Unusually, I must praise the BBC. Hear me out!
As a once great fan of BBC Radio 4 our car radio is permanently tuned in to that station. Sometimes I turn it on, as I did the other day, and a programme called AntiSocial with Adam Fleming was just beginning. I was reaching to turn it off as I could not imagine what drivel I was about to hear when I heard the name Alan Miller mentioned. Alan initiated the Together Coalition which was one of several initiatives that helped us sceptics to get through lockdown. Assuming Alan would be the subject of the programme and held up to ridicule I was even more surprised to hear him being allowed to preface the programme with a lengthy and uninterrupted speel about Together; he was even allowed to mention its opposition to vaccine passports and compulsory vaccinations (the latter point appears to have been edited out of the BBC Sounds version). He also broached the subject of the programme which was 15-minute cities. I listened on…
Alan opened the discussion with a reasoned argument about the origins and aims of 15-minute cities making it clear that his major objection was to the undemocratic way these were being foisted on residents of Oxford. He is not an Oxford resident but, like most of us, he assumes that Oxford is simply the experiment to see how much they (our WEF overlords) can get away with. In the course of the debate—and to be fair to the presenter, he produced the facts—over 60% of Oxford residents were against the measures, which appear to be going ahead anyway.
Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council—in cahoots over the measures—prefer not to refer to 15-minute cities; rather they like to describe these as ‘low traffic zones’ (LTZs) which to the untrained ear sounds like a traffic reducing measure and greater pedestrianisation. And who’s not in favour of that? Even Alan Miller was not dismissive of properly considered and democratically introduced measures to make cities quieter and safer. After all, as he made clear, he is also a cyclist.
Brought on to provide an alternative view was cycling activist Carla Frankim who, again to be fair, was not unreasonable; initially. She recounted a visit to Guernsey and how nice it was and how safe it felt to be in town centres where there were not cars. I don’t know if readers have been to millionaire haven Guernsey, but I have. I had dinner with the Minister of Health who arrived by bicycle and entered the restaurant holding a pair of cycle clips. You simply cannot extrapolate from a quirky place that time has largely forgotten to busy city centres where, let’s face it, everything is not within a 15-minute walk.
There are two main problems with LTZs. First, busy main roads must be closed to prevent traffic getting to them and an inordinate amount of surveillance and bureaucracy is needed to enforce these. Of course, the traffic must go somewhere, usually to other main roads which will allow it to get to where it wants, and these become even busier. But the other problem, as explained by an expert on the programme, is that there is little evidence in favour of LTZs. The expert said that there were only two good studies, both in London. One had shown percentage decreases in car emissions within and on the edge of LTZs, but no idea was given as to whether this was clinically significant. Did it reduce the medical problem associated with car pollution? The other study, carried out in Lambeth, showed that LTZs made absolutely no difference. Again, kudos to the BBC for allowing such subversion.
Someone from the BBC climate change unit called Marco Silva (not the football manager) was rolled in to speak about conspiracy theories and how they arose. He ridiculed The Great Reset as only a passing thought of King Charles and Klaus Schwab with little detail attached to it. Somehow, he had not noticed lockdowns, social distancing, masks and vaccine passports. He also said that the notion of climate lockdowns was ridiculous and that nobody was speaking about them. Marco, I think you’ll find they are. It is probably worth mentioning that Alan Miller did get ‘fact checked’ once—which he took well, and the point was minor—but Marco got free rein.
The period in the debate that I thought said it all about the low emission emissaries was towards the end when Carla Frankim really exposed herself. She had a propensity to interrupt Alan Miller for which the presenter did chastise her (Alan did not once interrupt her) which I think is a hallmark of the self-righteous, they don’t want to hear the other side. Then, faced with the fact that the people of Oxford did not want 15-minute cities she said that these things must be tried. In other words, they should be introduced whether people want them or not and, of course, once in, they stay. It was all OK though as these things were being done ‘in people’s best interest’ and that ‘people (Oxford City Council etc) have our best interests at heart.’ And there you have it; ‘they’ know what’s best for ‘us’ and that’s an end to it. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is most probably, a duck!
Roger Watson is a retired academic nurse who lives in the UK.
He is currently engaged in a range of professional consultancies in the UK, Europe and China. He writes regularly for several outlets including The Daily Sceptic, The European Conservative, Country Squire Magazine and The New Conservative.
