Tag Archives: Great Reset

15-minute cities and the new feudal system

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While the power elite will continue to enjoy their jet-set lifestyles, the general public will increasingly be restricted to 15-minute cities as “climate lockdowns” are imposed.

Serfs weren’t allowed to leave their village without their master’s permission. They spent their whole lives restricted to a small area, except perhaps for a rare pilgrimage. As councils start to require permits to drive down certain roads or into certain areas, the parallels with the feudal system are obvious.

15-minute cities are superficially attractive. The basic idea is that employment, retail outlets, health services, schools and various other amenities should be easily accessible to people’s homes – indeed within a short, 15-minute walk or cycle ride. This new urban geography is designed to reduce car dependency and foster “stronger communities.”

Encouraging walking and cycling is a key aspect of the policy, though in practical application this has meant using a big stick rather than a carrot.

The road space available to cars is reduced to make way for cycle lanes or wider pavements. Speed limits are lowered; traffic lights increased; parking restricted; obstacles placed in the road; streets closed.

These measures create delays and impose costs on motorists, reducing their mobility and deterring them from travelling outside their immediate area.     

Indeed, proponents of 15-minute cities admit that mobility is not their priority. Because, they hope, key amenities are accessible locally, they argue mobility is no longer needed to the same extent.

But here the movement hits a major hurdle: economies of scale.

Many services are inefficient or not viable at a micro level. In a relatively free economy, this means they would tend to be driven out of business by more efficient competitors that serve a larger catchment area and population.

An obvious illustration is to compare big edge-of-town supermarkets with the same brands’ “local” iterations, the latter having far less choice and significantly higher prices. Consumers often choose to drive further to a big supermarket in order to do a weekly shop in one go, which may be cheaper and more efficient than making frequent visits on foot or by bike to smaller local stores. (Of course, staying at home, shopping online and waiting for deliveries is another option under the 15-minute-city model – which may explain why the Big Tech elite are promoting it so enthusiastically.)

The 15-minute city concept therefore implies using planning controls and mobility restrictions to hinder the economies of scale associated with larger catchment areas – effectively forcing businesses and consumers to stay local. Accordingly, such policies are now commonplace across the UK, Western Europe and “progressive” US cities, representing a shift to command-and-control economics and a further erosion of private property rights.

There are similar issues with labour markets. If mobility is restricted – for example, by slower journeys or a forced reduction in car ownership – then it becomes harder for potential employees to find jobs that match their skills and talents. The size of the area in which they can access opportunities may shrink dramatically. The same problem applies to many small businesses. Productivity and wages suffer. Welfare dependency may increase.

The 15-minute-city movement seeks to overcome the economies of scale problem through high-density living. If large numbers of people are stacked on top of one another in blocks of small apartments, then a population of tens of thousands can be packed into a square mile. But given current rates of new home construction, it will typically take several decades to densify neighbourhoods in this way. Lost economies of scale will not be replaced in the foreseeable future.

Moreover, high-density districts have disturbing social and political implications. Residents of detached houses on large plots are relatively free to engage in various activities without affecting their neighbours. Their physical environment promotes self-reliance, independence and resilience. They have the space to accumulate possessions, resources and reserves; make repairs; start various businesses; even grow their own food.

By contrast, high-density apartment blocks are characterised by monitoring and surveillance; rules and regulations; permits; conflicts over communal space, repairs and maintenance. Eccentric, offensive or anti-social behaviour may affect a large number of neighbours, providing a rationale for meddling and intervention. This kind of neighbourhood promotes a culture of interfering in other people’s lives.

And residents of small apartments can’t own much. Their possessions and real resources are severely limited by lack of physical space. They have relatively little scope for self reliance and are more vulnerable to becoming dependent on the state in any crisis. They are therefore more controllable.

15-minute cities are an attempt to manipulate the built environment in order to undermine individual freedom. They’re a Trojan horse for big government and top-down control.

Richard Wellings

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Political manipulation and the push for climate lockdowns

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The plan is clear. The political elite want to create what amounts to a new feudal system, with the manipulation of the green agenda providing a convenient pretext.

