In early December, the County of Oxfordshire, in England, voted to begin intensely filtering traffic in certain parts of Oxford between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. This is slated to begin sometime in 2023, upon completion of some existing transportation projects. Right now, the local government says that there will be a six-month trial of using the filter system, and at the end of the trial period, there will be a vote as to whether or not it should be continued.
Six portions of Oxford will be restricted from private vehicles during this time period. Residents can travel freely in their own areas. However, attempting to enter a different restricted area using a private vehicle will require a permit. Violators will be subject to fines of £70 (about $85).
How will this be enforced?
Contrary to some internet speculation, there are no plans to erect physical barriers. People will still be allowed to walk, bike, or take public transportation wherever they want. Vehicle usage will be monitored with Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras, the same technology that has been around for more than 20 years to collect money remotely on toll roads. The ANPR cameras will also enable the county to issue permits to private drivers to make a limited amount of trips within the city within the restricted time frame.
Critics all over the world, including Australia Sky News host Rowan Dean insist that this is a gross violation of freedom of movement, and will lead us down the slope to a medieval world with an autonomous nobility and a peasantry tied to the land.
Supporters reply that this is simply an attempt to remedy Oxford’s notoriously horrible traffic. What are we supposed to think? What’s actually going on?
I think it’s important to be precise with our language.
The second one side becomes hyperbolic, the other side uses it as an excuse to throw all arguments out the window. County Oxfordshire is not proposing locking down people within their neighborhoods the way many of us were supposed to be locked in our homes during Covid. These aren’t exactly “climate lockdowns.” But the restrictions on using personal vehicles are extreme and could prove devastating to anyone that can’t walk or bike in all kinds of weather.
Proponents like to point out that individual drivers will be able to get permits to drive into restricted segments up to 100 times per year, which averages to about twice a week.
For people with flexible schedules, working part-time from home, this seems workable.
But many people cannot work from home and just imagine trying to throw children’s schedules into the mix. Let’s say you have to drive to one section for work and another for your child’s school.
You’ll only have a permit to drive your vehicle once a week. What if you have a middle school student in one sector, a high school student in another, and your job in another? It gets very ridiculous, very fast.
A spokesperson for the council that passed this measure defends the situation, saying, “Everywhere in the city will still be accessible by car, although some private car drivers may need to use a different route during the operating hours of the traffic filters.”
Most parents do not actually enjoy driving their children all over creation.
It’s just a facet of modern life we all have to put up with.
If there were quicker ways to get through Oxford, they wouldn’t need to be mandated. English drivers would figure them out on their own. This looks like a classic example of the government trying to solve one problem and creating another, larger one in its place.
And, again, I won’t call this a “lockdown” because it’s not, exactly, but it reminds me of the lockdowns in that it’s going to pit different groups of people against each other. Professionals with the option of working from home, with no more than one or two children that also happen to be old enough to use public transport on their own, will be okay. People that must work in person, and people with children who cannot use public transport for one reason or another, will be severely impacted.
And the mother in me cannot help but think of pregnant women being expected to ride their bikes around town in the winter.
I was back in the office four weeks after my first child was born, but if someone had told me I had to ride a bike in an English winter to get there, I would have pitched a fit.
These traffic filters may not be climate lockdowns, but it’s important to recognize what they will be and what they set the stage for.
Installing these traffic filters, with the attendant cameras and data collection, represents a big step toward a surveillance state. Even if County Oxfordshire hates the cameras and votes to stop using them next year, the infrastructure to monitor the movement of private vehicles will be there.
Right now, the plan is to charge violators £70, which is comparable to a speeding ticket.
It’s annoying but not disastrous for most people. It’s the kind of thing where if your child gets sick (or your teenager does something really stupid) and you need to get to the doctor, even though you haven’t got a pass, it’s still doable.
But once the infrastructure is in place, it would only require a very small change to jack the fines up to something crazy, like £7000. And that would turn a small emergency, like a needed trip to the doctor’s at an inconvenient time, into a total disaster.
