Londoners – what have you done??

[StephenFord]

Sadiq Khan is now enjoying his 3rd term as mayor.

He has presided over the largest increase in knife crime  ever.

He has enforced the ’congestion’ zone.

Introduced ULEZ (ignoring a public consultation heavily against and is currently under investigation for doing so), then pleased at it’s money raising power, increased the zone to ‘outer’ London.

Building fewer social housing than Boris (!).

Regularly displays traits of being as woke as you can get. Allowed ER to glue themselves to roads/trains and gave police direction to either just leave them, or spend hours using solvents to remove them. (They should have been left in situ if they glued themselves, and allow traffic to veer round them!)

He regularly holds the government to ransom for demands to excess funding of TFL as he has lost total control of it’s operating budget.

The list of his failings are endless, yet the majority of Londoners obviously love this guy to bits, as he gets chauffeured around in his £450,000 bomb proof Range Rover.

You had a candidate (Howard Cox) whose manifesto included from day one, to terminate the congestion zone charge, and rescind the total ULEZ scheme, yet he barely registered in votes.

Well, I guess some turkeys do vote for Christmas ... 😂

 

[StephenFord]

Just learned that SK got just 11% of the vote to return him to office. There's surely something wrong about that? Also just learned that his 'pay per mile' scheme is likely to introduced as he's continuing the roll out of the cameras to enforce it.

Still, I don't live in London, what do I care 🤣

[alexp999]

He got 43.8% of the vote. 
 

11.1% MORE than 2nd place. 

[StephenFord]

2 minutes ago, alexp999 said:

He got 43.8% of the vote. 
 

11.1% MORE than 2nd place. 

Absolutely correct, I really misquoted that LOL Many apologies, will leave post as is rather than 'edit' as error fully exposed now.

[TomsFocus]

It is bizarre that Howard Cox got so few votes when his main agenda seemed to be 'increase air pollution in the city'.  Baffling.  

[StephenFord]

8 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

It is bizarre that Howard Cox got so few votes when his main agenda seemed to be 'increase air pollution in the city'.  Baffling.  

Oh Tom, you really are 'green' through & through LOL If SK was one bit interested in air pollution, he would do something about the absolute toxic atmosphere of the underground. Instead, he allows the ventilation of all those nasty, particulates & fumes straight onto street level without a second thought for his beloved Londoners LOL

[TomsFocus]

Just now, StephenFord said:

Oh Tom, you really are 'green' through & through LOL If SK was one bit interested in air pollution, he would do something about the absolute toxic atmosphere of the underground. Instead, he allows the ventilation of all those nasty, particulates & fumes straight onto street level without a second thought for his beloved Londoners LOL

There's a big difference between passively leaving an old polluting system for now and actively removing new systems that have reduced air pollution though.

There's plenty of evidence to show that the high levels of NOx in particular cause more respiratory issues in major cities.  I don't understand why anyone wouldn't want to reduce those in the area they live in, even if they couldn't care about the global situation as a whole.

I have to say I'm not a fan of Khan either, but had I lived in London, I definitely couldn't have voted for Cox based on his proposals.

(As it happens, our local election was a waste of everyone's time as well, the same guy got in again that's had the position for over 10 years.)

[StephenFord]

5 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

There's a big difference between passively leaving an old polluting system for now and actively removing new systems that have reduced air pollution though.

The underground (according to the Green party) emits over 20 times more pollutants than is in the air at street level traffic (away from stations). You more than most know the strides that have been made in ICE cars in the last decade, they emit really small amounts of pollutants now than a decade ago.

Still, we've had this discussion many times before.

It's not just us, many folk have diametrically opposed views on his issue, each can clutch to various scientific evidence that proves their points.

