Gigging in London?

[Nicko]

15 hours ago, ambient said:

I’m personally of the opinion that we're too reliant on cars. What London is doing is ultimately good, Birmingham are introducing charging in the near future too. I’d rather not breath air that’s polluted by car and lorry exhaust fumes. If you play in a band and absolutely need to drive to a gig to carry your equipment then car share, organise amongst yourselves so you’re travelling in the minimum number of vehicles. I’m no doubt going to get a lot of dislikes for this, but we simply can’t carry on as we are, gridlocked roads and pollution, it’s unsustainable.

We are too reliant on cars because as a gigging musician there's really no viable alternative.  I could get one bass and an amp to the gig, but not a spare bass, the lights, the PA etc. and much as we like to rip the fosters out of them how is a drummer supposed to get a kit there?  Fine if you want to hire a 7.5Ton truck for the gig but I suspect the vast majority of us use our normal cars for gigging and cant afford the luxury of a shared vehicle for band use.

My 300HP petrol car is exempt though!

13 hours ago, ambient said:

He’s doing it for a reason, don’t blame him for what he’s doing. Something has to be done. Can you think of anything better?

Yes. He could give a reasonable time after convincing people that diesel was the best option for cars before introducing a system that makes their cars worthless.  

He could ban HGVs at various times of the day. 

He could address the issue of excessive traffic calming which often causes congestion and inevitably leads to unnecessary acceleration and deceleration.

He could increase capacity on the tube, oh no wait he can't - because the unions have him in their pocket. 

He could regulate the busses more, bacause busses are part of the problem.

He could address the issue of black cabs - essentially a car driven to central London every day so that wealthy people can travel by private transport. 

He could support businesses in the suburbs instead of continuing to centralise business in the area east of the city- while allowing central and western business districts to flounder meaning people have to travel further.

10 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

Just for balance, I moved to London in July 1974. I cannot imagine living anywhere else. 

Despite its problems its the best place in the world to live.  I've lost count of the number of towns, cities and countries I've visited and while I've enjoyed many of them none come close to London as a place to live.

On the subject of LEZ one of my friends had an old Landrover which was classed as a truck.  He replaced the diesel engine with a nice petrol V8 which avoids the charge.  I'm fairly sure thats no necessarily a solution to London's pollution problem.

[FinnDave]

One band I play with has given up gigging in the centre of Reading due to the obscene number of cameras monitoring very poorly marked and confusing bus lanes (I got caught twice at one gig!), and difficulties parking. Three members of the band got parking tickets the last time we played there, fortunately I had another engagement, so a dep copped the fine that night. The fines are usually more than each of us earns for the gig!

And that's just Reading, which is a lot further down the scale than London for driving nightmares.

[Silvia Bluejay]

8 minutes ago, Nicko said:

We are too reliant on cars because as a gigging musician there's really no viable alternative.  I could get one bass and an amp to the gig, but not a spare bass, the lights, the PA etc. and much as we like to rip the fosters out of them how is a drummer supposed to get a kit there?  Fine if you want to hire a 7.5Ton truck for the gig but I suspect the vast majority of us use our normal cars for gigging and cant afford the luxury of a shared vehicle for band use.

My 300HP petrol car is exempt though!

Yes. He could give a reasonable time after convincing people that diesel was the best option for cars before introducing a system that makes their cars worthless.  

He could ban HGVs at various times of the day. 

He could address the issue of excessive traffic calming which often causes congestion and inevitably leads to unnecessary acceleration and deceleration.

He could increase capacity on the tube, oh no wait he can't - because the unions have him in their pocket. 

He could regulate the busses more, bacause busses are part of the problem.

He could address the issue of black cabs - essentially a car driven to central London every day so that wealthy people can travel by private transport. 

He could support businesses in the suburbs instead of continuing to centralise business in the area east of the city- while allowing central and western business districts to flounder meaning people have to travel further.

