Forum Topic

TFL Entrapment

So, I dared to use my car.As an anti christ , supposed kill the world diesel , I need /HAVE to pay ulez , congestion etc.BUT , you try doing it. Register, email , password, passcode, secret pin, mind maiden name, etc etckhan:TfL you are entrapment money making scum

Peter Yale ● 504d40 Comments

khan/tfl/council moving in on all & every side with their anti car policies.Force, sorry “encourage “ every man woman & dog to cycle or walk.Hanwell CPZ expansion is under consultation.That’s it implemented then, if not straight away then definitely in near future

Peter Yale ● 479d

Looks that way as the little donut is probably putting the final touches to his 2024 ''Big One''. I'd go for a ban on any diesel cars from 2026, any advances on that?

Peter King ● 480d

my understanding is that the constitution of the Mayor of London was amended so a Mayor can only be elected for two terms and was changed during Ken Livingstone's tenure.So in line with most democracies including the USA.Has it been changed again?

Raymond Havelock ● 480d

Khan is a Self Serving Incompetent Pipsqueak, he HAS to GO.A third term? God help us!

Rosco White ● 481d

Report today stating London the MOST congested city in the world.Hmm, I wonder why!!!Scrap TFL & rid us of khan & co

Peter Yale ● 481d

Philippa, you could have fooled me!

Anthony Hawran ● 483d

Facts and observations?  You are presumptious!  I am definitely not spending my time contemplating my navel!

Philippa Bond ● 483d

Philippa, there you go again, being patronising and condescending. I was just stating facts and observations. You seem to be an apologist for the patronising neo feudal officious jobsworths of the Labour Party, that are good at virtue signalling. ULEZ is an example of this, Labour in action virtue signalling at the expense of the people.

Anthony Hawran ● 484d

Philippa, there you go again, being patonising and condescending. I was just stating facts and observations. You seem to be an apologist for the patronising neo feudal officious jobsworths of the Labour Party, that are good at virtue signalling. ULEZ is an example of this, Labour in action virtue signalling at the expense of the people.

Anthony Hawran ● 484d

None so blind as those who will not see .............. 😆

Rosco White ● 484d

And Anthony you need to stop wallowing in your various hatreds  and obsessions.Rosco knows quite well exactly why he got that reply from me.

Philippa Bond ● 484d

Philippa, you seem to be quite patonising and condescending, just like L.B. of Ealing Labour Party controlled council when they wanted to "pedestrianse" and kill off through routes in Ealing Broadway on Bond Street, High Street, and Springbridge Road, just to satisfy their own disingenuous virtue signalling ego.

Anthony Hawran ● 493d

Good grief.  You sound like you've eaten too much and are  going to need indigestion tablets or you won't be able to get to sleep!

Philippa Bond ● 494d

Philippa, the Labour Party have more than their fair share of top dog neo-feudal managers, that talk down to the people. This is so that the people have to be obliged to wipe the arse of these disingenuous Labour virtue signalling jobsworths, in order "to protect public services", which realy means protecting the pensions of the neo feudal minded Labour Party top dogs "politicsed Jehovah Witnesses". In my experience, your reply to Rosco White personifies this patronising virtue signalling attitude.

Anthony Hawran ● 494d

What a load of rubbish from you Anthony Hawran.  If you want to know what the Labour Party think perhaps you had better ask them.

Philippa Bond ● 494d

Phiippa, That reply to Roscoe White is a officious patronising jobsworth reply that can come from the Labour Party, just for their own moralistic sense of being.

Anthony Hawran ● 495d

You should be eating your five a day of fruit and vegetables!

Philippa Bond ● 496d

Yes, and my toilet's blocked, and it's all because of "The Tory Cuts!"  🤣

Rosco White ● 496d

It is the problem of having a Govt who does not believe in spending money on the state.  They would privatise their own grandmothers if they could - but wait - they have already. Noam Chomsky - Neoliberalism is destroying our democracyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBzSLu3MZ6I

Philippa Bond ● 496d

South Ruislip, no cash payments at Oyster machine.Blinds down at office window .See it say it sort it !!!!Bang on window, wake some disinterested employee up who might be able to help!That’s if,as usual , there’s someone/no one in ticket office Bloody khan