(To learn about the four levels of disaster, make sure to check out our free QUICKSTART Guide.)
I’m not saying County Oxfordshire is planning to do this, because right now, they aren’t.
All I’m saying is that once this infrastructure is in place, doing so will be very easy.
If anyone thinks this is just preposterous, and “of course” the British government wouldn’t do something so ridiculous, I would invite them to read the press release on the U.K. government website regarding their climate change goals.
On April 20, 2021, the British government announced its plan to slash emissions by 78% relative to 1990 levels by 2035. This is the world’s most ambitious climate change target. The British government has a variety of strategies by which they expect to make this happen, and largely eliminating private vehicle usage will be part of it.
The British ban on the sale of new gas and diesel-powered vehicles will come even earlier than California’s in 2030. Hybrid vehicles will be able to be sold until 2035 when all new vehicles must be completely zero emission.
(Obviously, U.K. regulators are not taking into account the massive emissions that go into manufacturing lithium car batteries as opposed to conventional car batteries, but that’s another story.)
As in the U.S., electric cars in the U.K. are more expensive than conventional ones.
The average price for a new electric vehicle in the U.K. is about £50,000, and while the price for a conventional vehicle is not that much lower, at about £46,000, the existence of many more used conventional vehicles means that conventional vehicles are still the only realistic option for lower-income drivers. I’ve never bought a new vehicle.
And while there won’t be an outright ban on combustion engines, ending sales of new ones means that parts and maintenance on the existing conventional vehicles will become more expensive and difficult to obtain. The U.K. intends to drastically reduce carbon emissions by 2035, and nearly eliminating personal vehicle usage will help to achieve that.
(Want uninterrupted access to The Organic Prepper? Check out our paid-subscription newsletter.)
Leaders don’t want to look bad but they want to make us change our lifestyles.
Worldwide leaders don’t want to look like dictators, but at the same time are not shy about insisting that we need to completely change our lifestyles.
Most of us in the U.S. are familiar with Biden’s Build Back Better plan. Did you know Canada’s Justin Trudeau has also promised to Build Back Better? So has New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern. So has the Netherlands’ Mark Rutte. So has the U.K.’s Boris Johnson. Leaders want us to be ready to go along with whatever changes are deemed necessary by the political class.
Very few people are publicly cheering the lockdowns, and when this story about traffic filters generated headlines about “climate lockdowns,” mainstream press was quick to distance the project from lockdown rhetoric. But the lockdowns were not universally hated. For many, the social disruption simply represented an opportunity to remake society.
Boris Johnson has pledged to Build Back Greener, and in his Ten Point Plan, he makes it clear that massive changes in transportation will be part of that.
The British government claims that it is not trying to restrict anyone’s movement, but the end result of more-expensive vehicles and strict traffic controls will be to restrict movement. There’s just no way around it. This may not be a full-blown climate lockdown. But it will be a trial run of the infrastructure and surveillance equipment that could enforce one.
What do you think?
What do you think of this restrictive law keeping people in their own neighborhoods? What difficulties can you foresee for people? Do you think this kind of mandate will spread to other countries? Could it spread to our country? Let’s discuss this in the comments below.
About Marie Hawthorne
A lover of novels and cultivator of superb apple pie recipes, Marie spends her free time writing about the world around her.
Of course the UK and US will totally push forward. My daughter is on a base in the UK and has rented a car and has said in general that she ‘feels safer’ there due to ‘no guns’ (yikes) and ‘cameras everywhere’ . She says if you speed ‘they’ just send you a ticket. I asked her how ‘they’ know you are speeding if big brother wasn’t watching?! She hasn’t quite picked up what my husband and I and her 3 brothers have been putting down if you know what I mean…but hopefully she does soon. ???? They seem to be a passively dictatorial country. I have little interest in visiting there.
Those of us born and living here are getting fed up with being a captive state and having invading armies coming ashore every day.
The “Mother May I” Government.
The Right to Freely Travel is considered a hallmark of a Free Country.
