FACT-CHECK: Oxfordshire County Council To Begin Climate “Lockdown” In 2024?

Time for a Fact Check!

I saw this story trending on Twitter and I floored me.

I couldn’t believe it!

Take a look:

https://twitter.com/sophielouisecc/status/1599534960137842688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1599534960137842688%7Ctwgr%5E8ffce8e7739c420137aba3a259314cbe0f4ff334%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Farticle%2Ffactcheck-oxford-climate-idUSL1N3331OK

Oxford councilors in England are introducing trial climate lockdowns in 2024.

This includes locking residents into one of six zones to ‘save the planet’ and to leave a zone, you must ask permission from the council.

But wasn’t this a conspiracy theory?https://t.co/MPgZ6on0Lh

— Lewis Brackpool (@Lewis_Brackpool) December 5, 2022

Often times truth is stranger than fiction, but sometimes things are so crazy that it turns out they’re not real.

Which was this?

I thought I’d investigate.

The story was mostly publicized by a site called VisionNews:

Oxfordshire County Council yesterday approved plans to lock residents into one of six zones to ‘save the planet’ from global warming. The latest stage in the ’15 minute city’ agenda is to place electronic gates on key roads in and out of the city, confining residents to their own neighbourhoods.

Under the new scheme if residents want to leave their zone they will need permission from the Council who gets to decide who is worthy of freedom and who isn’t. Under the new scheme residents will be allowed to leave their zone a maximum of 100 days per year, but in order to even gain this every resident will have to register their car details with the council who will then track their movements via smart cameras round the city.

Communism will make the weather better.
Oxfordshire County Council, which is run by Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, secretly decided to divide-up the city of Oxford into six ‘15 minute’ districts in 2021 soon after they were elected to office. None of the councillors declared their intention of imprisoning local residents in their manifestos of course, preferring to make vague claims about how they will ‘improve the environment’ instead.

Every resident will be required to register their car with the County Council who will then monitor how many times they leave their district via number plate recognition cameras. And don’t think you can beat the system if you’re a two car household. Those two cars will be counted as one meaning you will have to divide up the journeys between yourselves. 2 cars 50 journeys each; 3 cars 33 journeys each and so on.

Under the new rules, your social life becomes irrelevant. By de facto Councils get to dictate how many times per year you can see friends and family. You will be stopped from fraternising with anyone outside your district, and if you want a long distance relationship in the future, forget it, you are confined to dating only those within a 15 minute walk of your house.

A single person’s life will be at the mercy of Communists in central office, dictating the same type of draconian rules we had to avert the last crisis, a mild flu virus so deadly 80% of people didn’t even know they had it.

So…is it true?

Reuters has already provided a huge “Fact Check” which is often a first sign to me that they’re trying to defend and hide something by obscuring the truth.

That’s what they always do.

They find some small detail that they say isn’t true and then they declare the whole thing False.

But let’s start by seeing what they say in their “Fact Check“:

In a series of emails exchanged with Reuters, a spokesperson for Oxfordshire County Council said the Vision News article had misrepresented its traffic filter initiative, which has been part of Oxford’s Transport Strategy since 2015 and aims to tackle traffic congestion and reduce pollution.

Six traffic filters are set to be tested for a minimum of six months around Oxford city from 2024 (here). This means that between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. private cars will need a permit to get through.

Drivers using the filters who do not have a permit, or are not exempt, will face a penalty charge notice of £35, which will increase to £70 if it is not paid within two weeks.

“Everywhere in the city will still be accessible by car, although some private car drivers may need to use a different route during the operating hours of the traffic filters,” the spokesperson said.

“Everyone, wherever they live, will still be able to drive to and from any destination in Oxford, or anywhere else, anytime they like, as often as they like.”

The spokesperson added: “None of the traffic filters will ‘trap’ residents. As you can see from this zoomable map (here), traffic filters are points on a road, not a ‘zone’. So, residents living on roads near the filters will be able to enter and leave through other roads at any time, without using a permit. Everyone can enter and leave their street in at least one direction without going through a filter.”

