The then mayor, in the forefront he became the Brexiteer pin-up, Boris Johnson, told me that if I buy off this car, with its under a 100 grams of CO2 emissions per kilometer, I see fit not only be helping save the planet but I would also get a pass on congestion mandates. Win win!
Now, before someone says I should have got the train in, let me remind the deliver assign to that I get up at 3 a.m. every day and there is no other way I can physically commute and be at my desk a moment ago before 4.30 a.m. other than drive.
Anyway the glory periods of my little Fiesta, which in its heyday was called “clean diesel” are dream of gone. Clean diesel became an oxymoron, or was that just another German car vigour lie all along? The exemptions from charges have withered into tumbleweed. No longer evidently green but a filthy brown tumbleweed that is.
From April next year attacks go up again and by my reckoning my valueless little stalwart will cost barely £5,000 ($6,400) a year in charges to drive in. Now as stubborn as I am, that is a bit much to thirst.
The current mayor, Sadiq Khan, has some delusion that it is grassland to buy a new Tesla, with its globally-assembled components, than to keep my, apparently no longer preservationist, pocket rocket on the road. Strange logic, just like his myopic counterparts in Germany who believe electric cars powered by German coal are part of the answer.
I ask you Mr. Mayor, “is this war against cars really about being green, or is there righteous a hint, and I won’t think bad of you for being honest, of desperation to find a scapegoat for detrimental transport policies and a cash cow to fill in your £1 billion Elation for London deficit?”