Peter Yale ● 498d

Using words like 'trick' and 'Polemicists' is another means of being dismissive to and condescending to another view.Actually I have first hand experience of 43 years working in industry allied to large organisations. and during that time worked for large organisations. In fact 3 of the organisations you have listed. Seen it all for myself and had to sit through meetings and do the rounds of networking that beggar belief in the levels inept people stoop to to get up the greasy pole. So little got done for such great cost and waste.It's why I prefer to work for much smaller operations. But have to regularly deal with some of these organisations in one form or another.TfL has a long history fairly well documented going beck to it's inception, the revolving door of senior executives, the contracts awarded, it's recruitment process, it's political interference and it's own inner politics and it's shortcomings cast a shadow over it's achievements. A shadow too over those who are terrific achievers and there are some excellent people there but most, as in other organisations who are very capable are kept at arms length or suppressed.  I don't need to prove a case, it's all documented going back 40 plus years.The lessons are never learned.It's nothing new. LRT was poor but not a gravy train. LTE was far better but very much an old boys club at the top but did recognise the need for capable people within operations. It too. suffered from political meddling by the GLC from the latter 1960s.I am very widely travelled and your observations of public transport ( mainly metros ) is similar. Innovative, efficient, cheap , clean and very well run in places.Not the same in others. This applies mainly to the older systems and the limits that the infrastructure constrains absolute modernisation. The real irony is that many of the systems to be in awe of stem from London Transport's own engineers and researchers who were constrained by limits and the endless political to and fringe and took those ideas forward via other companies or LTs own subsidiaries.  I do wonder if you have worked in such organisations or just observe from a different perspective from afar?

Raymond Havelock ● 499d

Raymond, it does concern me slightly that you are using a trick popular with polemicists when they want to disparage a large organisation. Whether it is the monarchy, the army, the Church, the EU, the United Nations, the BBC or any other well established institution it is alway possible to identify waste and working practices that are clearly deficient. I have worked or dealt with lots of monolithic beasts in both the private and public sector over the years and have never come across one which is anywhere near perfect. They all have overpaid time-servers and assumptions about the way to do things which appear to be self-evidently wrong. However, for nearly all of them they manage to achieve the purpose for which they were created very well and probably better than any conceivable alternative. Therefore we should treat any attempt to claim that an institution's worst features are what defines it, as being profoundly suspect. You may be right about TfL but you have really only offered unsupported opinion and anecdote with no meaningful evidence to prove your case. Perhaps the best way to judge is by an international comparison and I don't really have enough experience in that area to reach a firm opinion. What I can say is having used urban metros in various countries London falls well below the standards of the Far East but compares well with many European countries and the US. In the use of technology both for payment and passenger information, TfL appears to be world leading. The main negative is the level of fares but these are explicable not by excess management pay (which is a tiny fraction of overall budgets) but the very low level of subsidy provided by the government. My impression is therefore that TfL gets a passing grade but that could be changed if you were able to provide me a convincing argument that they didn't deserve it.

Gordon Southwell ● 500d

The initial phase of the ULEZ was based on 6 year old data that was out of date by a wide margin before a single sign had had been produced.  TfL and the Mayor refused to engage in any challenges of the facts on the issue  {which pointed out too & later confirmed by a very delayed FoI application} that the works and infrastructure alone will take 11 years to offset the carbon footprint due largely to the huge evolutionary drop in non compliant vehicles. ( Because this was done by age of vehicle and not MOT emissions, low mileage and well maintained vehicles often match the emissions of 3 year old vehicles on their first MoT.)If you have a certain occupation, you often need a specialised vehicle or modifications to make it fit for purpose. That expense along with increased insurance premiums, means the vehicle has to last for 20 plus years unless it has very high mileage. It's replacement costs are higherNow this will have to be done again on a massive scale and yet again TfL are refusing to disclose the carbon footprint and operational energy use by the infrastructure and how many more years this will take to offset.Fact is the Prime Minister stood up in parliament and mealy mouthed or not. Has reminded the Mayor of his duty to people's need to make a living. Now is not the time and a few more years down the line it won't be needed in any case. More emissions already come from large buildings systems and domestic boilers and vehicle emissions are and have been contracting at a faster rate than any other forms of toxic emissions even with population increases.You are right that the Govt hid behind the curtains while orchestrating the matters of TfL but that's because of the huge degree of mismanagement which has been documented over the last 15 years when the first alarm bells were sounding over contracts.Active travel is pointless when residential street pavements remain so poor that they hinder anyone with age or basic mobility issues ( and that's a lot of people ). Road surfaces remain potholed, poorly marked with too many side streets unrideable from slimy leaves to lousy surfaces. All of which make active travel realistic but have been neglected for far too long and are not a TfL responsibility.All of which are easy fixes and with proper overseen maintenance should not even be at the state they are in.There have been many Driverless train feasibilities and all are flawed. But it's not the actual operating staff that are taking up most of the pie chart, it's consultants, top heavy executive salaries and perks, policy led initiatives and infrastructure renewal, necessary from long neglected maintenance and rationalised overhaul cycles.If we are going to have 100,000 plus extra people living here, where are jobs for them if automated everything comes in?  Most of the other manual jobs in transport are minimal skill minimal pay or even lower agency paid jobs with no longevity.

