Essay by Eric Worrall
First published JoNova; 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: https://www.visionnews.online/post/oxfordshire-county-council-pass-climate-lockdown-trial-to-begin-in-2024
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 Oxford 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 County 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: https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/23073992.traffic-filters-will-divide-city-six-15-minute-neighbourhoods-agrees-highways-councillor/
Oxfordshire is the home of the University of Oxford, 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. A number of leading Oxford intellectuals were hanged or otherwise persecuted over the centuries, because of their resistance to authoritarianism. 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.
Update (EW): The “15 Minute City” concept mentioned by Councillor Duncan Enright is intimately tied to sustainability and climate goals. From Introducing the “15-Minute City”: Sustainability, Resilience and Place Identity in Future Post-Pandemic Cities :-
“… The success of this concept, as it has been shown in the city of Paris under the leadership of Mayor Anne Hidalgo, has been hailed as a potent urban planning concept that will lead to an economic boost, while bringing about social cohesion and interaction and help create sustainable ecosystems in cities, more so after the experiences of COVID-19 and associated containment measures. While some of the features of the “15-Minute City” concept had been temporarily adopted in different cities after the impacts of COVID-19, its adoption in long-term planning would result in a higher quality of life as proximity to basic services would help in saving time wasted in traffic, thus promoting sustainable mobility [35]. This will aid in efforts to reduce emissions as envisioned in the Paris agreement and promote higher cultural outputs, amongst others. For instance, by re-thinking the transportation system to create more biking and walkable streets, the challenges of private car ownership will be somehow addressed as they will be reduced as more people embrace biking culture. In addition, as expressed by Reimer [36], the adoption of the “15-Minute City” concept will also open gateways for more novel digital innovations such as bike-sharing technologies that would increase the high livability experiences of urban residents. For instance, as is expressed by Gehl [37], the re-thinking of cities to facilitate walkability and cycling would, in turn, inspire the creation of parks, squares and public places within neighborhoods, and by doing so, it would help to bridge the social inequality in accessing such facilities, which are not always available for everyone in a car-dependent city. …”
Balkanising cities into smaller districts, like the districts in “The Hunger Games”, will in my opinion cause substantial economic damage, and reduce social contact and cooperation between different regions of cities which have been manipulated in this way. The whole point of living in a city, for people who choose to do so, is the broad range of economic and social opportunities and resources offered by city life. But as they’ve said many times, traditional concepts of prosperity and economic growth are not the core goals of deep greens.
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.
You forgot Atlas Shrugged. I’m sure we’re missing others.
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.
I grew up in New York City, in Manhattan. In the 1960s owning an auto in Manhattan was insanely expensive and I, like most lower class people, could not afford it. Gun ownership was impossible unless you were an ex-cop or a Mafia bodyguard.
Basically, if you wanted to travel you used public transportation which meant that you could go where the government let you and when the government let you. Murder rates were higher than now so walking at night was dangerous.
I moved to Los Angeles and seeing that public transportation was impossible, I bought a motorcycle. For the first time in my life I could go anywhere I wanted, anytime I wanted. I suddenly understood the campaign against automobiles and for public transportation. It’s the sense of being in control of your life that politicians hated.
When I moved to a suburb of Seattle, I got a concealed pistol permit. I rarely carry, but when I do it’s because of the time of day and the area I’m in. In my 70’s I don’t have the reflexes to get out of trouble if it finds me, so knowing I’m armed gives me a freedom to move that I would not have otherwise.
In New York, the people are “pacified” and accept that they are serfs, helpless without the state to provide for them. Ultimately, that’s the reason that all large cities in the US are heavy Democrat voters.
Culture is upstream from politics, but even more importantly, when you control the culture, you control not just people’s actions, but their very minds. Political force can bend people to the will of the state, but using the culture, people can be made to bend themselves.
Does a carry permit for a shooter entitle you to always shoot first in anticipation?
‘Cause it seems to me that that’s the only way it provides any real protection.
Good luck with your arrangement anyway though.