Despite its problems its the best place in the world to live.  I've lost count of the number of towns, cities and countries I've visited and while I've enjoyed many of them none come close to London as a place to live.

On the subject of LEZ one of my friends had an old Landrover which was classed as a truck.  He replaced the diesel engine with a nice petrol V8 which avoids the charge.  I'm fairly sure thats no necessarily a solution to London's pollution problem.

The above, x1,000.

[Monkey Steve]

I loved living in London - moved up when I was a teenager, and still work here, commuting in from Surrey.  As well as my job, 99% of my social life is here, the band I'm rehearsing with in here, I love the place.

But traffic and pollution is a nightmare, and adding these charges is a blunt but apparently effective instrument, as we can see from the debate.  Nobody who will have to pay the fee is at all pleased about it - which is exactly the point!

[EliasMooseblaster]

17 hours ago, ambient said:

That explains it, I’ve only ever played at venues. They’ve tended to be fully equipped, even down to drum kits.

Though in some venues, it's a pretty loose definition of what passes for a "drum kit"!

[FinnDave]

11 minutes ago, EliasMooseblaster said:

Though in some venues, it's a pretty loose definition of what passes for a "drum kit"!

A kit of parts which, when assembled with skill by an experienced practitioner may or may not eventually resemble a useable set of drums?

[ambient]

39 minutes ago, Nicko said:

We are too reliant on cars because as a gigging musician there's really no viable alternative.  I could get one bass and an amp to the gig, but not a spare bass, the lights, the PA etc. and much as we like to rip the fosters out of them how is a drummer supposed to get a kit there?  Fine if you want to hire a 7.5Ton truck for the gig but I suspect the vast majority of us use our normal cars for gigging and cant afford the luxury of a shared vehicle for band use.

My 300HP petrol car is exempt though!

Yes. He could give a reasonable time after convincing people that diesel was the best option for cars before introducing a system that makes their cars worthless.  

He could ban HGVs at various times of the day. 

He could address the issue of excessive traffic calming which often causes congestion and inevitably leads to unnecessary acceleration and deceleration.

He could increase capacity on the tube, oh no wait he can't - because the unions have him in their pocket. 

He could regulate the busses more, bacause busses are part of the problem.

He could address the issue of black cabs - essentially a car driven to central London every day so that wealthy people can travel by private transport. 

He could support businesses in the suburbs instead of continuing to centralise business in the area east of the city- while allowing central and western business districts to flounder meaning people have to travel further.

Despite its problems its the best place in the world to live.  I've lost count of the number of towns, cities and countries I've visited and while I've enjoyed many of them none come close to London as a place to live.

On the subject of LEZ one of my friends had an old Landrover which was classed as a truck.  He replaced the diesel engine with a nice petrol V8 which avoids the charge.  I'm fairly sure thats no necessarily a solution to London's pollution problem.

Buses do contribute to the pollution problem, though they are committed to improving and will have replaced the diesel only buses by 2020, cutting emissions by 95%. How many passengers does a bus carry compared to one guy in his car?

Tube trains run every couple of minutes at peak times anyway, and I believe they are increasing the capacity by introducing new trains. All of which costs huge amounts of money and is a gradual thing, but they are doing it. They can't obviously increase the length of the trains, this is governed by the length of the platforms.

He's got incentives in place for cab drivers to switch to electric or greener fuels. Birmingham when it introduces its charging scheme is doing the same to encourage the cab drivers to switch.

Where will the lorries wait during the time that they can't enter? You're talking of hundreds if not thousands of vehicles. I believe part of the problem with lorries is the proliferation of mini-supermarkets; Tesco Express, Sainsbury's Local etc. All of which have to be supplied meaning lorries are delivering stock to these places in little towns and villages, travelling along roads that weren't designed for lorries to use, and obviously into and around central London. There's a Tesco Express opposite the Houses of Parliament for example.

The charging scheme is one of many schemes to improve the air quality. London reached the air pollution limit after one month this year, you have to do something.