Raymond Havelock ● 500d

Raymond, the rather mealy-mouthed statement from the PM does not, as you have claimed, amount to a request from the government that the Mayor does not proceed with the extension. Although it is technically true that the ULEZ is a devolved matter, the government did actively dictate policy to TfL including the ending of the fare freeze, limiting Freedom Pass use, the investigation of driverless trains, the amount to be spent on Active Travel as well as the scope of the ULEZ and how much would be charged. It is therefore very misleading of Rishi Sunak to suggest that he is unable to influence the Mayor on this matter. You may be correct that the government was pushing at an open door when asking the Mayor to extend the ULEZ but ultimately the momentum behind it is financial rather than ideological and to suspend or cancel the extension would require total reworking of TfL's funding from central government. The initial phase of the ULEZ brought in much less revenue than anticipated so there was an imperative to expand the scheme. The only other options would be that the government covers the lost income (unlikely) or service cuts are implemented (which would be terrible for London). It is wrong to say that this has been done slyly. It was a manifesto commitment for the 2021 election. I totally agree with you that it is a bad policy but he had a mandate to do it and the government was complicit in its implementation.

Gordon Southwell ● 500d

In reply very much of Mayor Khans  and even this councils policies for intentions were not in their manifestos and what was very slyly buried.In the Mayors case it was dogged but appears in the original plans for the ULEZWhat you are referring to is the Grant Shapps cloaked strategy which oddly, Labour councils embraced but not his own parties councils.However the quotes from 14th December, House of Commons:I asked the Prime Minister in the House of Commons: “As my Right Honourable Friend will know, the Mayor of London, despite objections, has decided to expand the ULEZ zone across all London Boroughs which will massively impact my constituents and those who share a border with London. Will he, therefore, urgently speak to the Transport Secretary and encourage him to use the powers at his disposal to reverse this disastrous decision?”The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, replied: “My Honourable Friend will know that transport in London is devolved to the Labour Mayor of London, but it is disappointing that the Mayor, backed by the Leader of the Opposition, is choosing not to listen to the public. The zone is being expanded against the overwhelming views of residents and businesses, and I’d urgently consider the Mayor, and the gentleman opposite, to be on the side of hardworking Londoners.”So if the Prime Minister is not in favour, presumably nor is the government and as with many things this Mayor has pushed through not with a proper mandate nor what he was elected on.

Raymond Havelock ● 500d

It’s not really about the cars, as most are compliant, even older vehicles. Khan knows that, since the latest Travel in London report has all the data. Most ‘toxic air’ transport emissions are from business vehicles.It’s the tradespeople and businesses reliant on HGVs or vans in order to trade. Upgrading a fleet of vehicles, however small, might be the breaking point for many smaller businesses. The scrappage scheme, such as it is, won’t cover the costs of newer, compliant vehicles.So expect the availability of some trades to diminish or just get even more expensive. As usual the wokerati ignore the wider effects of their policies. Easy to do when your job doesn’t involve any more travel than moving from desk to coffee machine and toilet.And it won’t convey climate change one iota.

Simon Hayes ● 501d

The Twerp hates cars and everyone who drives them, it's patently obvious, regardless of any "justifications."

Rosco White ● 501d

Described as car apartheid.

Peter Yale ● 501d

That's fair comment but there remains an underlying truth that people with older cars tend to be less well off and tend not to regularly trade in their vehicles. 

