GREEN MEANS GO...
“TIME TO TURN OFF YOUR ENGINES WHEN YOU’VE STOPPED,” BEDFORD COUNCILLORS TELL TAXI DRIVERS
Taxi drivers in Bed- ford who don’t switch off their engines when they are stopped have been thrust into the front line of the bat- tle against climate change. According to Bed- ford Today, coun- cillors on one com- mittee have decided to ask their col- leagues on another to consider whether they want to make wasting fuel a con- dition when licens-
ing the trade. “I’m getting fed up of taxi drivers leav- ing their engines running outside schools,” said dep- uty mayor Cllr Charles Roydon, at last month’s climate change committee. “It really drives me bonkers. We can stop this through licensing.” And Labour group leader Cllr Sue Oliv- er was so impressed with a presentation on the council’s use
of spy-in-the-cab telematics that she wanted to see the technology “rolled out” to other vehi- cles, such as taxis. Telematics equip- ment records driver behaviour, including braking and acceler- ating. The com- mittee was told that the council has used it in its 204-strong fleet with good results. Mayor Dave Hodg- son said: “We might want to take this to
the licensing com- mittee to see if they want to introduce it in the future for new vehicles.” “Most of the licens- ing committee are here so perhaps you can take it away and look at that. It’s something we could do immediately and say from year X we expect you to have telematics. And if you didn’t hit a cer- tain level you’d have to come in front of the committee.”
Gurdeep Dosanjh, the secretary of the Bedford Hackney Carriage Association, spoke to the Local Democracy Report- ing Service after the meeting. He was not impressed. “What about the buses in Bedford that are 20 years old and don’t switch their engines off?” said Mr Dosanjh. “I am sure that buses are polluting the area more than taxis are. They are all run-
GULLIBLE GOVERNMENT IS CLUELESS ABOUT DIESEL AND PETROL ENGINE FUTURE
FairFuelUK is a pub- lic affairs team with no shareholders to satisfy,
just an
award-winning cam- paign representing the real concerns of motorists across the UK. Decades of fis- cal exploitation by successive Govern- ments with little in return warrants the need for FairFuelUK. It is fronted by pop- ular TV motoring journalist Quentin Willson and the Campaign’s Found- er Howard Cox. FairFuelUK has res- ponded to Boris Johnson bringing forward the ban of sales of diesel, pet- rol and now hybrid vehicles to 2035 from 2040. Howard Cox, found- er of the FairFuelUK Campaign, said: “The political wor-
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ship at the altar of Greta Thunberg has now become an embarrassment, with the Government now making uncost- ed decisions re- garding the future of our road trans- port. There is no need for targets banning hard press- ed motorists’ prized possessions. Emis- sions are falling be- cause vehicle tech- nology is improving by the day. So why put a finger in the air target ban in place when cleaner fuel technology will evolve organically without Boris’s new extinction threat of the internal com- bustion engine? “The emissions agenda is currently being dominated by the concept of panic and global catastro-
phe. The ‘double- speak’ which en- ables campaigners to call for reduced NOx emissions, based on no credible data, and encourages drivers into the soot filled London under- ground, has caused road users to exclu- sively bear the brunt of the environmen- tal assault against pollution. “The Mayor of Lon- don has, through his anti-car and pay to pollute policies, uni- laterally devalued
the UK’s diesel fleet by £35billion. He has made millions of vehicles virtually un- saleable. Nobody ob- jects to clean en- gines. No-one argues against improved ef- ficiency which cuts emissions, but there are fairer and better ways to lower emis- sions. Wherever anyone stands on climate change and local pollution, there are effective proven products available now, which improve things instantly.
“Since not one sin- gle case of death from ambient air pollution has been recorded in recent history, the flawed healthcare data fig- ures being used are essentially an ex- cuse to turn the screw on road users who must pay what- ever is demanded because of their unavoidable depen- dence on transport. “There’s another problem which the anti-car lobby com- pletely refuses to address: energy and overall pollution issues. It turns out that an EV is 14 times worse environmen- tally compared to a hybrid. This is in part due to the huge environmental foot- print of creating an EV and its batteries.” Quentin Willson
said: “Cleaning our air is an absolute priority but it won’t happen through aim- less virtue signalling by politicians. Gov- ernment and local councils need to apply evidence- based science to the sources and causes of pollution to clean up our urban air.” “The UK is woefully underprepared for vehicle electrifica- tion,
is broadly
ignoring marine, avi- ation, industrial and domestic combus- tion and needs to really incentivise consumers and in- dustry to change their behaviours. The UK needs a con- sistent and well- crafted national air quality strategy that’s supported by world-class scientif- ic research.”
MARCH 2020
ning their engines. “The council should start with them first, then they should come out to taxis. “Instead of sitting there making deci- sions, the coun- cillors should get out and do a day’s work with the trade,” he added. He said he would be speaking to Cllr Roydon, the coun- cil’s elected head of environment, high- ways and transport, to find out more.
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