Air pollution kills. Whether by poisons like nitrogen dioxide, tiny particles or maybe even the C02 itself(see LSS 20 11 20) it causes asthma, cancer, heart disease and possibly dementia. Its effects fall mainly on poorer people. You’d think they would want to get rid of it at all costs, as soon as possible. Yet recent attempts to extend the London ULEZ zone [2] had so enraged a significant section of voters that the Labour Party was denied by election win in a key outer London marginal. What is going on? Do people really vote against their own interests? Or is there a better explanation?
Yes, a typical voter, particularly one hardscrabbling a living at the poorer edges of society will still know about air pollution and how it damages their children. But most have a closer, more pressing urgency; to see those children fed. And in an economy where margins have become so impossibly tight, the £12.50 charge to enter the ULEZ zone can make a real difference, especially to those like builders or van drivers who may have to cross it several times a day. Of course they voted against-wouldn’t you? And so, just when a really crucial, life enhancing reform needed all the support it could get, a vital set of potential supporters fell away.
“Cut wages the minimum-we’re paying ourselves to much!” was the key mantra of the Thatcher years from 1979 to 1990. Only a drastic fall in real wages would allow the economy to thrive, ran the old nostrum. In its name millions of secure, unionised and well paid jobs were abolished. To be replaced by precarious self-employment in jobs like delivery, building trades, taxi driving and the like. The effect was to drive a deep wedge between progressive opinion and large sections of the working class. The early signs were apparent at the Stanlake disruption of 2000, a geezers-in-vans uprising if ever there was one. It has grown and anastomosed ever since, aided and abetted by a well funded ecosystem of “news”outlets such as The Sun and GB News. Now, when it is even in the billionaires’ interests to achieve a cleaner planet, the critical social mass has gone missing.
We still have a little time to clean the noxious clouds of filth the shroud us. But progress is slow. And it was Margaret Thatcher who chained the fetters which slow us. That will one day be seen as her truly toxic legacy.
[1]https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-matters-air-pollution/health-matters-air-pollution
[2]https://www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/environment-and-climate-change/pollution-and-air-quality/ultra-low-emission-zone-ulez-london
#margaret thatcher #pollution #particulates #ULEZ zone #london
Learning, Science and Society 