Gordon Southwell ● 501d

Handing the roads over to the wealthy is a ridiculous over-statement. Until recently I had a 2007 Nissan Micra, worth no more than £1000, but still ULEZ compliant.

Susan Kelly ● 501d

Sorry, Raymond but you need to look at the detail of the agreement between Transport for London and the Department of Transport that finalised the last funding agreement. ULEZ and its expansion is hard coded into it so, even if a new Mayor took over, there would be no way to back out. I'm aware that some government ministers have criticised the scheme but that is plain hypocritical. Notably Transport Ministers, including Mark Harper have not spoken out against it because they know the detail of the arrangement. You say the Government has requested he does not proceed with the extension — are you able to provide a source for that? I'm not aware that Sadiq Khan has been pushing for ULEZ expansion since he came into office — was it in any of his manifestos? You may be right, I just don't recall him saying it. He has spoken favourably of road pricing schemes and made proposals for them previous but these would have been less regressive that the current arrangement which, as you quite rightly say, punishes less well off drivers. I'm certainly not going to argue that the Mayor bears no responsibility for the current situation but he has acted in complicity with the government. Like his predecessor Johnson, he has a liking for revenue raising schemes dressed up as green measures. I can't really comment about your claims about TfL waste — they may well be true but they are absent any actual figures or international comparisons that might serve to prove their veracity.

Gordon Southwell ● 501d

Mr Havelock lobs another slam dunk.  👌Any retort Mr Southwell? Other than yet another tired version of "It's the Tory Cuts!" 😂I see that The Twerp is gearing up for a shot at his third term, no doubt the Lobotomised Labour Lemmings will put him right back in where he can continue pursuing his idiotic policies and waste vats more of money whilst wreaking yet more havoc.The post of "Mayor" needs to be abolished, like running a Council it's not a job for Politicians.  As is constantly proven, and we suffer and know only too well.

Rosco White ● 501d

That's incorrect. The Mayor has been pushing for a huge ULEZ since he came to office and got a compromise which has been decisive and effectively hands the roads over to the wealthy and penalises those who make a living  by harder means.The Government has requested he does not proceed with the extension at the present time because of the widespread hardship and further exodus of jobs further destabilising the populous.That was on TV just a few days ago.What he has said is not what he has been placing consultants and advisors and appointees to implement.A typical slimy lawyer using slimy tactics to his advantage any which way. Just like he did with Cressida Dick. When the time was right for him - Not the Metropolitan Police he ejected her.  But only after he had used her for his own objectives.TfL spend money and wastes money like a few other institutions. It's not so much the politicians but the culture within such organisations when politicised too far and Ken Livingstone. Boris Johnson and the present mayor are all very much part of the propagation of such a culture.TfLs extreme interfering on frivolities and tiers of pointless red tape and pedantic policy implementation with engineers and experts in the construction of the Elizabeth Line by people parachuted in who could not tell screed from concrete is indicative of  the waste and £millions added to the costs.Top heavy with over salaried management, incompetence and almost certainly embedded fraud two decades of inexplicable costs, the failure of Tube Lines and the mess of Metronet.  Yet Pats on the back all round, bonuses and golden goodbyes and Hello's a plenty and constant distraction of resources away from the core of TfLs true responsibility.And all thats left is to screw the taxpaying public with fabricated money making schemes.

Raymond Havelock ● 501d

I'm no fan of the ULEZ which I agree is a money making scheme but you are wrong if you think TfL is solely responsible for its implementation. The Mayor was initially unwilling to extend the scheme and resisted the increase in charges but was obliged to do so as part of the government's conditions for continued funding. While London may have got more than its fair share of transport finance in the past, this present government is starving the capital of cash and pursuing a ridiculous notion that transport can be self-funding. TfL has been left with no choice but to expand the ULEZ.

Gordon Southwell ● 501d

It is xmas Mr W 🤷‍♂️

Peter Yale ● 503d

In vino veritas .................  😊

Rosco White ● 503d

Thanks Mr W.Admittedly I sunk a few sherries, but .....

Peter Yale ● 504d

Couldn't agree more ..............

Rosco White ● 504d

Why do we stand for it?Protest, stand together. Refuse these diabolical made up charges.Anti car , woke ****** s

Peter Yale ● 504d

Press 1 for this, 2 for that.None applicable, just wait for massive fines.It’s all money making , lieing , cheating scum

Peter Yale ● 504d