[EliasMooseblaster]

10 minutes ago, FinnDave said:

A kit of parts which, when assembled with skill by an experienced practitioner may or may not eventually resemble a useable set of drums?

Pretty much - "experienced practitioner" can often mean "Grand Wizard of the Darkest Arts of Gaffer Tape" in some of the places I've played!

[ambient]

I did a gig in Amsterdam the weekend before last. I arrived on the Sunday morning and enjoyed a pleasant walk to my hotel which was out in the museum quarter. Pleasant because I wasn't coughing and choking on exhaust fumes, and being deafened by the sound of engines. I even commented about this on Facebook and posted photos of the roads; hundreds of cyclists, quite a few little mopeds, some cars but absolutely nowhere near as many as in UK cities. Hundreds of people walking too. This was the city centre, I did notice more cars in the outskirts when I travelled to my gig in the evening, but still nowhere near as many as in the UK. They have a fantastic public transport system, trams, buses and a metro. They also cycle a lot, the pavements are wide and uncluttered and not full of holes or lose slabs, they have a 2 metre wide proper cycle path for bikes and mopeds to use, then the actual road that isn't full of holes and is shared by buses, trams and cars. People there tended to me to look a lot fitter and not so fat too, so that's a bonus, the overweight people I saw tended to be speaking English.

I did 6 or 7 hours of field recording around the city, I'm just now doing some work with them, there are cars there in the recordings; they were done in a city, most of the engines that I picked up were on boats and mopeds or motorbikes. There isn't however the all pervasive background low drone that you would normally expect with recording in a city or urban environment.

There were also many electric car charging points around the city.

It can be done, we can improve our cities, it just takes will power and obviously money, the money raised by the congestion charge is used to fund TFL,  since they introduced the charge some £1.2 billion of revenue has been re-invested in transport schemes.

Edited October 31, 2018 by ambient

[NancyJohnson]

14 hours ago, ambient said:

He’s doing it for a reason, don’t blame him for what he’s doing. Something has to be done. Can you think of anything better?

If I can just interject here, all this is being done to cut down on congestion (via charging/penalising) and/or trying to get the city air we breathe cleaner (also via charging). 

First, let's look at some numbers; the metropolitan area of London is around 1,600 km² (and for the benefit of perspective, the surface of the earth is, more or less, 510million km², of which landmass makes up 149million km²), so percentage-wise London is around 0.01% of the total landmass of the planet.  Back in 2015, London was only ranked 40th biggest city in the world by metropolitan landmass and 32nd by population.  In the scheme of things, London is pretty small compared to Jakarta or Karachi or a handful of places you've never heard of (Tianjin? Chengdu?).

Moving forward, and yes, I do appreciate what London is trying to do to decrease congestion and to get the air cleaner, but in the scheme of things London's efforts are a metaphorical p*ss in the ocean.  Sorry if that hurts.  We are too small and insignificant to keep crusading for what we believe is right when the likes of India, Pakistan and China spew countless tonnes of pollutants into the atmosphere every day.  You can also throw in Bangladesh and Iran in as well.  Taking money off people via a stealthy taxation based on it being for the good of the world, will not clear the air; the only correlation is that it will just make people think twice about jumping in the car and drivers are an easy target to squeeze money out of and at the end of the day the money London takes just goes into the corporeal pot.  It's just greed.  We seem to have taken the greed model, bettered it and made it our own.  It doesn't matter which political party you are, it's all about the £££s.

Can I think of anything better?  Yes, but it'll upset the snowflakes.  Boycott Chinese and Indian steel for starters, boycott products made in these countries until such a time as they effectively clean up their act, because out little bit of effort will make no difference whatsoever.  Thinking small (London) is frankly pointless.  The problem isn't here, it's 6,000 miles away.

[ambient]

4 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

If I can just interject here, all this is being done to cut down on congestion (via charging/penalising) and/or trying to get the city air we breathe cleaner (also via charging). 