Oxford is no longer a Free Country/County, and if I lived there, I’d be doing something about those fecking Snoop-o-vision cameras.
Spray Paint could be useful…
A high powered Pellet Gun does a number on the lenses as well. Paint’s a good first strike.
All kinds of ways to sabotage their snooping.
A book titled “Nudge” authored by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein is one of the playbooks of the globalists. The scenario explained above is an example of attempting to nudge society into compliance.
Why do they insist on making things so complicated?
If they really want to get us unwashed masses to reduce our carbon foot print, why not just detonate a few super EMPs every other day for a week or two?
Presto!
Back to the low carbon emitting (comparatively) 1800s we go!
Population reduction too!
I believe they view Earth as their petri dish. Throttling freedom helps them recognize the miscreant’s for further study or elimination perhaps through the use of Social Scoring. I do believe in the high probability of EMP’s being used against some countries so the globalists can study that outcome too.
I think they like the idea of that level of control.
But as we have seen from those insisting on not taking the jab (thankfully as another peer-reviewed study from Germany shows the link between mRNA vaccines and myocarditis resulting in death),
to the Canadian truckers protest, Alberta is going against Turd-duh, sheriff’s in OR saying they will not enforce the new gun laws, nearly half of the states in the US have passed some kind of Constitutional Carry law, gun sales have been at record levels for months on end, seeing more push back against public school over reach, home schooling on the rise, all point to a populace who will not go quietly into the night.
Great points on the level of control they desire vs. the actual realities of Freedom Loving Americans and people worldwide. I am fortunate to live in a Constitutional Carry state and exercise that right.
Concerned Citizen,
First, congratulations on exercising your 2ndA rights!
Second, I think it is the illusion of control that is more powerful than the actual control.
By using the illusion, they do not actually have to do anything much other than promote the idea.
Lots of people just say, “They will do this! They will do that!”
And accept it as fact.
Yet, as the examples I provide in my prior post show differently.
Do you believe in reality? That you control your own fate?
Or their illusion, give in to their narrative, and roll over blindly to their control?
I do believe in reality and I like to believe I control many aspects of my own fate. I went Galt 13 years ago. Just to test my preps I went completely off grid for 18 months starting in 2018 until late 2019. It was a humbling experience. To this day I am 80% off grid all the time. I live closer to an Amish life style than anything else.
Oh, I forgot to address one of your points, propaganda attempts to disguise their hidden agendas, but they’re in plain sight if you know how to recognize them. Like trading Vic Bout for Griner…. Who better to sell all those American Weapons going into the Ukraine than an international arms dealer?
5th generation warfare. Hearts and minds.
My friend, I believe that you have hit upon the solution to ALL of the societal problems that we are now facing. Bring it all back to the basics. Although the elites might not be happy with the people that do survive, because chances are it won’t be their supporters.
Lone Canadian,
Back to basics! Right!
We have gotten so far from what is really important, as sad as it may be to say, I think we might need some kind of real disaster to put things into perspective.
Bidenflation seems to be getting us closer and closer to that kind of event.
60% of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck.
Food inflation has out stripped the decline in gas prices at the pump.
The cost of heating is at all time highs, and could go even higher.
Next year is going to be worse.
The government can hand out more stimulus/inflation checks to try to keep us unwashed masses compliant, but if that cannot cover the cost of things like food, rent, utility bills, gas, and the kids are going to bed hungry, things can and will go badly.
Britian is not and never has been, a “free” country. It’s citizens have always been under a Authoritarian form of government. The same goes for Canada and Australia. You need a goivernment permit,(their permission) to do just about anything and it keeps getting more and more restrictive.
The USA is close behind. However in the US we remember what it was to be free and resist this kind of authoritian garbage.
They say History repeates itsel. It seems like Britian is going back towards a society ruled by the Elete classes, as they will be theonly ones able to afford the privlidges of living somewhat as a “free” people.
