Forum menu
I love a good conspiracy theory, the loonier the better. I like trying to understand what kernel of "truth" they are based on. So for example - Flat Earth: the kernel of "truth" is "Gee, Bob it sure does look flat" also I think the true "believers" like to throw in some misquoted scripture for good measure.
With a lot of the others you can see where people have tried to put 2 and 2 together and got "Satanic Lizard" as the answer.
But the nonsense around "15 minute cities" I just don't get? Apparently having more corner shops means we'll end up in Hunger Games style dystopia, all assigned to our "zones".
Somehow the WEF is involved, or is it the WWE or the WWF?
Does anyone know why a basic urban planning idea has attracted such nonsense? Is anyone actually concerned about it?
Are we just in a place now where everything can be a conspiracy?
Should I just spend less time on Facebook?
You forgot about social credits and the government being able to disable your car at the push of a button
A pillock decided that trying to limit people driving around in the city was actually an outright ban, and people would be blocked into their zone for life. Or something.Does anyone know why a basic urban planning idea has attracted such nonsense?
It seemed to start during Covid, along with the other paranoia.
Oxford are bringing new traffic control measures in, residents will need to apply for a permit to allow them to pass through these zones, limited to 100 days per year. The whole of the city is still accessible by car, you just have use a different route. The computer modelling has shown it will reduce pollution, congestion and public transport journey times.
It has got some people in meltdown.
FWIW I live in a "15 minute city". We have a supermarket, GP, swimming pool, leisure centre, pubs, restaurants and school, all within a 15 minute walk. It's a coastal village.
The ones that are giving me the most fun currently:
1. You can't fit that much fuel into a airliner. This is often accompanied by a picture of a large static farm diesel fuel tank and then a line drawing of a plane, I've no idea (even after asking) what the actual conspiracy here is. Something something chem-trails?
2. The cold weather the US is experiencing right now is either because Leviathan is waking up, or it is to prevent Leviathan from waking up. This ones often has pictures of a sand bank off the coast of the US, which TBF, if you squint does look like the head of a giant crocodile.
I think the 15 minutes city thing is because you're going to be restricted to your city zone by the Globalist's New World Order, and they're just softening you up, you sheeple.
I think Flat Earth is one of ones that appears at first to be harmless, but is in fact one of the the more dangerous ones.
I really need to listen to fewer podcasts about this stuff.
I know a lot of it seems to be centered on Oxford, but a 15 minute scheme in Glasgow seem to have triggered similar conspiracy nonsense.
Open a map of Europe and pick a city at random, its probably a 15 minute city as most of Europe's cities are built around dense urban housing, like mid rise apartments, rather than single dwelling suburban sprawl.
My wife's family are from Brasov, Romania and despite having half the population of Glasgow its probably less than a fifth of Glasgow's size. It does have an proper city centre, but shops and services are just built into the fabric of all the little districts so its more like a 10 minute city.
People still drive everywhere though.
You can't fit that much fuel into a airliner. This is often accompanied by a picture of a large static farm diesel fuel tank and then a line drawing of a plane, I've no idea (even after asking) what the actual conspiracy here is. Something something chem-trails?
The "Jet Fuel Hoax" is an absolute belter. I think that planes are actually supposed to run on fresh air and the fuel tanks are just for the chemtrails.
Oxford are bringing new traffic control measures in, residents will need to apply for a permit to allow them to pass through these zones, limited to 100 days per year
Sorry what?!
Conspirary loons are loons, but this sounds like an absolutely mental case of council overreach
It’s defensive knee-jerk drivers that are scared that their freedom* is going to be limited and they are going to be forced to walk everywhere or mix with the great unwashed on a bus. So they go on the attack.
*freedom - needing to buy, maintain, insure, tax and fuel a vehicle (or two) and then rage about driving standards, pot holes, the great unwashed impeding their progress, parking and traffic jams, rather than accepting that it would be great if the schools and shops were within a 15 minute pleasant walk and you only need to use the sacred car if you need/want to.