First, let's look at some numbers; the metropolitan area of London is around 1,600 km² (and for the benefit of perspective, the surface of the earth is, more or less, 510million km², of which landmass makes up 149million km²), so percentage-wise London is around 0.01% of the total landmass of the planet.  Back in 2015, London was only ranked 40th biggest city in the world by metropolitan landmass and 32nd by population.  In the scheme of things, London is pretty small compared to Jakarta or Karachi or a handful of places you've never heard of (Tianjin? Chengdu?).

Moving forward, and yes, I do appreciate what London is trying to do to decrease congestion and to get the air cleaner, but in the scheme of things London's efforts are a metaphorical p*ss in the ocean.  Sorry if that hurts.  We are too small and insignificant to keep crusading for what we believe is right when the likes of India, Pakistan and China spew countless tonnes of pollutants into the atmosphere every day.  You can also throw in Bangladesh and Iran in as well.  Taking money off people via a stealthy taxation based on it being for the good of the world, will not clear the air; the only correlation is that it will just make people think twice about jumping in the car and drivers are an easy target to squeeze money out of and at the end of the day the money London takes just goes into the corporeal pot.  It's just greed.  We seem to have taken the greed model, bettered it and made it our own.  It doesn't matter which political party you are, it's all about the £££s.

Can I think of anything better?  Yes, but it'll upset the snowflakes.  Boycott Chinese and Indian steel for starters, boycott products made in these countries until such a time as they effectively clean up their act, because out little bit of effort will make no difference whatsoever.  Thinking small (London) is frankly pointless.  The problem isn't here, it's 6,000 miles away.

London's air pollution is exactly that; London's. Move 30 miles away from the centre and it isn't as bad. Where I'm sat now in Sutton Coldfield isn't as bad as 8 miles up the road in Birmingham city centre where they're also introducing a charging scheme. It's an effort to improve that, London breached the pollution limit one month into the new year.

[Woodinblack]

1 hour ago, NancyJohnson said:

Can I think of anything better?  Yes, but it'll upset the snowflakes.  Boycott Chinese and Indian steel for starters, boycott products made in these countries until such a time as they effectively clean up their act, because out little bit of effort will make no difference whatsoever.  Thinking small (London) is frankly pointless.  The problem isn't here, it's 6,000 miles away.

Breaking my golden rule of *if someone uses the word 'snowflake' in any conversation they are probably talking out of their behind*, surely these 'snowflakes' you a referring to are more likely to be boycotting Chinese and Indian steel (and the US, also one of the big polluters, but probably too expensive to matter) as ethics would matter. It would be the opposites of snowflakes, which I don't know what that is, I guess gammons if we are reducing everything down to childlike terms that will be buying the stuff that is the cheapest and less ethical?

And I would say that the reason for getting rid of pollution in a city is not just to make the world a better place (and personally I am not sure that the 40th biggest city removing pollution is actually a bad thing) but to make that city a better place?

[paul_c2]

13 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

 

And I would say that the reason for getting rid of pollution in a city is not just to make the world a better place (and personally I am not sure that the 40th biggest city removing pollution is actually a bad thing) but to make that city a better place?

Fortunately, electric cars do this brilliantly - they still need energy, its generated (mostly) by fossil fuels, but it moves that generation (and thus the local pollution impact) to somewhere else.

[Leonard Smalls]

2 hours ago, Monkey Steve said:

Nobody who will have to pay the fee is at all pleased about it - which is exactly the point!

Aye... When I was in London (18 years!) I would only ever use the car to leave town; if I was going to the centre I'd cycle or get the tube. Going to work was either cycle or motorbike.

But I knew some folks who couldn't cope with the idea of public transport, never mind pushbike; those people would drive everywhere - it was amazing how full the carpark at work was with cars that had driven 1 or 2 miles. They'd take 30-odd minutes doing that, then whinge about the traffic, or the congestion charge but would never think about who caused that traffic (them!) or why their backsides were increasing in size daily.

