57 minutes ago, olddog said:

Am I right in thinking that the figures on GB's maps are for 'whats in the air' ( motor vehicles contribute but not sole source by any means )  ?

 

e.g. in some of the far east buring of fields after harvest is common ( and creates a lot of 'smoke' for many weeks )

As far as I know, that is a correct assumption, there is nothing that I'm aware of to say otherwise. I have spent a lot of time trying to drill down into the data that I can find on areas that have been reading higher at times such as around the steel plant at Port Talbot, some days it is high into the moderate (yellow) or into the Orange zone.

 

This I think can be down to emissions coming from the works and the docks as can be seen from the attached map, the reading closest to the sea are now into the yellow, whereas the one on the road near the housing estates are in the green. I think this shows the wind direction is outwards towards the sea and carrying the pollution with it?

 

 

At a guess, heating using turf / coal accounts for some of the high-ish figures in small Irish inland towns

 

( wonder what the map would look like on a good summers day ? )

 

Any-road-and-up......looks to me like the figures on the map have little to nothing to do with vehicle pollution.....look at the very rural far south west....

1 hour ago, olddog said:

At a guess, heating using turf / coal accounts for some of the high-ish figures in small Irish inland towns

 

( wonder what the map would look like on a good summers day ? )

 

Any-road-and-up......looks to me like the figures on the map have little to nothing to do with vehicle pollution.....look at the very rural far south west....

Thats my thoughts as well, I think vehicles are being scapegoated for other reasons. You can use the website itself and interrogate those areas that you mention by looking for them on the interactive map and pausing the mouse over their locations and the map will present a rolling 12 month record for each of the sections monitored so you can look at a summer record for each item, and it will give you an idea of what it would look like.

To highlight the point I made about Port Talbot and the docks and Tata Steel plant and the emissions coming from it, you can see from this screenshot taken just a couple of minutes ago the figures are all in the green today indicating no risk of respiratory or other problems from the local air at the moment.

 

By a combination of the air quality website maps when zoomed in and Google Earth / Google Maps in a lot of cases it is possible to locate these monitoring stations as they are often hidden in plain sight as these screenshots show, starting from the top of the map, location 1 to the bottom, in a school compound by the M4. I have indicated where I think it is located, can't be 100% as I can't get close enough to get a view from street level as there is high screening wall between it and the M4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 28 November, 20241 yr by Graham Butcher

12 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

To highlight the point I made about Port Talbot and the docks and Tata Steel plant and the emissions coming from it, you can see from this screenshot taken just a couple of minutes ago the figures are all in the green today indicating no risk of respiratory or other problems from the local air at the moment.

 

 

Probably because the last blast furnace shut down at the end of September. 

Has anyone here been fined for taking non-compliant vehicles into a LEZ?

Does anyone here live within a Low Emission Zone?

 

The ULEZ / LEZ,s are not getting scrapped any place in the UK anytime soon are they?

They are here to stay and more to be introduced are they not?

Is Mumping and moaning about them going to achieve anything?

 

If people just give up and don't voice their objections then yes, there will be countless others schemes introduced. Think about it, when everyone starts to switch over to EVs, the revenue from them will drop away. Do you think that will just accept that, or will they lower the threshold to include EVs with their tyre emissions etc? 

 

What about the long issue of the non working chargers at Edinburgh Airport and others you keep going on about @Ootohere, are they fixed yet? Maybe if there was more users around were also voiced their views they might get fixed? I expect the reason for them not being fixed is that are not profitable for them so they are tardy about getting them fixed, cheaper to leave them not working. 

 

It's about the money. 

I make the reports and email the council. Not just post on social media as bout the faults.   PS there are regulations and requirements about the EV chargers and time to repair.  On commercial dividers yet the worst at non repair are public finances local authority / council ones.  Especially in Scotland. 

Edited 29 November, 20241 yr by Ootohere

No surprises there that council /public funded ones are the worst ones at repairing them even despite there being regulations and requirements, who is going to challenge them, when they make the rules themselves?

 

Back in 1990 when the Poll Tax riots were taking place which actually did manage to bring about change to the tax situation, social media was almost non-existent and not many people had access to the hardware or software then so mass public demonstrations which often ended up as riots were the only way to get the full extent of public opinion known. Sure, there were loads of people writing letters of complaints to the respective authorities, but they are much easier to placate than an angry mob on your door, which would you personally prefer to see, more riots or massive social media peaceful upraising making it clear that these peoples continued tenure in office really depends on being re-elected at the next elections as opposed to massive public gatherings which get quickly out of hand and become full-blown riots with all the injuries and property damage that results from it?

The Poll tax riots were in Scotland since it was started there before introduced in England or wales. In Dundee there were a married couple of councillors very much involved in the protests and they never paid their poll tax and yet still collected their wages / expenses as employees of the council.  Other than councillor allowances.one was the Council Leader.    We had Labour Councillors and Labour Councils back then in Scotland.  No improvement really where there are SNP of Labour lead councils now.   We did not need social media.  We had DC Thomson press and the P&J and at one time Council George Galloway and the Gaddafi funded free  news paper.   Elsewhere Tommy Sheridan.     PS, computer games industry pretty much started in Dundee, and all the library computers that Bill Gates donated made a big difference.  Sinclair ZX spectrum  computers and then  Dave Jones in Dundee very much had Dundee ahead of many places as far as advances in computing.  And also the corrupt Councilors. 

http://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpvzp80jv07o

 

 

Just this past week this film released.

Edited 30 November, 20241 yr by Ootohere

The ZX Spectrum was assembled by Timex in Dundee, was it not?. However, I really don't think that Scotland can make the claim that they started the Computer Gaming scene, as it was not the only computer around at the time. The was the BBC Micro, Commodore Vic and C64 as well and social media really wasn't around unless you count the Blackberry Messenger, but there is no denying that the Spectrum did spawn a huge programming movement here in the whole of the UK.

6 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

The ZX Spectrum was assembled by Timex in Dundee, was it not?. However, I really don't think that Scotland can make the claim that they started the Computer Gaming scene, as it was not the only computer around at the time. The was the BBC Micro, Commodore Vic and C64 as well

I can also remember the (Welsh) Dragon 64, the Tandy TR(a)S(h)-80. Sinclair SX 80 and 81 ...

@Graham Butcher at the forefront of the innovation of the games industry.  Grand theft auto, lemons etc.  a big move on from the crap that was available at the time.  Still very much innovating in Dundee.    Often opportunities are taken up where it is easy to get stuff.  Hence the City of Discovery was an early adopters of EV,s and the council got EU and UK grants and funding.  So bring us around to LEZ,s but not ULEZ,s.    You can not just pay £12 and take a non compliant ICE vehicle into the Zone.   There was and is a need to reduce emissions.      There is also a need to update the Council Tax because it is as ridiculous as the Community Charge was.   An unfair tax and like the Council Tax not everyone payed. 

 

EDIT, 

Just this week. 

A Labour Councillor. 

Edited 1 December, 20241 yr by Ootohere

This landed in my inbox today, the planned Greater Manchester CAZ has now been officially scrapped, and it was set to be £60 a day and was directed by the last Tory government pre Covid (allegedly) ifg that is correct than to my mind, my suspicions are beginning to look correct after all.

 

 Greater Manchester Scraps £60 Daily Clean Air Zone Charges | Regit