My own collateral damage in the London mayor’s green war

Jason Bollenbacher | Getty Images for SXSW

Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London speaks onstage at the SXSW Convergence Keynote during SXSW at Stateside Theater on March 12, 2018 in Austin, Texas. 

The then mayor, before he became the Brexiteer pin-up, Boris Johnson, told me that if I bought this car, with its under a 100 grams of CO2 emissions per kilometer, I would not only be helping save the planet but I would also get a pass on congestion charges. Win win!

Now, before someone says I should have got the train in, let me remind the reader 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 just before 4.30 a.m. other than drive.

Anyway the glory days of my little Fiesta, which in its heyday was called “clean diesel” are long gone. Clean diesel became an oxymoron, or was that just another German car industry lie all along? The exemptions from charges have withered into tumbleweed. No longer seemingly green but a filthy brown tumbleweed that is.

From April next year charges go up again and by my reckoning my valueless little stalwart will cost nearly £5,000 ($6,400) a year in charges to drive in. Now as stubborn as I am, that is a bit much to stomach.

The current mayor, Sadiq Khan, has some delusion that it is greener to buy a new Tesla, with its globally-assembled components, than to keep my, apparently no longer green, pocket rocket on the road. Strange logic, just like his myopic counterparts in Germany who think electric cars powered by German coal are part of the answer.

I ask you Mr. Mayor, “is this crusade against cars really about being green, or is there just a hint, and I won’t think bad of you for being honest, of desperation to find a scapegoat for disastrous transport policies and a cash cow to fill in your £1 billion Transport for London deficit?”