[project_c]

4 hours ago, FDC484950 said:

London needs most of the 2 million-plus people who have swelled its ranks and overburdened infrastructure and transport in the last 5-10 years to clear off. It’s not likely to happen, and telling people to get out of their car and replace it with cramped, sweaty, smelly, expensive, unreliable and sometimes downright dangerous public transport is a bit short sighted. The ultra low emission zone is about cleaner air, but the most polluting traffic is lorries, buses and taxis, which are at least getting cleaned up (gradually). If you want to see what pollution is really about, stand by a taxi rank next to a London terminus and look at the atmosphere with all the dirty old diesel engines running - because that’s what they do all day whilst waiting for fares!

The wider transport issue needs to be solved as, notwithstanding pollution, oil will run out, and 20 million electric cars/taxis/whatever will need to be powered by something. Public transport is pretty much woeful outside of London so is no replacement.

How about this very simple solution:

1. ban everything that isn’t electric: lorries, cars, cabs and public transport etc

2. introduce rent control 

3. ban empty foreign owned ‘investment’ homes

4. carry on cycling

5. introduce flexible work hours

 

5 simple steps - would fix most of London’s issues in under 5 years. Will it happen? Will it fük..

[Monkey Steve]

17 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Aye... When I was in London (18 years!) I would only ever use the car to leave town; if I was going to the centre I'd cycle or get the tube. Going to work was either cycle or motorbike.

But I knew some folks who couldn't cope with the idea of public transport, never mind pushbike; those people would drive everywhere - it was amazing how full the carpark at work was with cars that had driven 1 or 2 miles. They'd take 30-odd minutes doing that, then whinge about the traffic, or the congestion charge but would never think about who caused that traffic (them!) or why their backsides were increasing in size daily.

Exactly!  While there are almost daily delays on one part of the tube or the other and they are often over-stuffed (don't try the Waterloo & City line during rush hour if you don't enjoy being crushed against other people), there's usually a way round it, and when the tubes go on strike, people (me included) are usually pleasantly surprised to find that central London isn't actually that big and you can walk across most of it inside an hour - my tube journey from Waterloo to Kings Cross takes me 20 minutes, and i can walk it in 45 minutes if the tubes aren't running.

The way legislation is going, buses, bin lorries, and other council vehicles are likely to lead the way in greener energy - my business deals with the bin lorry part of the equation, and there is huge pressure from local authorities to replace older, polluting vehicles with greener alternatives, and everybody is waiting for the day that everything has to be zero emissions.

 

[Nicko]

2 hours ago, ambient said:

Buses do contribute to the pollution problem, though they are committed to improving and will have replaced the diesel only buses by 2020, cutting emissions by 95%. How many passengers does a bus carry compared to one guy in his car?

Tube trains run every couple of minutes at peak times anyway, and I believe they are increasing the capacity by introducing new trains. All of which costs huge amounts of money and is a gradual thing, but they are doing it. They can't obviously increase the length of the trains, this is governed by the length of the platforms.

He's got incentives in place for cab drivers to switch to electric or greener fuels. Birmingham when it introduces its charging scheme is doing the same to encourage the cab drivers to switch.

Where will the lorries wait during the time that they can't enter? You're talking of hundreds if not thousands of vehicles. I believe part of the problem with lorries is the proliferation of mini-supermarkets; Tesco Express, Sainsbury's Local etc. All of which have to be supplied meaning lorries are delivering stock to these places in little towns and villages, travelling along roads that weren't designed for lorries to use, and obviously into and around central London. There's a Tesco Express opposite the Houses of Parliament for example.

The charging scheme is one of many schemes to improve the air quality. London reached the air pollution limit after one month this year, you have to do something.

I don't know why you seem to be leading the cheers for Sadiq.  Have you ever actually been to London? 

If so you would see lots of busses during the day plying for the same custom and driving around pretty much empty until rush hour when they are full but stuck in traffic.

