Well done, Dundee City Council.
Your low emission zone (LEZ) has pickpocketed nearly £40,000 from people in Dundee in just six weeks.
Not only are you ruining the city centre, you’ve also imposed an extra tax.
Dundee City Council say “any monies collected are to pay for the scheme and its objectives and then to pay back any grant awarded”.
I don’t really care where the cash is going. It’s the fact it is being extracted at all I think is a travesty.
This LEZ is punishing people whose “crime” was driving on an illegal road a few yards from a legal road.
‘LEZ will make no difference’
Have a think back, councillors.
Was devising sleekit ways of snatching money from working families the reason you got into politics?
I watched the council’s climate, environment and biodiversity committee of June 10 streamed on YouTube, the first after LEZ financial penalties were imposed.
It was an unedifying sight. Out of-touch politicians who had completely forgotten their virtue-signalling has effects in the real world.
If the zone did any earthly good you might be able to justify yourselves.
But what I saw was an SNP group gleeful at pleasing their masters by imposing a diktat which will make no difference in any meaningful way to anyone’s health.
A collection of smug faces congratulating each other on a job well done.
Do you think the 3,000 people you’ve fined will agree it’s a good job? Perhaps they’ll remember the fines when they next vote.
And it wasn’t only the SNP group that showed it had lost touch with ordinary people.
‘SNP group following head office orders’
Kevin Keenan’s Labour lot didn’t raise a squeak in opposition at that June 10 committee, only a few comments about how the LEZ’s “measures of success” might be verified.
The SNP group have the excuse that they must follow head office orders or get sent to the salt mines. They aren’t allowed to think for themselves.
But Mr Keenan, aren’t you embarrassed at not speaking out against a scheme that could make Dundee citizens poorer?
You and your supposedly socialist group have become too comfortable on that council.
You should be taking every opportunity to rail against scattergun fines fired at ordinary people.
I remember the days when Labour would stand up for the workers, not meekly acquiesce with schemes to screw more money out of them.
‘Paper tigers’
Lib Dems, you also like to talk about fighting for the common citizen.
Fraser Macpherson, did you vent your anger over this unfair tax on workers? No you didn’t.
You were just as complicit as the Labour paper tigers, and dull-eyed SNP drones.
It’s a cosy council cross-party clique who have all lost sight of life outside the City Chambers bubble.
How much groceries would £40k buy? How many school uniforms? How many hours’ heating for homes?
Away wi ye Dundee City Council, the lot of you. Hang your heads in shame.
I’m almost glad my father didn’t live to see the Dundee he was so fiercely proud of run by this festival-of-mediocrity council dreaming up ways to fine the city’s people.
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