The End of the Motor Car
Dr Vernon Coleman
The plan is to eradicate private motoring. The excuse for this is that private cars use up energy which cannot be spared. Motorists are blamed for damaging the environment and are, it is claimed, a major cause of global warming. There are huge taxes on buying a car, running it and fuelling it. Car parking becomes ever more difficult. It becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to take a car into a city. Toll roads are being introduced to make the cost of motoring ever more expensive.
In London, Sadiq Khan, the mayor, wanted to close roads, make more cycle lanes and make the English capital completely car free. Taxi drivers had fought hard against the ban. A judge found that the proposal did not take into account the needs of the elderly or disabled who ‘could not be reasonably expected to cycle, walk or use public transport’.
The mayor of London also wants to widen pavements to ensure that pedestrians have more space.
Around the rest of the country, so-called ‘low traffic neighbourhoods’ have been set up by councils as part of the green revolution intended to keep people separated in the long term.
Many of the changes which are already apparent are designed to make life unpleasant if not downright difficult for motorists. So, for example, town and city centres are filled with strange pieces of road furniture which create traffic jams (and, rather ironically, more pollution since stop-go motoring massively increases the use of fuel and the production of waste gases), speed limits are lowered to create more traffic jams (once again this causes vehicles to use up more energy), road taxes rise massively (except for electric cars, which still use the roads and which have been proven to require just as much, if not more, energy as cars using the traditional internal combustion engine) and so on and so on.
In the UK, the Government is planning massive changes to the Highway Code, including a hierarchy of road users to ensure that those who are believed to do the greatest harm have the greatest responsibility to reduce the danger they pose to others. Car drivers will, for example, have to give way to pedestrians waiting to cross the road – wherever they may be standing – and new safe speed limits and distances will be imposed on motorists overtaking cyclists and horse riders. All this will slow everything down, reduce productivity and result in far more declining businesses. Just what the Agenda 21 enthusiasts are rooting for.
In late 2020, the UK Government announced that it was going to make it illegal to sell diesel or petrol motor cars from 2030. The previous, arbitrary cut-off date was 2040 and bringing this forward by a decade will be ruinous for car companies and those involved in the servicing and repair of vehicles driven by internal combustion engines.
The big question, however, is where does the Government think the electricity will come from. Huge amounts of electricity will be required to power all the electric vehicles it is expecting to replace petrol and diesel driven vehicles.
In fact, of course, there obviously won’t be anywhere near enough electricity to go around. The UK is already on the edge of a major electricity shortfall, and electric cars use up vast amounts of electricity.
To deal with this problem, the Government will dramatically limit the number of private motor vehicles allowed and it will introduce massive road taxes on electric cars. By cutting the supplies to electric cars at unpredictable times, more and more drivers will be forced to stop using their vehicles. Existing petrol and diesel cars will be taxed out of existence. The impossibility of running a private vehicle will force people to move out of rural areas.
The long-term plan is to stop private vehicle ownership and to force people into towns and cities so that they don’t need to travel to work or to the shops.
In February 2021, it was announced that motorists in the UK would be given £3,000 if they gave up their cars. The £3,000 would be available to spend on public transport, bicycles and electric scooters.
The elderly and frail who have no access to public transport, and who are too unsure of themselves to ride bicycles or scooters, will simply have to stay at home or move into flats in cities.
Taken from Vernon Coleman’s new book `Endgame’ which is available as a paperback and an eBook.
Copyright Vernon Coleman April 2021