Some tube trains run every few minutes through the centre, others don't.  My tube in the morning is the 7th stop (approx 20 stops to central london) and its pretty much full by stop 10.  Thats at 7.15 in the morning.  It runs around every 10 minutes, at least when theres not a broken down train, a signal failure or a strike.  More to the point the tube only works if you are going out to in, not if you want to go 5 miles around the edge say Northolt to Hounslow or Wembley to Barnet to

You're right replacing trains is a slow business - the Bakerloo line trains are nearly 50 years old. Sadiq Khan has not introduced any new rolling stock since he was in post, unless you include the Crossrail trains which were orderd before he was elected. 

I'm not sure theres actually any real evidence that the congestion charge has imprved air quality, given that the Euro emissions limits on new cars leads to constantly improving vehicle emissions anyway.

[Nicko]

6 minutes ago, Monkey Steve said:

The way legislation is going, buses, bin lorries, and other council vehicles are likely to lead the way in greener energy - my business deals with the bin lorry part of the equation, and there is huge pressure from local authorities to replace older, polluting vehicles with greener alternatives, and everybody is waiting for the day that everything has to be zero emissions.

 

Absolutely nothing to do with the thread, but can you tell me why bin collections are done at the time everyone's trying to get to work?

[NancyJohnson]

44 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

Breaking my golden rule of *if someone uses the word 'snowflake' in any conversation they are probably talking out of their behind*, surely these 'snowflakes' you a referring to are more likely to be boycotting Chinese and Indian steel (and the US, also one of the big polluters, but probably too expensive to matter) as ethics would matter. It would be the opposites of snowflakes, which I don't know what that is, I guess gammons if we are reducing everything down to childlike terms that will be buying the stuff that is the cheapest and less ethical?

And I would say that the reason for getting rid of pollution in a city is not just to make the world a better place (and personally I am not sure that the 40th biggest city removing pollution is actually a bad thing) but to make that city a better place?

London undoubtedly could be a cleaner place and let's face it, it is cleaner now compared to how it was when my mum was a girl; she described it to me once as, 'every house having a coal fire and every chimney belching smoke coming out of it, smogs so thick in Shepherds Bush that you could barely see a few feet in front of you.  it made breathing difficult.  In wintertime sooty residue on everything.'

Thing is though, we don't live under a dome, we live on a sphere with weather systems circulating whatever is in the atmosphere.  Their pollution and toxicity becomes our pollution and toxicity, and to a way lesser extent vice-versa.  If we cut our pollutants today to zero and India/China just carried on regardless, things wouldn't change a jot. 

Concerning ethics, how do you approach that then?  Do you take the viewpoint that it's OK to for undeveloped(?) countries to continue throwing sh*t into the atmosphere but to cease, or restrain, them from doing so is ethically wrong?  We're not talking about Britain and the Industrial Revolution here, we're talking about single cities with a population of double or triple the entire population of the UK at the height of the Industrial Revolution, not a scattered population with a couple of hundred foundries.  India and China are manufacturing on a massive scale, seemingly with little care for what it's doing to the environment globally.

[ambient]

13 minutes ago, Nicko said:

I don't know why you seem to be leading the cheers for Sadiq.  Have you ever actually been to London? 

If so you would see lots of busses during the day plying for the same custom and driving around pretty much empty until rush hour when they are full but stuck in traffic.

Some tube trains run every few minutes through the centre, others don't.  My tube in the morning is the 7th stop (approx 20 stops to central london) and its pretty much full by stop 10.  Thats at 7.15 in the morning.  It runs around every 10 minutes, at least when theres not a broken down train, a signal failure or a strike.  More to the point the tube only works if you are going out to in, not if you want to go 5 miles around the edge say Northolt to Hounslow or Wembley to Barnet to

You're right replacing trains is a slow business - the Bakerloo line trains are nearly 50 years old. Sadiq Khan has not introduced any new rolling stock since he was in post, unless you include the Crossrail trains which were orderd before he was elected. 

I'm not sure theres actually any real evidence that the congestion charge has imprved air quality, given that the Euro emissions limits on new cars leads to constantly improving vehicle emissions anyway.

