Remember me
What have Liverpool and Scotland football legend Kenny Dalglish and the former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby got in common?
They’re just two of more than a million motorists who have fallen foul of recently introduced 20mph limits.
Dalglish was caught driving at 30mph in Little Crosby, on Merseyside, which would have been perfectly legal a few weeks earlier.
He was given three penalty points on his licence and ordered to pay a £1,000 fine, £120 in costs and a £400 victim surcharge, even though there was no ‘victim’.
Welby, who was doing 25 on London’s Albert Embankment, a road which drove safely at 30mph for as long as anyone can remember, escaped comparatively lightly. He was fined ‘only’ £500, with £90 court costs and a mere £120 non-existent victim surcharge.
It goes without saying that such penalties are out of all proportion to the severity of these newly manufactured ‘crimes’. In the couple of years since councils started slashing speed limits, they’ve been raking in a king’s ransom in fines – more than £2.4billion in 2024 alone.
Ker-ching!
While no one can argue with lower speed limits around schools and playgrounds and on narrow streets with pedestrians in close proximity, most of the 20mph zones are designed deliberately to entrap unsuspecting motorists.
Central London is now rife with 20mph speed limits thanks to Sadiq Khan
As I’ve argued for more than 20 years, we now live in a punishment culture, where the police work hand-in-glove with the far-Left anti-car fanatics who have seized control of transport policies to persecute otherwise law-abiding citizens for trivial motoring infringements.
Ever since the Toytown government in Cardiff pioneered a blanket 20mph limit in Wales, copycat schemes have been enthusiastically embraced by cash-hungry local authorities across Britain, despite widespread public opposition. The latest is Glasgow, which from March will be cutting speed limits on 3,700 streets.
Wokingham Borough Council, in Berkshire, ‘consulted’ 177,000 residents over the introduction of 20mph limits. Seventy per cent were opposed. Yet the council simply ignored them and the scheme is going ahead.
Council leader Stephen Conway said: 'We did not ignore residents [Yes you did]. Consultation feedback informed the decision, but consultations are not votes and do not determine outcome by majority rule. We must consider safety evidence, national guidance and the needs of all road users alongside the views expressed.’
There speaks the authentic voice of the typical jumped-up, anti-democratic British council leader.
Nowhere has the blanket 20mph limit been more ruthlessly enforced than in Mayor Genghis Khan’s London. Having also ignored a ‘public consultation’ which opposed his plans for a ULEZ low-emission zone, he ploughed ahead with slashing the speed limit even on main roads.
For instance, one I use regularly is the Finchley Road, a major artery connecting Central London with the Northern suburbs, littered with speed cameras every few hundred yards. It’s possible to rack up 12 points within little more than a mile.
Kenny Dalglish and Justin Welby have both been caught breaking the 20mph limit
No allowance is made for traffic conditions at the time of day. There are few things more soul-destroying than having to crawl along an empty six-lane main drag at 19mph at 1am for fear of losing your licence.
Even in the early hours, motorists on the Finchley Road are forced to drive on their brakes in convoy with one eye glued to the speedometer. It makes the slow speed pursuit of OJ Simpson in LA look like the Cannonball Run.
Far worse is the once wide-open Park Lane, where thousands of drivers have already been fined for doing 24mph. Khan has narrowed the space for cars to just one lane to accommodate buses and cyclists.
It’s not just the 20mph limit, either. A report last year said it’s now quicker to walk in London than catch a bus, thanks to Khan’s hated cycle lanes, road closures, pavement widenings, pedestrianisation schemes and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, which have created gridlock and pollution everywhere.
No wonder London has just been named as the slowest capital city . . . in the world. Last year traffic moved at just 10.3mph. And the average long-suffering Londoner lost 141 hours sitting in rush-hour traffic - almost six days.
Congestion has actually got worse since the introduction of the congestion charge, most of it deliberately manufactured. Among 492 of the world’s biggest cities included in the study, just one suffered worse traffic – Barranquilla in Colombia, where cocaine gang wars and murders are often blamed for hold-ups.
Khan’s war on motorists is killing London’s economy and the taxi trade. Black cab drivers are quitting in droves. For every ten leaving, only two are applying to take The Knowledge.
Meanwhile, as I wrote here recently, with drivers forced to crawl along at 20mph, mopeds, scooters and bikes are free to go wherever the hell they want, however fast they want.
Electric scooter riders think nothing of overtaking and undertaking simultaneously, two at a time. They ignore red lights with impunity, performing dangerous U-turns in the face of incoming traffic, mounting pavements and tearing down cycle lanes, yet seem to escape any sanction whatsoever.
Not surprisingly, frustrated motorists are swerving Central London and heading for out-of-town retail parks or shopping online. The already struggling retail and hospitality sectors are suffering disproportionately.
The only way to avoid penalty points and a fine is to take a ‘speed awareness’ course, costing £100 (Ker-ching, ker-ching) where even if you’ve had a clean licence for 50 years you will be addressed as if you are a child with special needs.
London has become one of the world's worst cities to drive in
Even if you give city centres a miss, new hazards lie in wait at suburban shopping parades in the form of fiendish parking apps. The Mail on Sunday revealed that motorists have been hit with £5billion – yep, billion – in parking fines since 2019.
(Ker-ching, ker-ching, ker-ching!)
One unfortunate woman was slapped with an £11,000 penalty by a private parking firm because she was unable to pay for her tickets because of poor internet coverage.
Manchester, Birmingham, Belfast and Liverpool – as Dalglish found to his cost – are all under assault from the anti-car fanatics.
A third of all British roads are now subject to 20mph limits, affecting 28million motorists, and more are on the way under Labour.
Previously law-abiding, careful drivers are being criminalised. The roads are grinding to a halt, just like the rest of the economy.
When even the Archbishop of Canterbury is nicked for doing 25mph on a road which used to drive at 30, the game is well and truly up.