By pure coincidence, this was just uploaded.
It explains the new driving permits and looks at the press interpretation.
The "Jet Fuel Hoax" is an absolute belter. I think that planes are actually supposed to run on fresh air and the fuel tanks are just for the chemtrails.
No, I think it's that 'they' have invented something that doesn't need fuel, but won't tell us. There was a video of a bloke trying to work out how big the fuel tanks were on Concorde, getting it wrong by several orders of magnitude, so thus explaining why jet engines couldn't work.
Sorry what?!
Conspirary loons are loons, but this sounds like an absolutely mental case of council overreach
You would probably need to get someone from Oxford to explain is properly but from what I understand, the traffic restrictions are to stop you driving through the city, you can still drive around the city on the ring road any day you like. There is absolute no restriction how and where you enter the city if you aren't in a car.
The people who scream that nothing is local now and everyone has to travel to work, a Dr , shop or other facilities. Remembering the old days if saying good morning to the GP and Vicar as they stroll for their morning paper, passing the butchers as a rascally terrier runs out with string of sausages.
Well they are against councils and governments investing in logical amnesties as they think it’s means Judge Dredd type Megacities.
Oxford are bringing new traffic control measures in, residents will need to apply for a permit to allow them to pass through these zones, limited to 100 days per year
Sorry what?!
Conspirary loons are loons, but this sounds like an absolutely mental case of council overreach
Glasgow has installed one way streets and no entry bollards to make it virtually impossible to drive across the city centre IIRC. You can drive in from any side but have to return to the same side. Want to drive across you have to use one of the main orbital roads
It’s defensive knee-jerk drivers that are scared that their freedom* is going to be limited and they are going to be forced to walk everywhere or mix with the great unwashed on a bus. So they go on the attack.
*freedom - needing to buy, maintain, insure, tax and fuel a vehicle (or two) and then rage about driving standards, pot holes, the great unwashed impeding their progress, parking and traffic jams, rather than accepting that it would be great if the schools and shops were within a 15 minute pleasant walk and you only need to use the sacred car if you need/want to.
My parents, having given up their car anyway, got sucked into the 15 minute city rabbit hole, convinced cities would have locked gates every mile or so to keep people trapped in their zone.
I pointed out that within 15 minutes of their house they could reach a Tesco Express, two hairdressers, an Indian, a Chinese, a pizza place, two doctors surgeries, a pharmacy, a pub, a decent cafe, a primary school and a small industrial estate for employment, as well as (ok, occassional) buses to get you to places for other stuff, which is why they didn't need a car. The penny dropped.
According to the stupid person with the newspapers you will be charged every time you leave your 15 minute zone. Why can't these ****s find religion like nutters did in the old days.
On the subject of conspiracy theories I live in Somerset. Been taking a lot of photos of the flooding while out on my bike .
One woman commented " Our weather is controlled "
I replied " Yes by Mother Nature"
She replied " No by haaarp and chem trails I suggest you do your research"
WTF is haaarp? I've asked her for her source but have yet to get a response 🤔
High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program
One woman commented " Our weather is controlled "
I replied " Yes by Mother Nature"
She replied " No by haaarp and chem trails I suggest you do your research"
WTF is haaarp? I've asked her for her source but have yet to get a response
Weirdly the people that insist our weather is controlled by chem trails also think that climate change is a hoax.
You would probably need to get someone from Oxford to explain is properly but from what I understand, the traffic restrictions are to stop you driving through the city, you can still drive around the city on the ring road any day you like. There is absolute no restriction how and where you enter the city if you aren't in a car.
Not from Oxford, but do the odd bit of work there. Was surprised to find Vans are exempt from the congestion charge. Possibly the only time, aside the tax implications a van has been less cost than a car.