I have written before about how I live. When covid lockdowns first started, our inept county judge (there are no city counsels or mayors in our county) and commissioners signed a proclamation of limiting/restricting egress and ingress to our county. We only have five roads entering and leaving our county. That proclamation violated our governors executive order stating travel inside the state would not be restricted. Considering there are no grocery stores, feed stores, hospitals, clothing stores, etc. in our county that restriction was stupid. Of course my husband and I are on all the government list, because we are vocal and not grey men. My husband called the county judge and sent him a copy of the governors EO. The judge dropped the requirement, but claimed he just copied other counties proclamation.
There are court cases about the right of the citizens to travel. Mostly older court cases. Like our former inept county judge, the current one is just as bad, if you don’t stand up and challenge the powers to be, then they will get away with restricting our right to travel freely. Just as I refused to wear a mask and only shopped at places that did not require the mask, the same will come with the travel restrictions. I will be looking into browns gas possibilities to fuel my car if gasoline is hard to come by.
I do agree that we need to do something to address climate change (unless “climate” and weather are being manufactured somehow, nefariously – not sure about this, but it could be possible). And we, the human species is not known for our adaptability and ease with change. So from that perspective I see that enforcing change for the betterment of the whole picture could be a positive. There would have to be so many exceptions though, to make it work well for everybody, referencing some of the many situations you mention in the article. It leads to a logistical nightmare. But I don’t trust the governments of any country nor the WEF. I believe Mr. Schwab is evil. So I think this whole thing is actually leading to a very bad situation which will be one of the many steps put in place to completely control the world population that remains after all the “die-off” that is happening. A very messy can of worms is opening, I fear!
Climate change is not caused by man and man cannot change the cycles. Weather has always changed on planet earth. Here is an article that may enlighten things https://canadafreepress.com/article/cold-records-get-ignored.
Can we really address climate change?
Scientists agree, over the past million years there have been 5 significant cooling periods to include a few ice ages.
Flip side, they also have found the arctic to be some 50 degrees higher in temps then current ones.
Regardless, we should do something about polluting or man made pollution.
But then that puts us into a bind. Less pollution, means less wasteful consumption. In some parts of the US, telling someone they need to give up their happy motoring lifestyle be it gas or electric.
2,400 sqft home? Nope. The wrecking crew will be there Monday. Then a pre-fab (oh, the horror, the horror) 900sqft home will be delivered as your new home.
Out of season food? Nope.
Paying farmers for the real, non-government subsidy, non-fertilizer, non-feed food products? Might be a bit more than what you are used to, even in Bidenflation.
Wind and solar to meet your energy needs? Take away the government subsidies, and mandate all wind and solar to be recycled, and watch your electrical bill soar! (note: Currently only 10% of solar panels are being recycled. The rest are landfill bound! And potential toxic leaching into the water table that we need to live)
I think the WEF go green, great reset is nothing more than an illusion for the dumb and gullible to keep the good times going for as long as they can (for them) and know full and well things are going to go badly, and they will be in their bunkers, compounds, “Eagle nest,” so very far from the mess they created.
As Lone Canadian noted, the survivors will not be the elite supporters.
Like to think the meet with a Munich like end.
Sounds like your eyes are opening, Blessed.
Does anybody else remember the World Weather Treaty signed in 1978? At that time, over 170 nations agreed that, although the technology was available to disrupt climate and weather patterns, the technology would not be used. Duh! Since the beginning of history, since when has any treaty ever not been violated??????
Just like covid lockdowns…a tyrannical “solution” for a fake crisis which wouldn’t work even if the crisis were real!
Those Brits, Canadians and Aussies all see themselves as Loyalists, subjects of the King of England. My ancestors took a different path, so whatever King Charles or his Schwabian allies say is of less concern to me than what my neighbors think.
An armed individual is a citizen. Unarmed individuals are subjects. We did the ORIGINAL Brexit in 1776.
This is predictive programming. Borgenesis will be trackable, geofenced in the I.O.B.. community precursor to “The Line” in Saudi.