Have you heard about the little plan to curtail automobile traffic in Oxford (UK)? In sum, motorists will be able to travel freely in a designated area closest to their home, but should they get itchy feet and would like to drive to an area yea-over, they need to apply for a special certificate.
A motorist is allowed to have 100 days a year where he or she can transcend the borders of their little neighborhood, but there will be paperwork. If one chooses to travel 101 days outside of one’s zone, there will be fines. Municipal cameras will kindly keep an eye on license plates to ensure compliance.
Now, the astute reader will notice the similarities this scheme has to a strategy put forth by the WEF: to end private car ownership completely. The reasoning is thus: climate change is poised to foment such dire consequences, drastic action must be taken.
Evidently it is much easier to monitor the comings and goings of common folk than to inquire into the costs of the privileges and benefits of the self-appointed ruling class has on the planet.
The plan in Oxford is likely to work. Oxford is a community with a large, transient student population. While students might have personal cars, in the day-to-day many likely find it easier to walk or bike or to take a bus rather than to deal with the hassle of finding parking (let alone affordable parking) at their destination. It is very likely that the student’s car, even if kept at home, is charged by some entity for parking.
Again, as a significant proportion of the population are students, it is unlikely that they will using their cars regularly to take them beyond the confines of the hamster wheel of their daily life, and certainly not for 100 days a year. In short, students will not be affected very much by the reduced-driving plan. After all, they are supposed to be going to classes and studying and preparing for their future.
Outside of London, even with the fabled British Rail criss-crossing the countryside, the preferred method of commute is by car. Unsurprisingly, there is resistance from the middle-class—the people who have to get up in the morning, get in a car, and drive to a place of employment that is likely not two skips down the street.
Keeping down the complaints might prove to be a little more difficult for the authorities, but as Mr. Trudeau has showed with the truck drivers, it can be done. It may be a little messy and painful, and a law may be broken here and there, but it can be done.
In theory, the idea of a car-free, nearly medieval city-center is very appealing. Who does not like the idea of sauntering down the cobbled streets and stopping to enjoy a coffee or another libation at an outdoor table, and not to have one’s view blotted by a line of parked cars, or by a line of cars creeping along?
Yes, this is a dream, but having cars is a reality. In Pontevedra, Spain, cars have been successfully taken out of the city center. Part of the plan was to provide underground parking for cars on the periphery of the city. But none of this has the “stick” provision of the UK plan. The mayor and city leaders strove to build a community where everyone valued the very pleasant outcome.
To keep people in “zones”—now, on a slightly voluntarily basis, but in the future, perhaps not so voluntarily—is akin to keeping them in prison. While the bars may not be visible, they exist. Controlling city traffic is a problem that can be tackled, but it can be done without punishing the citizens who choose to live and pay taxes in a specific area.
But if the problem is not city traffic, but if it is something as dubious as climate change, perhaps we all should be shunted back into caves—the sooner the better.
Buy my new book and learn to argue against the regime: Everything You Believe Is Wrong.
Subscribe or donate to support this site and its wholly independent host using credit card click here. For Zelle, use my email: matt@wmbriggs.com, and please include yours so I know who to thank.
If too many cars is a problem the solution is getting rid of the hoardes of non-white savages who are mentally incapable of driving properly to begin with.
The stuff of which dystopian futures are made.
There was a movie, Code 46, that used this as one of the underpinnings-a future where all of the wealth was in mega-cities and outside was wasteland. You needed a passport to get in.
It goes hand in hand with the bug eating seminars in grammar schools
all over Europe, but there’s no conspiracy there’s no plan….Who would have
ever thought anyone would have to write this? It falls under the rubric of
‘the new normal which is anything but normal.
If the authorities see Alex Jones driving outside of his home town, arrest him and fine him $666 Billion dollars and the message will be heard by the herd.
Since the wealthy have no intention of getting rid of their private jets, limousines, and huge yachts that burn more energy in a day than the proles do in a year, we can see the actual motive of these clowns–a neo-feudal society where they have everything, and the proles have nothing…
Just organize a day or a week when hundreds or thousands drive outside their zone(s). Let the cameras deal with that. Let the bureaucrats sort through the paperwork. Then, when all the fines have been assessed and the notifications have been sent out, take to the streets and burn the fines publicly.
Or shoot the cameras. Or cut off the electricity to the cameras and the gov’t offices.
This whole scheme–like the WEF’s other schemes, without exception–rely 1000% on a universal and unfailing supply of electricity, which is something we don’t have and are not going to have.
People don’t have to do this. They don’t have to submit to this, but the very likely will because it’s easier to do nothing than to do something.