A nice change from fun like getting fined for driving a Transit Connect through the Rotherhive tunnel each way (2 fines).
WTF is haaarp?
Live album by MUSE.
Leeds is pretty much stopping all traffic going through the city centre apart from buses and taxis. They're doing by installing 'bus gates' so if you drive down there you get a fine. Seems a perfectly good idea to me. I'd much prefer more pedestrianisation.
Oxford are bringing new traffic control measures in, residents will need to apply for a permit to allow them to pass through these zones, limited to 100 days per year. The whole of the city is still accessible by car, you just have use a different route.
The Oxford thing is a bit nuts, if you have a van you can drive through any of the zones for free or if you use a personal car for business 'goods vehicle' you can apply for free as well. Not sure what the fuss is about.
Should I just spend less time on Facebook?
Yes. Leave the morons to it.
The end.
You're welcome (to go and do something less boring instead)
The negative feelings toward the plan does have some merit.
The UK has a history of using the stick, rather than the carrot when it comes to a lot of things and Transport is one of those things.
We all know that since the 60s society / economy, whatever you want to call it was built around personal transport - cars mostly, and we all know it's gone too far, we just don't have the space or infrastructure and the inefficiency of everyone having their own car has caused the environment untold damage.
We need to change direction, getting millions of people to give up or even just reduce their use of cars is going to be unpopular, cars are frankly brilliant. A comfy, climate controlled vehicle that's just outside your house is waaay nicer then a cramped, too hot or too cold Bus or Train that probably isn't available exactly when you want, probably doesn't go exactly where you want it to, and will likely take longer.
Some measures have been taken to make it a bit better, better trains, better buses, a few cycle lanes etc, but they're few and far between.
IMHO a lot more measures have been taken to make it better by comparison, reduced speed limits, anti-congestion measures, increased taxation etc.
If we weren't skint, we could replace the sort of train network we lost after the Beeching Report, nationalise transport as a Public Service, not as a for-profit product etc, but despite some words, nothing much has come from it.
So, 15 min cities, aka 'the third option' instead of trying to replace personal transport, make it obsolete or less necessary maybe, everything within a short distance you can walk or cycle to. No more massive out-of-town stores, superhub Dr surgeries or even commuting. Sleep, Work and 'live' all within a small area. Village life on a grand scale. Sounds quite nice. I personally just don't trust anyone to use the carrot, I don't believe they'll put the work and money into making it nice, they'll do it with the stick. They may not build walls and gates you can see, they'll be financial ones.
Not to mention, high rises aside, this seems close to the 'streets in the sky' plan from the 1960s - Governments trying to create a artificial utopia which quickly turned to shit.
I personally just don't trust anyone to use the carrot, I don't believe they'll put the work and money into making it nice, they'll do it with the stick. They may not build walls and gates you can see, they'll be financial ones.
The problem is that in the short term, you need the stick. Partly because it can be used to fund better public or active transport, partly because if you try and put more buses on, they'll simply get stuck in all the traffic that is now everywhere all the time. We've reached a stage where we can;t maintain what we have (roads or rail) because everything is so busy all the time. As soon as you need to repair anything, the entire network grinds to a halt, there is no resilience or leeway in it any more.
But there's been no long-term planning, no strategy, no real gameplan. We (the country) are now building houses everywhere we can with desperate urgency to supply ever more houses but there's no thought gone into "where will these people go to school, where will they shop, how will they travel...?" because everyone is just whacking houses into any old field and the result is that everyone will drive everywhere.
That'll be fun on the roads... 🙄
15 minutes cities are great where they can work. West end of Glasgow for example. High housing density is the main thing so the population required to support services and shops is in a small area. Nothing new. When I lived there in the 1980s I could cycle to work in 15m and walk to either the city centre or Byres Rd within 15m. Minimart and pubs were 5 minutes walk. Great public transport as well.
