THE Sun’s Give Us A Brake campaign is a still small voice of common sense among the current cacophony of know-alls, nay-sayers and doom-mongers.
Though I’ve never bothered learning to drive (I’ve been married three times; why keep a dog and bark yourself?) when it comes to the current ding-dong over whether cars are the work of Satan or a vital component of mobility, modernity and freedom, I’m in the latter camp.
Like so much about ecology, the war against cars is intrinsically pleasure-hating.
They’ll be taking away the weekends next — after all, we didn’t need them before industrialisation, when we were happily toiling for the lord of the manor seven days a week like good little serfs.
Though ULEZ and LTN both sound like sexy new forms of electronic dance music, they are decidedly anti-fun — and very expensive.
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In a Sun poll in June, 85 per cent of us opined that the politicians setting these rules had no grasp of the financial pressures facing the general public.
What we are witnessing now is not simply a war on cars — it’s a war on the poor who dare to drive. The rich can easily pay to pollute, in the way the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages allowed the wealthy to pay for “indulgences”, a penalty which allegedly absolved the sheller-outer of sins.
Just as wealthy Just Stop Oil protesters will continue to have Instagram feeds which make Around The World In Eighty Days look like a stroll in the park.
The irony is that the wealthy don’t need their vehicles while many working people do.
Was there ever such a gap between those in power and those in financial peril as displayed in David Lammy’s pronouncement earlier this year that tradespeople who carry a vast amount of gear around with them don’t need their cars but can simply hop on the bus?
In his pomposity and absolute lack of comprehension of how ordinary people actually live, Lammy, who earned an extra £200,000 from outside work in the past three years, has replaced Emily “Lady Muck” Thornberry as the unacceptable face of over-privileged Labour.
Remember her loathing of White Van Man, which she displayed so shamelessly during the 2014 election campaign that she was forced to resign from the shadow cabinet?
This repellant attitude never went away, it’s now simply shape-shifted into carphobia.
In Brighton, we’ve just got rid of the Green council after 12 years; its war on cars was unprecedented.
Bella Sankey, the new Labour council leader, estimates that parking fees imposed by the Green council cost us more than £1million in day-tripper revenue over three years, leading to a £3million black hole in the city’s finances.
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The loss in parking revenue makes up the largest part.
The plan to introduce Brighton’s first LTN is thought to be what gave Labour its first council majority in more than two decades.
Pleasingly, with poetic justice, the new council has pledged to re-allocate the £1million set aside for LTN to refurbishing the city’s public conveniences — literally flushing the LTN fantasy down the toilet.
The Labour Party nationally needs to grasp this initiative if it hopes to win back lost voters.
We need a new Peasants Revolt against this creeping Green feudalism.
Importance of mobility
The Tories understand that this issue alone may save them, with the Prime Minister declaring himself an unapologetic motor lover.
As the child of immigrants, he understands the literal and metaphorical importance of mobility — of not being condemned to life in the place you just happened to be born in.
I’ve only voted Conservative once in my life, and that was for Brexit.
But if Mr Sunak stands by his claim to stop this sinister crusade to turn most of us into serfs on bikes, pedalling humbly into some drab future in which only the wealthy know the pleasure of travelling be it by car or plane, he’s got my vote. And I still can’t drive.