4 Billion folk use FaceBook, I can't abide it as it's an insiduos company, and they also own WattsApp too - doesn't neccessarily make me wrong 😂

[TomsFocus]

It depends on which pollutants you're looking at.  For example, large particulates aren't particularly harmful to human health as they're too large to get deep into the lungs, and are heavy enough to drop to the ground quickly rather than hanging in the air, but still get counted as pollutants to skew the stats in favour of some of the ultra-green agendas.

Yes, brand new ICE cars, and indeed most up to around 5 years old now, do produce very small amounts of NOx & particulates.  But I don't know what percentage of London traffic is made up of those currently.  I would guess the vast majority of cars in London are around 5-15 years old when higher NOx & particulate levels were allowed, and many will have worn emissions devices that are no longer as effective as they were new as well.

I'd like to hope I take a fairly balanced and pragmatic view of environmental issues.  I don't consider myself to be ultra green at all, but do struggle with some of the choices I have to make which are not as environmentally friendly as I'd like them to be, due to my own circumstances and the current technology and society we have right now.  However I do also hope that we continue on the trajectory of reducing the pollutants that we are aware of, and the impact they're having, rather than increasing them which would be a backwards step for me.

I don't expect you to change your mind though.  And I don't think you're going to change mine either.  So it's probably best we just leave it there and agree to disagree in this case.  

[orangecurry]

So how many of the people commenting here actually live in London? 😆

[StephenFord]

2 minutes ago, orangecurry said:

So how many of the people commenting here actually live in London? 😆

Probably none, but what does that matter? It's our capital city. I did work there for 2 years. Not many folk on here are from Northern Ireland, but I'm sure plenty had opinions on how to deal with 'the troubles'. I'm unsure what point you're trying to make...😀

[orangecurry]

😆  that you are talking nonsense from a position of no direct experience.... but carry on 😁

[Eric Bloodaxe]

Given the amount of "noise" about Mr Khan's policies, what I draw from this is either:

- they're not as unpopular as it seems or

- given a 40% turnout (slightly down on last time) people simply can't be *rsed to vote 

And you don't even have to step further from the door than the nearest post box if you register for a postal vote.

Even worse in my area - the successful mayoral candidate was elected on 35.1% of a 30% turnout.

 

[orangecurry]

19 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Given the amount of "noise" about Mr Khan's policies, what I draw from this is either:

- they're not as unpopular as it seems or

- given a 40% turnout (slightly down on last time) people simply can't be *rsed to vote 

Indeed - what we should all draw from this is that 99.9% of what you read in the media/social media is 'wrong', and often deliberately wrong to send people off in the wrong direction when they vote.

Londoners, people actually living in London, clearly think his policies are not the wrong ones - removing all of the ***** old diesels is just one of those policies - and they have shown this by

a) not bothering to vote because they are not unhappy with the current situation

b) voting for him for a third time

What you should all be very worried about is that due to the 99.9% of wrong information that people on social-media are fed, we will never have a 'fair' election ever again.

[StephenFord]

31 minutes ago, orangecurry said:

What you should all be very worried about is that due to the 99.9% of wrong information that people on social-media are fed, we will never have a 'fair' election ever again.

 

2 hours ago, StephenFord said:

4 Billion folk use FaceBook, I can't abide it as it's an insidious company, and they also own WattsApp too - doesn't necessarily make me wrong 😂

Well, we have one thing we agree on 🤣

[StephenFord]

1 hour ago, orangecurry said:

😆  that you are talking nonsense from a position of no direct experience.... but carry on 😁

Shall we talk about the weekly marches in London of support for a terrorist organisation (Deemed such from numerous governments, including our own). I guess you think they all have 'direct experience' too then!

mmm... get the feeling this thread will soon be closed... 🤣

[TomsFocus]

9 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

Well, we have one thing we agree on 🤣

Isn't that another thing you have no direct experience of?  

