YOU report businessman Andrew Paton setting up a campaign to oppose Glasgow’s Low Emission Zone (Anti-LEZ campaign boosted by mystery donor, August 29).

When other Scottish councils are also implementing and planning Low Emission Zones, Sadiq Khan on BBC Breakfast Time, in defending an accusation levied against London’s LEZ expansion to the 32 boroughs of the city that it is little more than a cash grab, has clearly stated he could have extended the congestion charge, which would have been a cash grab.

So there we have it: London’s congestion charge is now acknowledged and truthfully revealed as the cash grab opponents have long recognised it to be.

So, doesn’t £12.50 per day for LEZ non-compliant vehicles seem like a tax on the 10% of the vehicles assessed to be driving in London (any city?) at any time?

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And precisely what makes a vehicle non-compliant? Doesn’t the date of 2005 for petrol vehicles and 2015 for diesel vehicles seem arbitrary?

What Damascene moment happened in vehicle manufacturing in those years to render these vehicles suddenly “compliant”, other than arbitrary vehicle age?

Will those dates be fixed going forward as the benchmark for “compliance” or will they be moved to satisfy the cash generation required to finance the scheme?

And doesn’t the claimed “need” for LEZ render the emissions standards required by the MOT system redundant? Isn’t the truth that those MOT emissions tests already set the standard for all vehicles, which unequivocally demonstrates that these LEZ schemes are little more than another cash generation for hard-pressed councils seeking additional funding sources?

Let’s be honest. We already have the means in place to set emission standards. We are already moving away from fossil fuel-powered, carbon-emitting transport across the board. So, why do we need this scheme at all? Wouldn’t simply helping to fund vehicle upgrades, and defray the exorbitantly high cost of electric and hybrid vehicles, through an effective scrappage scheme hasten and deliver the desired climate-control benefits without impacting so heavily on the lower-paid, small businesses and charities?

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Once again we have a flawed Tory-inspired scheme that the Tory doppelganger Labour Party refuses to oppose lest it upsets those blue Tory voters it hopes to persuade support from to get elected.

Isn’t the reality that this Starmer-led Labour Party have long shed any interest in standing up for the workers, low-paid, those on low fixed incomes, pensions and benefits and no longer defend them in the face of the right-wing assault on them by the British wealthy and privileged establishment?

Let’s recognise LEZ schemes for what they are – just another means for councils to harvest cash from us that we can ill afford in these extraordinarily difficult economic times.

And let’s debate a motion in Holyrood to consider whether we should repeal the Act of Union 1707 and commence the constitutional process to free ourselves from this UK union founded on inequity, and take back our independence; the only means available that enables us to resolve our many funding problems without resorting to socially divisive schemes like this that have no impact on those who can afford not to be impacted.

Jim Taylor
Edinburgh