Other areas where people have houses and gardens and low density housing it is more of a struggle. I am 20 minutes or more walk where I am now from anything apart from a corner shop. The car gets loads of use. Of course not being in the inner city also means we can use cars without congestion.
Incidentally - Glasgoew can block city centre through routes because of the foresight of 1960s city planners who built the M8 motorway to remove traffic from the surface streets through routes in the city. Pity they never built it all.
What’s the stick here?
A slight reduction in the thousands of miles of unrestricted roads to try and reduce gridlock in economically important areas? Isn’t a working road network and vibrant successful cities a carrot?
Or what about some successful residential areas no longer being a desert in terms of culture, services, food, trade? Aren’t new closer better amenities a carrot?
In the supermarket I overheard a lady talking about AI, then loitered to hear more.
She was saying that schools want children to use it so that they don’t have to learn and that they will be kept ignorant. I was thinking that the school was teaching them how to use large language models, because people are probably going to need to know how.
then she was was talking about how her son asked a LLM to write a synopsis of her. It was incomplete, so she made the assumption that it was filtering key information to keep people in the dark.
She kept saying “they” and “them” a lot.
15 minute cities about The Them controlling us. It ties in nicely with “ you will own nothing and be happy” thing
Things Fell Apart podcast is an interesting listen. It’s more about disinformation than conspiracy theories
We all know that since the 60s society / economy, whatever you want to call it was built around personal transport - cars mostly, and we all know it's gone too far, we just don't have the space or infrastructure and the inefficiency of everyone having their own car has caused the environment untold damage.
...Not to mention, this seems close to the 'streets in the sky' plan from the 1960s - Governments trying to create a artificial utopia which quickly turned to shit.
Except 'streets in the sky' was the attempt to make a city work WITH everyone driving cars, by rebuilding the city above the roads. It didn't work, although theres a degree to which you could argue that's exactly what the modern shopping mall is. It seems people really like car free spaces, and have no trouble walking long distances from their car to the shops. The other thing that comes to mind is CentreParks - again, a car free space where everything is within walking distance.
Yet when there are attempts to return our towns and villages to something more like that we have outrage. Suddenly people have to be able to stop directly outside every shop.
Some measures have been taken to make it a bit better, better trains, better buses, a few cycle lanes etc, but they're few and far between.
IMHO a lot more measures have been taken to make it better by comparison, reduced speed limits, anti-congestion measures, increased taxation etc.
So reduced speed limits are an anti congestion, anti pollution and safety measure. Motorways flow better at restricted speed (m25), cars produce fewer bad emissions (Birmingham), fewer people die (20mph)
Increased taxation is just not true - costs of motoring have gone up by less than costs of public transport in the last 10 years and even more significantly in the 10 years before that.
But regardless, theres a shitload of evidence that public transport vs car use isn't influence that much by costs. Even where public transport has been made free, car use doesn't drop massively (if public transport I s free people do use it more, but they don't stop driving). Yes, it should be cheaper, and driving/parking should be more expensive but that's not all you need to do to change behaviour. 
The UK has a history of using the stick, rather than the carrot when it comes to a lot of things and Transport is one of those things.
That, based on what's above, just doesn't seem to be the case. And regardless, research shows you NEED a lot of stick
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(22)00220-0/fulltext
So, 15 min cities, aka 'the third option' instead of trying to replace personal transport, make it obsolete or less necessary maybe, everything within a short distance you can walk or cycle to. No more massive out-of-town stores, superhub Dr surgeries or even commuting. Sleep, Work and 'live' all within a small area. Village life on a grand scale. Sounds quite nice. I personally just don't trust anyone to use the carrot, I don't believe they'll put the work and money into making it nice, they'll do it with the stick. They may not build walls and gates you can see, they'll be financial ones.
and that's where you conflate sensible planning aim [don't build car dependent cities, create mixed development, where there are workplaces and industry local to where people live] into a conspiracy theory - 'even commuting. Sleep work and live within a small area' which is not what anyone is actually suggesting or planning.