Ordinary people’s mobility will be severely restricted. They will be forced out of their cars and off the roads by a raft of new charges and controls. Their lives will largely be confined to “15-minute cities.”

But the perpetrators have a problem. These measures are deeply unpopular with a large percentage of the public. And they are being imposed in ostensible democracies. So, they need a strategy to overcome resistance.

One element is a relentless propaganda campaign to promote the idea of a “climate emergency.” With clear parallels to the manipulation strategies deployed during the pandemic, they’re trying to persuade the public that a form of lockdown is necessary to stop global warming.

This is why the BBC lectures viewers on climate change every time there’s a heat wave, flooding or forest fires. It’s also why the BBC has effectively banned proper debate on environmental issues, with sceptical voices not welcome on its outlets. The understandable anguish created by images of natural disasters is used to undermine free speech on the issue.

The second element is a focus on local government. There’s a reason why mayors and councils are taking a leading role in the “climate lockdowns” policy, while central government pretends to be more motorist friendly. The establishment is exploiting the different incentives facing members of the public.

The benefits of measures such as “low-traffic neighbourhoods” (LTNs) are highly concentrated and obvious to the relatively small number of beneficiaries. By contrast, the costs, which may be enormous by comparison, are typically dispersed and not always obvious to the losers.

If a through road is closed off by the council, many of its residents will support the new restriction (though some may be against – for example if it means much longer journeys). Their street may be quieter and perhaps safer. This constituency offers a bedrock of support for such measures.

It will be bolstered by locals ideologically wedded to the green agenda, perhaps the result of a lifetime of indoctrination by schools, universities and the media, with no exposure to the counter arguments.

They will be joined by state-funded “sock puppets” – campaign groups paid by government to lobby itself and create a fake impression of wider support for policies that the political elite have already decided to impose.

By focusing on the local level, the instigators can build a sufficient coalition of supporters to at least make the argument that they’re not imposing their agenda despite overwhelming public opposition.

Indeed, many of the losers from such policies will not even live or vote in the borough or city where the new controls are being installed. They may be commuters or businesses now facing prohibitive charges or massive delays to their journeys.

Residents in areas beyond the schemes may see a big increase in congestion as traffic is displaced. The emergency services might become less efficient as they can no longer take a direct route, or because cycle lanes mean motorists can no longer get out of their way to let them pass. Labour mobility, productivity and wages may decline because potential employees can’t reach jobs that match their skills, and economies of scale may be lost as the populations that can be profitably or efficiently served shrink (click here for a more detailed discussion).

It will not always be obvious to people that the “war on motorists” is to blame for these negative economic impacts, which in turn dilutes political resistance to the new restrictions. And these effects are spread over a much wider geographical area than the benefits (that accrue to a small, concentrated group), which means opposition is harder to coordinate.  

Note that the purported non-local environmental gains are quite tenuous. The costs and benefits of any future climate change are impossible to calculate accurately. And the impact of the new controls will be negligible in terms of global emissions. In any case, anti-car policies are often counterproductive. Artificially created congestion can actually increase pollution.

Rather than restricting ordinary people’s mobility – and effectively creating a new feudal system in the process – policymakers should focus on win-win policies that both cut emissions and benefit the economy. This means ending the vast subsidies pumped into various polluting activities.

It speaks volumes that governments are so reluctant to take this obvious step. The green agenda is really about giving even more power to the elite and their institutions rather than saving the planet.  

Richard Wellings

How to manufacture a climate crisis

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The establishment is hinting that the kind of draconian restrictions imposed during the pandemic will be redeployed to enforce their climate change agenda. As with Covid-19, a key part of the plan is to generate fear across the population through psychological manipulation and media propaganda.

The desired result is a major reduction in personal mobility, with ordinary people taxed and regulated out of their cars and off flights. Heating costs will also be hiked dramatically as gas boilers are banned and replaced with expensive and less effective heat pumps. Food supplies are another target.

The aim of the ramped-up indoctrination campaign will be to convince the general public to accept this top-down assault on their living standards.

Key elements of the programme are already in place. The BBC long ago effectively banned any proper debate on its airwaves. Don’t expect to see scientists who point out flaws in climate modelling on the UK’s state broadcaster; or economists who question whether the benefits of reducing emissions are worth the costs.