If you have a legitimate and immediate threat to your life, you can use deadly force. If someone threatens your life but there is an easy safe retreat you have to use it. WA doesn’t have a “Castle Doctrine” so there’s no guarantee that merely saying that you were cornered or lacked the physical ability to escape may not be a defense. If you are physically assaulted then you can use deadly force and that has been fairly consistently upheld.
It comes down to the old expression “Better to be judged by 12 than to be carried by 6”. I won’t shoot unless I am reasonably sure that the alternative is serious injury or death. Hopefully, I will never have to make that decision.
“a county council travel chief has insisted the controversial plan would go ahead whether people liked it or not.”… until that is the people of Oxford vote them out, in disgust & anger. V thy these people can’t understand the limits of their power beats me. The power goes to their heads and mams them think they rule the world. They forget that the public are ultimately in control, lending it temporarily to them.
Who counts the votes?
“…This equates to an average of two days per week….”
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And eventually never if you don’t get your head right.
It sounds like the Twilight Zone.
Closer inspection of the policy shows the following:
The traffic filters are on 6 busy roads into town, and will only operate during day-time.
Residents will be allowed to pass through 100 times per year for free, will pay £70 after that.
Frequent road users will be exempted altogether.
This is no climate lockdown. It is non-linear road pricing.
I disagree Richard. The goal is to create a “15 minute city”, to coerce people to use resources within a 15 minute radius of their home, regardless of whether they are the best resources to suit their needs – just like some Covid lockdowns limited people’s movement to their local area.
The document Introducing the “15-Minute City”: Sustainability, Resilience and Place Identity in Future Post-Pandemic Cities explicitly mentions climate change and The Paris Agreement as justifications for moving towards this model.
The economic damage I claim will accrue is through disincentivising people to seek the best personal economic outcomes, by reducing the geographic radius people can search to find the best suppliers of goods and services, without incurring a financial penalty.
Granted £70 is a fairly mild penalty, except for people on low incomes, but if this policy continues, I doubt it will stay £70 for long. And the 100 day allowance would almost certainly be reduced over time.
The goal is to create a “15 minute city”
This is really twisting to fit a narrative. There is a very clear goal, which is to do something about Oxford’s dysfunctional traffic. I spent some time last year looking out the window at St Cross Rd, which is where one of the filters will go. St Cross Rd is the only functional N-S road passing East of the city and W of the Cherwell. At peak hour, especially in mornings, it was jammed solid; it could take up to an hour to get to High St. That blocks everyone. Others of those filter points were similar.
This is just the council trying to make it possible for at least some traffic to get through. It’s fairly drastic, and there is a lot of local opposition. Midnight sawing off of bollards happens. I thought they might abandon the scheme at this review point, but apparently not.
It wasn’t me who said “15 minute city” Nick.
Indeed, no. Oxford talks about it, with a paper here, titled, in fact, “15 minute neighbourhoods”. But notice something? It is full of town planning enthusiasm, but says nothing about climate (except to report that some people responding to council surveys mentioned it). You’re trying to beat up something from the fact that you found that an unrelated French academic paper which seemed to think they would be good for climate.
Did you actually read the document Nick? From your link:
“… Experience of neighbourhood and travel
The County Council identified the Plan should include reference to the following: 15/20 minute neighbourhoods, reducing air pollution, consider integration at the edge of the city and prioritise sustainable travel. …”
There is no coercion, Eric. There is non-linear road pricing, that only applies to commuters and occasional visitors.
The council is clear they want to create 15 minute neighbourhoods Richard. The coercion is the £70 penalty for having a job over the border in the next district. If you see nothing sinister about council telling you where you can travel, and issuing limited permits to travel to different suburbs, backed by a financial penalty, then that’s your lookout.
A fine is not coercion. The road will not be closed. Cars will not be impounded. No one will be imprisoned. If you travel without a permit, you will be fined. If you have a good reason to travel without a permit, the fine will be waived. For most trips, a permit will be issued free of charge.
Furthermore, you should distinguish between the aspiration (15 min neighbourhoods) and the actual policy (traffic filters on 6 busy roads at day time, with generous exemptions).
The aspiration is, in fact, benign. They hope that the people in and around Oxford would be within a 15 min bus or bike ride from everything they do on a weekly basis: work, school, shop, recreate. I wish that were true for me.