I spent 3 years undergraduate in Kilburn and a year post graduate at Goldsmiths. It’s new cars that the Euro emissions apply to, the congestion charge is affecting cars that pollute and are already on the roads.

[NancyJohnson]

1 minute ago, ambient said:

I spent 3 years undergraduate in Kilburn and a year post graduate at Goldsmiths. It’s new cars that the Euro emissions apply to, the congestion charge is affecting cars that pollute and are already on the roads.

Like Volkswagens?

[paul_c2]

4 minutes ago, ambient said:

I spent 3 years undergraduate in Kilburn and a year post graduate at Goldsmiths. It’s new cars that the Euro emissions apply to, the congestion charge is affecting cars that pollute and are already on the roads.

Emissions checks, in one form or another, have been around since 1970. We're on Euro 6 now, I'm not sure what you mean when you say "its new cars the the Euro emissions apply to" - cars since 1992 would have had to comply with the relevant emissions standard of the time to be able to be sold. Volkswagen dieselgate is interesting - since its now been proven they "cheated" the standard, I wonder if it renders those cars which fraudulently obtained their pass ineligible to avoid paying the higher rate of congestion charge etc.

[ambient]

6 minutes ago, paul_c2 said:

Emissions checks, in one form or another, have been around since 1970. We're on Euro 6 now, I'm not sure what you mean when you say "its new cars the the Euro emissions apply to" - cars since 1992 would have had to comply with the relevant emissions standard of the time to be able to be sold. Volkswagen dieselgate is interesting - since its now been proven they "cheated" the standard, I wonder if it renders those cars which fraudulently obtained their pass ineligible to avoid paying the higher rate of congestion charge etc.

Euro 6 only applies to new cars produced after 1st September 2015. Older cars would have had to satisfy whatever regulation was around at the time.

[Monkey Steve]

39 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

London undoubtedly could be a cleaner place and let's face it, it is cleaner now compared to how it was when my mum was a girl; she described it to me once as, 'every house having a coal fire and every chimney belching smoke coming out of it, smogs so thick in Shepherds Bush that you could barely see a few feet in front of you.  it made breathing difficult.  In wintertime sooty residue on everything.'

Thing is though, we don't live under a dome, we live on a sphere with weather systems circulating whatever is in the atmosphere.  Their pollution and toxicity becomes our pollution and toxicity, and to a way lesser extent vice-versa.  If we cut our pollutants today to zero and India/China just carried on regardless, things wouldn't change a jot. 

Concerning ethics, how do you approach that then?  Do you take the viewpoint that it's OK to for undeveloped(?) countries to continue throwing sh*t into the atmosphere but to cease, or restrain, them from doing so is ethically wrong?  We're not talking about Britain and the Industrial Revolution here, we're talking about single cities with a population of double or triple the entire population of the UK at the height of the Industrial Revolution, not a scattered population with a couple of hundred foundries.  India and China are manufacturing on a massive scale, seemingly with little care for what it's doing to the environment globally.

but this doesn't mean that we shouldn't do anything, just because somebody else is worse than us.  Things would change if we cut our emissions to zero, just not as much as if everybody else was doing their bit too.  If we don't do anything then it makes it far easier for the much worse polluters to reject any proposals to clean up their act as they can just point at us and repeat your "well you're not doing anything so why should we?" argument.

Change has to start somewhere, and if it means that people in London can breathe easier, I don't see a down side

[Monkey Steve]

53 minutes ago, Nicko said:

Absolutely nothing to do with the thread, but can you tell me why bin collections are done at the time everyone's trying to get to work?

Ha!

they're done throughout the day - the typical shift starts way before you are part of the daily commute, and continues until the rounds are finished - usually mid afternoon.  You only notice it when you get stuck behind one in the morning, but that's just the luck of the draw - your commute must go across where their round is at that time in the morning.  But you'll rarely be stuck behind a bin lorry coming home because the rounds are finished by then.