November - a bad month for Sadiq Khan & ULEZ

So as we approach the Christmas season what’s been happening in ULEZ land. The month started well on Saturday 4th November with a protest in Old Coulsdon. This spot, right on the border, is where the mobile camera vans have been parking up catching people out so it seemed like a good place to meet up and spread teh Anti-ULEZ word. All the vans had plenty of space, dinosaurs everywhere, a Sadiq Khan punchbag inspired by the All Bikes one in Purley, and a surprise appearance by MattHardyBladerunner. We did get rain but made the most of the afternoon.

The evening event was put on by the brilliant Edenbridge Bonfire Society who announced their surprise celebrity effigy would be Sadiq Khan, so how could we resist going to watch him burn? An impromptu convoy was lead by Keith Steers who has a lot of experience in these things and off we went to Edenbridge, with a lot of waves of support along the way through Caterham. We made some noise getting into Edenbridge town centre and parked up to enjoy the event and what a show it was, there were even dinosaurs on one of the floats. Although the weather was bad, it stopped raining just long enough for everyone to enjoy the spectacle of Sadiq Khan getting his head blown off and going up in flames.

On 9th there was Peoples Question Time where the public ask the Mayor questions and he refuses to answer them. Although this looked like a good chance to find out exactly why he ignored the consultation, fiddled the science and lied about the deaths, it seems that it is another opportunity for him not to listen to Londoners. There was of course some heckling as the anti ULEZ campaigners filled about a quarter of the seats.

More information is coming out about the person behind the funding of C40 cities, of which Sadiq Khan is the chairman and seems to spend more time worrying about his position there than he does about knife crime. The funding comes from the billionaire Sir Christopher Hohn who donates large sums of money to Extinction Rebellion too, as well as having a large stake in Heathrow airport. Is it right that these people are using their wealth to influence our lives without us voting for them or their idealistic policies? This is also being investigated by TogetherDec.

The next piece of pertinent news is a leaked report from the ASA saying that Sadiq Khan misled the public about the “benefits” of ULEZ in radio and newspaper advertisements . Many campaigner s would have complained about the incessant misleading adverts, and it seems that the ASA agrees with us, so a small victory, but it’s unlikely to come to anything as Sadiq Khan appears to be a slippery as Boris before him, but with less personality and charm.

Finally in the news section, Peter Fortune confronted Sadiq Khan at MQT about Project Detroit, the plan to change by the mile and teh vast amount of expenditure it has attracted. There are highly paid individuals and all sorts of shady dealings. At first Sadiq pretended not to have heard of it, it also goes by Project 2030 and had its own website until a short while ago when it was suspiciously removed. Look it up…

Another demo on 18th took place outside the Orpington Conservative Club to support the well organised event going on inside, as we got together for a more formal discussion with politicians, councillors and campaigners to discuss what comes next. It was worthwhile and interesting few hours and a good chance to network and swap ideas. Who knows where this will take us next.

Plenty of events to choose from on the run up to Christmas – we are not giving up.