don’t run twenty four hours a day.
The excuse? To “encourage” alternative transport, using the stick rather than the carrot.
As well as the created congestion, the fines to large numbers of drivers who didn’t notice the small change to road signs caused local outrage. They changed it back.
I predict a riot in Oxford.