PERMITS
Everyone who lives in the city of Oxford permit area (OPA), where the filters are to be located, will be eligible for one free, 100-day permit a year, which will mean “unlimited travel through any of the six filters for the whole day” on up to 100 days per year. Each household will be eligible for a maximum of three permits.

Residents living outside the OPA but within Oxfordshire will be eligible for a permit to drive through the filters “on up to 25 days a year”.

Exemptions apply to emergency vehicles, blue badge holders, health workers, professional and non-professional care workers, and people requiring frequent hospital treatments.

‘ELECTRONIC GATES’

According to the Oxfordshire Council spokesperson, the filters will only use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras to log traffic, “not electronic gates or any other physical barriers”.

“Traffic filters are designed to reduce traffic levels across the city, making bus journeys quicker and more reliable and walking and cycling safer and more attractive,” the spokesperson said. “Traffic filters are not designed to stop people from driving private vehicles.”

More information can be found here and here.

VERDICT
Misrepresentation. Oxfordshire County Council is not planning a climate lockdown trial in 2024. It is testing traffic filter technology in the city to tackle congestion and pollution.

Ok.

And not to be outdone, the AP has also done an intrepid “Fact Check“:

But Oxfordshire’s “traffic filters” will not block access to any part of the city of Oxford or the rest of the county, let alone lock people in their neighborhoods, the county government told The Associated Press.

“Everywhere in the city will still be accessible by car,” Paul Smith, spokesperson for the Oxfordshire County Council, wrote in an email. “Nobody will need permission from the county council to drive or leave their home.”

The “traffic filters” are license plate recognition cameras, not physical barriers. From 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., drivers in private cars will be automatically fined if they cross through the filters without a permit. Motorists who live in Oxford will be able to apply for 100 daylong permits to drive through the filters per year.

The “15 minute city club” referenced by one of the misleading tweets is an unrelated urban planning framework under which city residents would ideally be able to reach essential services within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from their home. Officials with the city of Oxford have separately proposed pursuing these goals. But some on social media have incorrectly linked the two, suggesting the traffic rules will also bar residents from leaving their neighborhoods.

The city and county emphasized in a joint statementthat the traffic restrictions will not “be used to confine people” to a given area. “Everyone can go through all the filters at any time by bus, bike, taxi, scooter or walking,” the statement added.

Many vehicles, like vans and motorcycles, are exempt from the new rules. Disabled drivers and first responders will likewise not be affected.

Drivers who lack a permit will also still be able to access all of the city without being fined. They “might just need to use a different route or drive through the ring road to avoid the traffic filters,” Smith wrote.

In New York City, officials are examining the possibility of charging motorists an extra fee for entering its most congested areas. The practice is commonly referred to as congestion pricing and has been used in cities including London, Singapore and Stockholm, according to the AP.

Major cities worldwide have also experimented with closing streets to car traffic as a way of encouraging residents to walk or bike. In one recent U.S. example, San Francisco in April voted to make a road through its famed Golden Gate Park permanently “car-free.”

Ok, so let’s decode this a bit.

My take?

It appears true that the city is not being locked down in the manner described in the viral article….

…..at least not yet.

Because what’s very interesting to me here is that the story is based in some real facts.

There are restrictions of where cars can go.

Sure, it’s not as exaggerated as what the article says, but you know what it feels like to me?

It feels like boiling a frog alive.

How do you do that?

Very slowly, unless the water is boiling and the frog never noticed enough to jump out.

That’s exactly what this feels like to me.

“Oh sure, we’re placing restrictions on where you can go…..but it’s only from 7am to 7pm!”

“Oh sure, we have restrictions….but you’ll get some free credits!”

“Oh sure, we’re placing restrictions, but worst case is you just pay a fine, it’s not a big deal.”

What happens when the areas of restriction get bigger?

What happens when the free credits go away?

What happens when the small fine turns into jail time instead?

See where this is going?

The original article and the rumor are not true “at this moment” but I think there is certainly major cause for concern here!

What about you?