Establishment journalists have also been encouraged to insert climate change into news stories. Almost every time there are floods, reporters tell viewers that such disasters are likely to get worse. The same policy is applied to heat waves, forest fires and hurricanes. Even cold snaps are blamed on global warming as part of the “extreme weather” trope.

Improved communications technology has been a great help to this campaign. Alarming footage of disasters in previously little noticed regions now spreads rapidly around the world, particularly if it fits the establishment’s narrative.

But propaganda by omission is another key element of the strategy. The public is kept in the dark about the debate over the frequency of climate-related natural disasters – and the possibility that even if their frequency were increasing there could be other causes.

The role of government policies is also conveniently neglected. Environmentalist-inspired changes to river management policies, such as reducing dredging, have made flooding more likely in some locations. The “green” agenda and its huge costs have also contributed to cuts in maintenance spending on drains and other vital infrastructure. Green land-use policies promote construction on brownfield sites, which for historical reasons are often on low-lying land near to rivers.

Another long-term factor is urbanisation, which promotes flooding as water runs off rapidly from concrete surfaces into drains rather than being delayed by vegetation and soil. (It also increases temperatures via the urban heat island effect.)  

Policy changes have also been implicated in forest fires. Management methods designed to mitigate the risks, such as thinning and clearing combustible material, have been phased out under pressure from greens. Moreover, arson is a leading cause of wild fires in some regions. This human element is another reason why assessment of long-term trends is problematic. There have been examples of environmentalists engaging in other forms of arson attack, and it is worth bearing in mind the possibility that various kinds of political actors could play a role in future incidents. 

Finally, water shortages have been made more likely by policies to obstruct the construction of new reservoirs, including in regions with growing populations. The subtext is that the resulting shortages would provide a useful rationale to reduce consumption by imposing new regulations and compulsory water meters.     

So, there is substantial evidence that many of the policies imposed by environmentalists actively contribute to the “natural” disasters that are then used by propaganda outlets to promote the idea of a climate crisis. The economic damage caused by green policies also makes societies less resilient. Yet discussion of these crucial factors is typically absent.

There are two main dangers from the one-sided propaganda and indoctrination programme currently being implemented by governments and their media assets. The first is that it will encourage the adoption of harmful policies that impose higher costs than any climate change they aim to prevent. In other words, there is a high risk that the cure will be worse than the disease, with negative effects on low-income groups and poor countries in particular. A sensible strategy would be to implement win-win policies that benefit both the economy and the environment – for example, ending the vast and inefficient state subsidies and privileges given to various polluting activities. However, governments and transnational bodies have been curiously reluctant to adopt this approach.

The second danger is that climate change will be used as a pretext to bring in a far more tyrannical economic and political system, for example by empowering unaccountable transnational institutions that lack the usual constraints. Indeed there are clear parallels with the Covid-19 pandemic, which is being used as a convenient excuse for elites to grab more power and to impose vaccine passports as a stepping stone towards a long-planned global system of digital IDs.   

A free and open debate about climate change is absolutely essential if these alarming outcomes are to be avoided. However, the wider agenda behind the climate change narrative could plausibly explain why elites are so obsessed with eliminating dissent.

Richard Wellings

Image: US government

HS2 and the “Great Reset”

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High Speed 2 never made any economic sense. In commercial terms it was always going to make heavy losses. Ballooning budgets mean the costs are now likely to outweigh the benefits. And it’s crystal clear that alternative transport investments would deliver far higher returns.

So, why on earth is the project still going ahead?

One theory is that transport policy was captured by powerful special interests. Construction firms, train manufacturers and an army of consultants stand to cash-in from the scheme. They certainly haven’t been shy about lobbying MPs and ministers over the last few years.

Councils in the North and Midlands will use HS2 to grab yet more taxpayers’ cash to fund their pet “regeneration” projects around the new stations. No wonder they’re backing the line so strongly.

Then there are the senior bureaucrats. HS2 provides them with some of the best-paid jobs in government.

But there are compelling arguments against the special interests hypothesis. This is not to deny their influence on policy, but to question whether it is strong enough to be decisive.