There is no plan to forbid people to travel 16 mins, there is no plan to ban cars.
The planned traffic filters only apply to trips into central Oxford. You can drive around Oxford to your heart’s desire. You can visit the neighbouring village, or London or Birmingham, as often as you want.
This is nothing more than a regressive tax, hitting the poor much harder. Is being poor going to be an exemption? What if you are living on a fixed income and heating prices continue to go up and you must still go visit your sick mother outside the zone every day? Will that be an exemption? Will you need to bring a note from a doctor to get the exemption?
Carers are exempted.
Richer people are more likely to commute by car into Oxford.
“A fine is not coercion.”
smh
If the aspiration was benign the plan would be to help fill gaps in services so people would accept the 15 minute lifestyle of their own free will, without the coercion of a fine.
The traffic filters are a means to manage traffic in central Oxford, largely unrelated to the 15 min neighbourhoods.
Includes delivery vehicles?
I think you can apply for an exemption. Goodness knows what morality tests will be applied to the exemptions. Likely large companies will find it easier to deal with the bureaucracy, especially if the practice spreads.
Vans are exempt.
So it’s communism’s fault?
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Yeah, and then you form an armed mob, destroy the local council buildings, set fire to the number plate cameras, tear up the barriers and kill anyone who tries to stop you.
Its called ‘revolution’, it is what we do when government becomes oppressive, and we have done it many times over the millennia, most recently in England, in 1650, and later in the American colonies in 1770.
And we will again.
WUWT doesn’t condone violence Zzebowa. Britain has well conducted local government elections.
You are like Extinction Rebellion and the Just Stop Oil idiots. Actually you are worse, because they at least do not advocate revolution and destruction of buildings etc.
You are proposing revolution because a local council proposes to do a pilot project to limit the amount of traffic now flowing through streets completely not designed to handle it!
Just read about what they are intending. Its perfectly reasonable, its not any infringement of personal liberty.
https://letstalk.oxfordshire.gov.uk/traffic-filters-2022
It does not regulate travel! All it regulates is driving a car.
People commenting here don’t even seem to understand how local government works in the UK. Traffic and highways are a County Council matter.
And the talk about revolution, mad as it is, also shows a total ignorance of UK constitutional history. No, the important one was not Magna Carta, nor was it the civil war. It was the revolution of 1688 which resulted in the Bill of Rights of 1689. Yes, the UK does have a bill of rights. And a tradition of common law rights.
And no, they do not include the right to drive anywhere you please whenever you please.
I can understand the alarm, but there is more to the story. Oxford is a historic town with a medieval city center that is very difficult to navigate. This is probably more an attempt to control excessive traffic in a special-case situation. Thanks to tonyb, commenter on Jo’s site, for the clarification. The original story was modified accordingly.
https://letstalk.oxfordshire.gov.uk/traffic-filters-2022
this is unbelieveable
if the people go along with this they will get what they deserve
Jeezus, I do not normally condone physical violence but I guess there has to be a limit somewhere. If someone tries this in a town near me , I suspect I may react badly.
This story is really ridiculous.
First, the pic is showing an ordinary high table dinner, not any kind of famous feast. College dining halls were long tables at which the students sat and the staff served, and at one end of the hall, on a raised platform, the dons sat. Their table was at right angles to the students’, as you see on this pic. Perfectly ordinary, probably was that way for 100s of years, and entirely reasonable to provide a separate area for the dons.
Second, there is no proposal to restrict people to their little area. It is not a restriction on travel. The only proposal seems to be to limit the use of cars to move through the city. Any other way people want to travel through the city, they can – bike, walk, public transport.
In addition, they want to travel from one of the designated areas to another without crossing the filter, they can do this too, just take a less direct route, go out to the ring road and then come in.
This is an attempt to do something about the problem Oxford has, which is a very restricted center through which all traffic gets funnelled on one or two very congested routes, which are also the routes people use to walk through the center and shop or get from place to place.
It is entirely reasonable to conclude the only solution to this is restrict the number of cars driving through the center on the way between two other parts of the city. You’d have to see the numbers to make a proper assessment, but it seems a quite reasonable idea to restrict this traffic.