It's the media that's the real issue, not specifically social media.  Genuinely baffles me that so many people still believe anything they read in the newspaper (or online news outlets) without question.  I could understand it with my grandparents generation, they grew up rurally with no internet and minimal TV, having to believe whatever they were told or read in a newspaper, but I don't understand why it's still happening in the internet age.  That is a part of human behaviour that I'm still trying to work out.  Though I'm probably too far the other way, I rarely believe anything without multiple sources of evidence from different perspectives to back it up.  

 

I do want to pick up on the other posts though, as it is important to note that the loudest voice is often not the majority voice.  As a 'quiet' person, I rarely find myself in agreement with the noisy people...but of course they're the ones that get heard.  With a vote like this, at least everyone gets the opportunity to have their say, without being drowned out by noisy people.  As has been said above, people would vote for change if they were really unhappy with the current situation.  I don't believe the low turnout is so much about laziness as the fact that the situation is 'adequate' for many non-voters.

[StephenFord]

25 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

As has been said above, people would vote for change if they were really unhappy with the current situation.  I don't believe the low turnout is so much about laziness as the fact that the situation is 'adequate' for many non-voters.

I have voted in every election since I was 18. The last 3 x times I have spoiled my vote, as I feel it is a perfectly legitimate form of democratic protest. I do know that I am very active in politics, and always have been due to my upbringing. Many folk in NI are.

At the next election, unless there is a candidate of independent thought. I will again 'spoil' my vote...

 

[Eric Bloodaxe]

1 minute ago, StephenFord said:

. I will again 'spoil' my vote...

The trouble is there's no mechanism for recording that properly, or to distinguish between those who just make a mess of things or those who are specifically making a point, such as yourself.

I'd welcome a "none of the above" option which would be properly recorded as such. 

[RL123]

One of the independent candidates on our forms identified as ‘none of the above’ ,

confusing- he didn’t get elected though.

[orangecurry]

3 hours ago, StephenFord said:

Shall we talk about the weekly marches in London of support for a terrorist organisation (Deemed such from numerous governments, including our own). I guess you think they all have 'direct experience' too then!

two things you raise - 1 - there is an important distinction between claiming 'direct experience', and my pointing out you do not have any direct experience of living in London.

2 - you are peddling the exact misinformation of which we speak - most protesters around the world are asking for the killing of innocent people to stop, not that Hamas are innocent, or even in support of them.

...and yes there's a HUUUUGE difference.

[StephenFord]

1 minute ago, orangecurry said:

two things you raise - 1 - there is an important distinction between claiming 'direct experience', and my pointing out you do not have any direct experience of living in London.

I lived/worked in London for 2 years as mentioned in a previous post. That is direct experience in that after a days work, it's the only city I ever worked in that I felt grit in my hair as it was a filthy environment! Though that was 3 decades ago.On more recent visits (though pre ULEZ), it was transformed.

I won't entertain a debater to your 2nd point as all you need to do is watch news footage (from bona fide news agencies, not social media) of the Saturday marches to actually see the 'support' on display through peoples chants, and/or their flags, emblems, logos on clothing etc etc...

[orangecurry]

1 minute ago, StephenFord said:

I lived/worked in London for 2 years as mentioned in a previous post. That is direct experience in that after a days work, it's the only city I ever worked in that I felt grit in my hair as it was a filthy environment! Though that was 3 decades ago.On more recent visits (though pre ULEZ), it was transformed.

Excellent!  So you agree that Khan's policies have transformed London from a shithole into paradise?

The prosecution rests.

(as you say, there's no point in trying to open your mind on the protests around the world.)

[StephenFord]

3 minutes ago, orangecurry said:

Excellent!  So you agree that Khan's policies have transformed London from a shithole into paradise?

ULEZ was introduced in 2019 - London was already massively cleaner by then that it ever was.... If anything, the EU in it's legislation on car emissions was largely to be congratulated on the shift. SK just saw £ signs on how to monetise motorists.

[orangecurry]

....but the actual Londoners want to keep him, the ones living there, now, full-time......so perhaps you should consider the possibility that it's YOU that has the wrong information........

(I'm out)  😆