Looking at political incentives, HS2 has been unpopular with the public, those against typically far outnumbering those in favour. The scheme has also been an endless source of embarrassment and bad publicity for successive governments, with numerous negative media stories on cost overruns, deception, incompetence, protests and the ill treatment of businesses and residents along the route.   

Having said this, the current government’s levelling-up agenda undoubtedly plays into the hands of the HS2 lobby. They could now argue that ministers were abandoning their pledges to boost the North should the line be cancelled or scaled back.

But earlier on, it would surely have made political sense to scrap HS2 and instead lavish the money on regeneration schemes in individual towns and cities across the region, including local transport upgrades. This would have been a quicker, more effective and less risky way of “buying” votes.

So, neither special interests nor political incentives seem to fully explain why HS2 is going ahead – which brings us to another possibility.

During the pandemic, awareness has grown about the so-called Great Reset agenda, often marketed by politicians as “Build Back Better”. This set of policies, promoted by transnational “elite” institutions such as the World Economic Forum and the European Commission, is being imposed across the Western bloc and its satellites.

At the heart of this shift is radical environmentalism – at least when taken at face value. In transport policy it translates into a ruthless war on drivers. This assault was ramped up in 2020 with the government paying councils to close large numbers of roads to through traffic and narrow main roads to install (often empty) cycle lanes.

Ministers also announced a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030. The cost of electrification is likely to run into the high hundreds of billions, with motorists picking up much of the bill. The government is also considering introducing a national road pricing scheme, ostensibly to replace the vast revenues currently stolen from motorists via fuel duty.

It isn’t difficult to discern the direction of travel. Ordinary motorists will gradually be forced off the roads by a combination of regulation, tolls, taxes and closures. Driving (and also flying) will increasingly be the preserve of the rich.

So, how does this agenda relate to HS2?

At the moment a significant proportion of people travelling from the South East to the North or Midlands, or vice versa, choose to drive. Rail makes most sense for city centre to city centre journeys, particularly trips involving central London, which is car unfriendly to say the least. But if the journey starts and finishes in the suburbs, if other stops are planned en route, or if heavy luggage is carried, the car is often quicker and more convenient than the train.

However, if the Great Reset agenda is enforced, most people won’t have this choice in fifteen or twenty years’ time.

Imagine someone driving from Yorkshire to London in the not-so-distant future. He struggled to afford an expensive electric car and rapid charging socket, and is saving up for the eventual battery replacement.

He incurs heavy tolls as the government tracks his drive south. On entering London, the surveillance system levies an additional hefty “congestion charge” tax. He’s then delayed by 20 mph speed limits, cycle lanes, road humps and chicanes. The route he used to take is no longer possible due to road closures and he has to make a long detour.

On arriving at his destination he struggles to find a parking space. One side of the road has been turned into a cycle lane and the other is permits only. When he finally finds one, the charge is prohibitive. He decides that he won’t bother driving next time. He will use video conferencing or if absolutely necessary take the train.

So, the transport market is going to be so heavily rigged that most people will have little choice but to travel by rail if they make these kind of journeys – assuming they can afford it (these policies are likely to bring a major reduction in overall personal mobility, with negative knock-on effects on job opportunities, business costs, productivity and wages).

This authoritarian agenda may explain politicians’ attachment to HS2. Senior officials and ministers have been aware of and signed up to Great Reset-type policies for years. They knew a big crackdown on private motoring was coming and were just waiting for a pretext to impose it. In the meantime, the true scale of the shift and its implications would deliberately be hidden from the public.

HS2 will prove very useful to government ministers during the coming assault on private transport and mobility. They will deploy it to deceive the public that they are speeding up journeys and improving connectivity when for the vast majority of travellers the exact opposite is true.

It is no coincidence that the EU, together with the UK and US governments, are all now promoting uneconomic high-speed rail and very similar transport policies more generally. This is a top-down agenda, ordered by an unaccountable transnational “elite” and imposed by its lackeys in national governments. Both liberty and democracy are being crushed in the process.

Opposing this railway is therefore about far more than saving taxpayers’ money, protecting private property and halting environmental destruction. If HS2 is stopped, or even scaled back, our leaders will find it harder to undermine people’s freedom to travel.

Richard Wellings