The restriction is also not draconian. It simply tries to limit the number of trips, and the limitation is so small that the question one should be asking is whether this is enough to make a material difference.
Other cities have done similar things – take a look at the traffic regulations in Cambridge, for instance, suffering from a similar problem.
Lots of people object to measures like this on a question of values. What they value is being able to drive through anywhere they want on the way to where they want to go. But setting the highest priority on this is a question of what you value.
It is quite reasonable to set a higher value on having a quiet low traffic city center where people can walk and cycle as they used to years ago before we had city centers totally dominated by cars.
Now, whether the particular scheme is sensible, that’s impossible to judge without seeing the analysis and the numbers. If they were motivated by net-zero considerations, that is idiotic, of course. But its not at all idiotic to want to reduce car traffic in the city. And the rants in the rest of this thread about communism and authoritarianism are completely idiotic.
The plain fact is that pedestrian areas of cities are much nicer places to visit. You can see it in lots of English cities, and you can see it all over Holland, who got there before anyone else in Europe. It is entirely reasonable for city councils to consider and try ways of improving the shopping and leisure environment of the city shopping streets. Whether this is the best or even a good way is a different question. And that is the one that people should focus on, not this conspiratorial nonsense that seems to be dominating this thread.
There are local elections next May so that is the chance for the people to change the make up of both Oxfordshire County Council (the Highway Authority) and Oxford City Council. I can see business booming in places outside the city concentration camps and those inside dwindling away especially if there are too few people in their gulag section to support them.
If true this is absolutely insane. Britain unfortunately needs to have their 1789 moment, it really looks like it will have to come to the point where people are dragged into the street.
Better now than later.
The rather hysterical reporting on this is a bit silly. They have identified six points, on six streets, where access for private cars will be limited. This is not the same as dividing the city into 6. I notice nobody complaining that the entire centre of Florence, which has the same problems (narrow streets, historic buildings), is car free.
Apparently reacting to climate change requires authoritarianism — therefore authoritarianism is no longer a bad thing.
I am surprised this story has not been retracted as it must now be clear to the author that it is almost entirely made-up.
Nonsense Richard.
There is no lockdown, it has little to do with climate, and it’s not a trial either. You did get Oxfordshire right.
It’s still there.
NOAA-Scripps Mauna Loa’s measured net increase in CO2 due to all sources and sinks, human & natural = 2.58 ppm or 0.000258% for 2020. (That’s avg 414.24 for 2020 minus avg 411.66 for 2019.) Same source: Average net CO2 increase over last 51 yrs = 1.76 ppm/yr. That rate doubles CO2 concentration in 200 yrs and temperature increases only 0.75 Kelvin. But plant growth would increase and plants would need less water, thus Earth continues to become greener and feed more people. No one knows cause of this slow CO2 increase, but clearly it is not human fossil fuels since, after removing the shared timeline simultaneity bias, there is no correlation between AGW proponent’s (e.g. CDIAC) modeled trend of fossil fuel CO2 versus NOAA-Scripps-measured trend in net CO2. More CO2 and heat would bring many benefits, few if any downsides.
There is no climate crisis except the power mongers and true believers pushing climate crisis. Power deludes politicians into believing it can overcome the defects of their ignorance.
These climate change fools don’t know about the defence industry weather modification tools that should have total control by 2025
It seems the Nazi’s won after all!
Is this a parody site?
I GRIEVE the fact that I can no longer tell lunacy from news.
Criminal damage will have no effect on climate, or anyones policy on climate.
Their ”cause” is just an excuse for wanton vandalism.
The climate will continue to change, regardless of human activity, as it has done for hundreds of millions of years.
Anyone who continues to think that burning fossil fuels affects climate, should try doing a tiny bit of basic research.
CO2 has varied from 7000 ppm to the present low of 400 ppm during the last 600 million years. During that time, global CO2, has risen for millions of years, while global temperature fell for millions of years, and the reverse. Therefore as the observed facts contradict the theory, that a miserable 40 ppm of human generated CO2 will cause climate heating/change, the theory is WRONG!
If the people of Oxford allow this to happen, they truly deserve it