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Wednesday, 30 August 2023

Tory Press Goes Full ULEZ Racist

When the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph ran its front page attack on George Soros, the paper’s management held an all hands meeting to tell the workforce that this slice of nailed-on anti-Semitism wasn’t. The Mail unleashed an equally blatant anti-Semitic attack on the memory of the late Ralph Miliband, which also got excused in the retelling.

Mail promotes mighty white campaign ...

The right-leaning part of our free and fearless press is, whisper it quietly, well-versed in doing racism and getting away with it. So papers like the Mail, and especially the Tel, have not hesitated when it comes to engaging in yet more blatant bigotry as they attempt to bend London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan to their will and stop the expansion of the capital’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ).

Both titles have no problem with the mildly inconvenient fact that ULEZ expansion has already begun, and nor do they have a problem with acts of criminal damage being undertaken as ULEZ cameras and signs are routinely vandalised. The Mail even has a former Tory leader to back this criminality.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith backs 'blade runner' ULEZ vandals: Tory MP says he is 'happy' for residents of his east London constituency to destroy cameras because they have been 'lied to’”. Yes, one of the Tories’ most shameless and habitual liars says someone else lied. The article also helpfully tells readers what the ULEZ cameras look like, not that it’s encouraging vandalism, oh no.

And the Mail gives front page prominence to a protest seemingly attracting fewer than 100 mainly white people (note narrow angle shot) brandishing placards telling “BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS KHAN” (less pollution means blood? Who knew?) with the caption “Time to get Khan out, say the ULEZ rebels”. The PM is “Rishi”. Former ones were “Liz” and “Boris”, who was also “Boris” when Mayor of London. But the current Mayor is just KHAN.

... as does the Telegraph

This is also how the Tel plays it, with another narrow angle shot of a mighty white protest, and the caption “Khan faces revolt over Ulez”. One wonders if either paper will be there at court supporting, or even just sympathising with, those engaging in acts of criminal damage against ULEZ infrastructure. Or rather, one doesn’t: the press whips up the hatred, but it’s not their fault.

And than a thought enters: where is the publicity FOR the measure? Moreover, where is the testimony from Rosamund Addo-Kissi-Debrah, whose daughter Ella, “lived near the South Circular Road in Lewisham, south-east London [and] died in 2013 following an acute asthma attack”. But then, mother and daughter were black. So they don’t count for the Tel and Mail.

This is despite her being “the first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death on her death certificate, as coroner Philip Barlow found she had been exposed to ‘excessive’ levels of air pollution”. Her Mum told “We just hope that the Government helps people to get out of their polluting cars. I think generally people want to change. Some can afford it, but not everyone can, and the Government needs to help them”.

But the Government, led by a PM who cares not a jot about pollution levels, with its press cheerleaders in the vanguard, is engaging in a full-on assault on the London Mayoralty instead, which will most likely end up costing far more than giving some additional help to those with older cars.

Only brown people have blood on their hands

Jumping on the anti-ULEZ bandwagon, though, did not stop Rishi Sunak being targeted by the mighty white brigade, who were backed, to no surprise, by former Brexit Party OberscheissenfĂĽhrer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, who, like the papers running their highly personal attacks on Sadiq Khan, is not at all racist, honestly. Like he wasn’t over his infamous “Breaking Point” poster.

It’s only “Sadiq Khan's hated £12.50 daily levy” because the right-wing press whipped up hatred against it - and the Mayor. No mention that it was a Tory policy, introduced by former occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, and that the current Mayor needs to expand the zone to meet conditions imposed by the Government. Which is attacking him for it.

Instead, readers get racism and hatred. No change there, then.


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3 comments:

Arnold said...

"SARAH VINE: Basket case Britain is starting to feel like a Third World country"
She won't be happy when she finds out who's been running the country for the last 13 years.

Anonymous said...

I guess if Suella Braverman is so keen for the police to follow up on all crimes they'll be looking into the DM for incitement

Mr Larrington said...

As one who lives in the original ULEZ zone, introduced with little publicity and absolutely no sympathy from those living in the expanded zone, I say “Fuck 'em”.