A few signs of the stunning lies and hypocrisy of the Barnet Tories

 I'd pretty much decided to lay off political blogging about Barnet, following Labours landslide, but I simply cannot ignore crass hypocrisy. The Barnet Tories have been pumping out complete rubbish at a huge rate of late. Maybe they are hoping for a few by-elections in the hope that Liz Truss will resurrect their election fortunes. I rather hope local voters see through this. I'm all for proper opposition, but this is nothing of the sort. It is just spouting of cobblers.

Here are a few examples. 

ULEZ

Stop Labour’s ULEZ expansion and pay per mile. Sign our petition: https://t.co/THlxXxdG2F

Tell Sadiq Khan what you think via the TfL consultation: https://t.co/EG9QwDTdro… pic.twitter.com/GJ1egZRoa6

— Barnet Conservatives (@BarnetTories) June 29, 2022

Who was it who originally planned the ULEZ extension? None other than Boris Johnson.  This is rather conveniently forgotten by the local Tories, who are simply trying a little bit of populist rabble rousing. 

Climate Change

Two months after declaring a climate emergency, Labour’s leader of @BarnetCouncil refuses to ditch single use plastic at the town hall and go paperless 😲😡🌳 pic.twitter.com/WOqsxIYult

— Barnet Conservatives (@BarnetTories) July 27, 2022

The Barnet Tories know very well that Barnet Labour are organising a public consultation on Climate Change. They did nothing to make Barnet more Eco Friendly. I emailed councillors on numerous occasions and never got a reply on a whole host of issues. They are now grubbing around for any little thing they can find to snipe. The Tories had a massive majority until May and could have passed rules explicitly making the Council Paper Free and banning single use plastic. It is worth mentioning that on the election night, that I attended as a candidate, there were no options for water apart from plastic bottles. Clearly it's only a priority in opposition. 

FGG Tories.

Now this is a strange one indeed. The local Tory MP for Finchley and Golders Green is Mike Freer. Normally Local associations are proud of their MP. Check out their profile (preserved here for posterity). 

Seems the @Finchleytories want nothing to do with their own MP?
Very odd pic.twitter.com/C87GtPgrIA

— Roger Tichborne/Rog T (@Barneteye) July 27, 2022

As for their website, it has the biggest porkie of the lot. There is a recent post that says "Let's stop Labour strikes and build a better railway". Oddly, when I read the article there is not a single mention of Labour apart from the headline. There are many things that are simply not true in the article, but one statement directly affects air quality in Barnet so I will specifically mention that. The article states

That’s why over the next 3 years, we want to spend £35 billion maintaining and growing the network. We want to expand the rail map, with trains returning to places axed from the timetable after the Beeching cuts, with new stations from Northumberland to Devon, with electrification to get rid of slow and dirty diesels.

Now I follow transport as one of my key areas of interest. The Midland Mainline runs through the Borough. Dozens of 'Dirty Diesel' trains hurtle through every day. Why? Because the Conservatives halted the project to electrify the Midland Mainline, requiring retention of 'dirty diesel trains'. Specifically " On 27 July 2017 a further briefing paper was issued and the Midland Main Line had a section of its own.^[18] This document, and the subsequent announcement by the new Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling said the electrification scheme north of Kettering to Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield had been cancelled and that bi-mode trains would be used."

Sadly, there are no bi-mode trains, so even though the electrification was completed as far as Kettering and Corby, trains travelling beyond these destinations run on diesel all of the way. This was nothing to do with Labour or the Unions. This was the Conservatives dropping a key project to improve the UK's infrastructure and lower pollution. It would have seen the end of diesel engines running through Mill Hill to St Pancras. Much as I'd love to ignore all this and enjoy the summer, in truth I find it sickening and I sincerely hope no one is taken in. 

If you think about it logically, the Tories posted a tweet opposing ULEZ and Tweet berating the Labour Council for not being greener. They face both ways on climate change, but when the facts are examined, they don't care. If they did, we'd see electric trains running to Sheffield on the Midland Mainline as we speak.  It seems to me that Grant Shapps is on a mission to be an even worse transport secretary than Chris Grayling (who cancelled the MML upgrade). That would take some doing.

I wrote a track with my Band, the False Dots discussing the state of Britains Railways, with some recent footage of 1960's vintage diesel engines passing through Mill Hill. Says it all really!