To quote from my favourite author (me)…
“To a progressive the steady stream of traffic on a busy highway is an absolute horror show: thousands of people making their own decisions, going where they want to go, when they want to go, and for their own reasons -it’s unconscionable, it’s unacceptable, it’s beyond their control. More subtly, all those vehicles and the freedom to use them are the result of free markets at work – and that too is anathema to the progressives because it rather directly shows that their entire understanding of the world as about Malthusian competition for limited resources is simply and fatally wrong.”
telearb.net, of course.
This is straight out of the USSR’s system of internal passports and restricted movement
During the last couple of centuries places like the U.S., the U.K., and some of their Western allies were moving toward freedom, and having quite a bit of success at it. When I was very young, in the 1960s, people with crazy ideas we now call “progressive” were considered a joke, nothing more than amusing fools to be laughed at. Now they’re in charge–elected and worshiped by millions of useful idiots who obey like brainless sheep. The ability we had to live our lives how we wanted to, where we wanted to, as autonomous individuals is quickly slipping away. And that’s my old man rant for the day.
I see how it is…
1. Fix the results with a very selective sample.
2. Declare SUCCESS!
3. Forcefully implement the policy everywhere.
4. ???
5. Profit…? No disaster.
6. Fix the results with very selective verbiage and examples and declare Profit anyway.
THE SCIENCE ™ at work!
We should all start breeding horses now. Ride them like men. Make sure they shit near the politicians’ homes. See how they like that pollution.
I’m learning to embrace schadenfreude, at least when the misfortune is self-inflicted. These demagogues were voted into office, right? Who did that?
Oxford? It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of folks.
I wonder if members of the ruling class, as well as their friends and family, will be offered special exemptions.
Cars = Freedom, in a way that no other device ever has in our culture. Frankly, I’m amazed they allowed us to keep them as long as they have.
GM, Ford, Chrysler/Jeep, Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes, Fiat, Renault, Peugeot, Citroen, Land Rover/Jaguar, Nissan, Toyota, Honda, Subaru, Mazda, and Tesla may have something to say about it. Not happening anytime soon.
…and the Chinese manufacturers. Shell, Imperial Oil etc…
The headlong rush to ban internal combustion engine cars and force the far inferior EVs on us is meant to destroy the American car industry. It is just an acceleration of the ridiculous fuel efficiency and safety regulations. Government will then control what remains.
Plantagenet, do not worry. They will all receive contract work to return to building tanks and other gas guzzling artillery for the never-ending war! It will be broadcast on TV as our only sports entertainment besides the gladiator arena where dissidents are sent for stepping outside their zone to recover their blown-away hat.
In theory, the idea of a car-free, nearly medieval city-center is very appealing. Who does not like the idea of sauntering down the cobbled streets and stopping to enjoy a coffee or another libation at an outdoor table, and not to have one’s view blotted by a line of parked cars, or by a line of cars creeping along?
Me. I don’t like it. I wake up every morning and there’s nothing out any of my windows but woods and pastures. City living is disgusting.
And here:
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/cars/oxford-introducing-traffic-restrictions-for-privately-owned-cars-after-2023-44498004
God bless, C-Marie
“Otto Moibul”
Oh yeah, sure, “Otto Moibul”, like I’m supposed to believe that’s, like, you know, a real person, c’mon, man, like, dude, like, I wasn’t born yesterday, like, I mean, like, whatever, dude, but listen, I’m not eating the bugs and I’m not sticking it in a poop hole, and you just need to get your stuff right with God, I mean, really, like, I can’t even, and you never drove that stupid buggy on the moon, and I’m still like, gassing up my car, and playing golf, and screw you and the blood-sucking central bank vampire squid you rode in on, dude. Meaning no disrespect, of course, Briggs… I mean, like “Otto Mobile”?!, right?, like, whatever!
Johnno, amirite?
It doesn’t really matter, does it? Every few years we have the promise of flying vehicles as commuter transport, and with the standard of most peoples’ driving cars that should help with population control.
DavidC
(/sarc off)
Pingback: The Elite’s Plan For A No-Car Society — Guest Post by Otto Moibul — William M. Briggs | Vermont Folk Troth
The determination of communists to monitor and control everything that everyone does all the time is a mental illness, and like most of the mentally ill, they are ‘reality-challenged’, in the sense that they believe that ‘reality’ is what they want it to be, therefore it is.
Combine this with the parasitism of communism, i.e. these people are incapable of producing, and must survive on the labor of those more intelligent than themselves, and how does any of this stuff ‘work’, when the people who do the work get tired of being slaves?
“Make them eat bugs and live in pods” is not the way to have a motivated workforce that can keep the lights on…