The 'Bladerunners' are right

Have you heard of the Blade Runners? They're the chaps cutting down the ULEZ cameras in London.

I tend to think of myself as somebody who has a reasonable awareness of the things that are happening in politics and the things that are happening in the world of motoring. I used to live in London as well. At the time that the second Wrath of Kahn began for unsuspecting Londoners.

If you believe that democracy does in many ways prevent violence and criminality in our civil societies you will not be surprised to see this substantial effort by a group tagging themselves as the Blade Runners. I dunno quite what they mean with that name, but I guess the press will be amplifying it for sensational effect.

The point is, nobody in all seriousness really asked Londoners if they wanted an ANPR network monitoring every journey for the purposes of fining them for owning vehicles they were told to buy not 10 years prior.

I know they're criminals... but I think they're right!



https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12404209/...

Believed by whom exactly? Someone monumentally clueless, I suspect.

Regarding the original question - there's lots of laws I disagree with, most far more important than the ULEZ, but vigilantism is rarely the solution.

You suspect wrong.

Even in China, where facial recognition cameras are used to fine pedestrians who jaywalk, only a relatively small area of the country has close surveillance of what's happening on the ground. Nowadays you're on camera pretty much anywhere you go in UK. I was walking up a suburban road today and the houses were literally bristling with CCTV. Whenever there's a crime where do the police go? - Asking the public for dashcam footage and CCTV.

I do enjoy their videos.

The cameras seem comically vulnerable, almost like they were meant to be stolen.

Are the cameras being replaced? What's the timelines like, do they get replaced within a few days?

That's going to get pricey.

Mediocre Whataboutery.

Mediocre retort. Where's the lie?

So you like your taxes being wasted by the tantrums of manchildren?

It's a way of saying it... but it's hard to argue that the timing for introducing ULEZ is worthwhile given that the vehicles it targets are in the last 3rd of their service for the majority of their owners and will be shuffling off to the scrapyard in the sky soon enough anyway.

Furthermore...

With any argument which says "all these things have to be done to lower pollution" so is with ULEZ that by creating the bureaucracy, buying and installing a ton of cameras and computer equipment and paying people to operate them you are creating pollution. All the effort put into running the scheme (effort = pollution) must be subtracted from the diminishing difference between compliant and non-compliant vehicles. i.e. for ever camera erected Londoners could make 3000 journeys in a non-compliant vehicle and we'd still be breaking even.

That's not the point I'm making though. It just seems to me like they didn't properly ask people about this and now we've got real vigilantes hacking down cameras. Quelle surprise.

Kicking off about the lack of democratic accountability... infinitely more substantial than the issue of paying the charge itself. I quite like the idea of being forced to buy an old petrol fuelled car to avoid a fine from the mayor.