London's "Blade Runners" might win the battle

The fight for liberty is being lost in the UK, but at least average people are beginning to fight back against creeping tyranny.

A new “Battle of Britain” is being waged against Sadiq Khan’s Blitz against drivers in London.

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At issue is Khan’s fight against climate change, which he seems determined to single-handedly win by restricting the use of vehicles in London. Khan just expanded his “Ultra Low Emission Zone” (ULEZ) to include most of Greater London, and Londoners are fighting back by destroying the infrastructure used to monitor automobile use in the city.

…Sadiq Khan, has expanded ULEZ to include all of London’s boroughs. As of this week, every inch of the capital is an Ultra Low Emission Zone where those who drive the wrong kind of vehicle – petrol or diesel vehicles that do not meet minimum emissions standards – will have to pay £12.50 on every single day they get in the driver’s seat and go somewhere. Let’s be clear about what the rollout of ULEZ represents: it’s an entirely regressive tax that will punish the poor most severely. It is an eco-toll that will have little impact on the wealthy of Greater London who drive ‘polluting’ vehicles, for whom £12.50 is small fry, or who can afford a brand new EV and are exempt from the charge. But it will devastate the freedom of movement of the less well-off who drive old cars. This is a cruel levy enforced by an out-of-touch mayor on a citizenry already struggling to make ends meet.

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Londoners are fighting back, and I for one am happy to see it. Not that I would ever approve of vandalism, you know…but what the hell, in this case I do approve of vandalism.

Beege wrote about the Blade Runners a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to give an update because the ULEZ zone has expanded greatly, and so has the civil disobedience. In some areas of London, 90% of the cameras used to enforce the zone have been vandalized or destroyed, and the Blade Runners want to get all of them.

Ulez vandals have hit at least a quarter of all new cameras in the expansion zone, data suggests.

At least 450 of the 1,762 cameras in the newly expanded zone are damaged or missing, according to a crowd-sourced map.

It comes amid a growing backlash to Sadiq Khan’s controversial traffic scheme, which was expanded on Tuesday to cover the entirety of Greater London.

Any person driving a vehicle which does not meet certain emission standards will be charged £12.50 a day, or fined up to £180 if they fail to pay.

This week a campaign has been stepped up against cameras that have been installed to monitor cars, with reports across the capital of vandals spray painting, stealing and cutting the wires of dozens of cameras.

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It’s a remarkable show of defiance, indicating that even citizens who have complied with appalling mandates for the past few years do have their limits. Perhaps it is because unlike COVID, which was an unknown danger for months, climate change propaganda is so pervasive and has been around so long that people have become inured to it.

Or, perhaps it is as simple as the fact that COVID mandates were easier to enforce, so people who were unwilling to cooperate with the mandates had fewer ways to resist effectively. Here, the small percentage of people with the guts to fight back now have an effective means to do so.

Whatever the case, the resistance is growing. People are getting fed up with the micromanagement of our lives and are taking matters into their own hands. And while most people are unwilling to stick their necks out, they are willing to enable this resistance to the regime.

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I love the fact that the people engaged in this form of civil disobedience look indistinguishable from the Black Bloc Antifa thugs whom people like Khan support.

There are few ways people can effectively fight the creeping totalitarianism that has been sweeping the West. We can’t fight social media companies that censor us. We are helpless before financial institutions that refuse us services. Fighting back against the MSM is an endless task.

But the ULEZ cameras? In London, they are taking them down.

That, at least, is a small blow for freedom.

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