The key feature of the places that are implementing circulation plans (ie replanning access for private motor vehicles so that town centre roads are not used for through route] - London, Bath, Oxford - already have very walkable centres where shopping, leisure and workplaces are intermingled. They are easy to get around by walking cycling or public transport but people arent going to do that if it's not safe and comfortable because of the volume of motor vehicles.
15 minute places are ace though I can't think of many proper 15 minute cities. Lots of towns though.
Bourg Saint Maurice, on foot in 15 mins: swimming pool, cinema, mediateque, funiculaire to a ski resort, station, bus station (with busses to Tigne and Val), town hall, hospital, DIY store, Bike shop, ski and outdoor shops, several supermarkets, rapid car chargers (and a petrol station), nice walks, MTB trails, bike path, recycling centre.
As for all the other consiracy bollocks, well it's bollocks but some people seem to love it, it seems to have replaced religion or compliments it in some peoples heads.
Where I live has had roads closed and parking restricted. Its made it a much more pleasant place to live and you can see far more people on the streets walking around and just chilling
you also need to remember that car use is the minority of journeys in most cities but occupies the vast majority of space
Is that Leith, TJ ? There was an article in the Guardian yesterday or the day before, as you say, people friendly.
Theory: 15 minute cities.
Reality: Northstowe a new town with 2 schools, no shop, no doctors, no industrial buildings so no employment, 6ish years in and half the roads have recently had tarmac applied. The only shop is in my village that is surrounded by the new town.
Yes, this relates to phase 1 of the build, but I've been in this house for 17 years and there is little sign of any real infrastructure being built, aside from the 2 schools of course.
The BEST thing about Flat earthers, was the graffiti on the A1(M) where they spelled Earth wrong when spraying a sign with Flat Erath - Genius!
Most UK inner cities are like this tbh. I live in an area of Bristol where I am less than a 10 minute walk from supermarkets, pubs, doctors, schools, pharmacies, parks, hairdressers, you name it.
It's great! Need garlic for dinner tonight? Nip to Tesco, back in 10 minutes.
My only real gripe is that the bakery gets very busy on a saturday morning.
Absolutely agree about the newbuild estates though. They are popping up all round the outskirts of most towns and cities, and there appears to be a distinct lack of joined up thinking going on, plus a bare minimum spend by the housebuilding companies. It's going to be messy once all the houses are occupied.
Is that Leith, TJ ? There was an article in the Guardian yesterday or the day before, as you say, people friendly.
yes it is.
New builds can be done properly using planning gain. Granton waterfront is a huge development the size of a decent sized town. In order to get planning permission for all the new housing the builders have had to put in facilities - new schools, shopping, health centres parks etc etc
But then on the south of the city we have those depressing new build estates with nothing
If we weren't skint, we could replace the sort of train network we lost after the Beeching Report, nationalise transport as a Public Service, not as a for-profit product etc, but despite some words, nothing much has come from it.
rail is kind of really expensive to build though, and you have to buy peoples houses and knock them down and all that
but. are we still on local(ish) transport? a mahoosive increase in bus routes and busses to service them would be a better option and vaguely achievable in the foreseeable future, particularly in any given city of a moderate size. bus lanes. bus only roads. bus stops everywhere. bus stations. busses akimbo. bus madness.
probably a conspiracy in that already.
The "Jet Fuel Hoax" is an absolute belter. I think that planes are actually supposed to run on fresh air and the fuel tanks are just for the chemtrails.
I just lost fifteen points of IQ even reading that sentence.
The article on Leith, it intrigued me enough to have a virtual walk around the place on Google Earth.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2026/jan/27/leith-edinburgh-culinary-cultural-hub
I think Flat Earth is one of ones that appears at first to be harmless, but is in fact one of the the more dangerous ones.
There's a guy on YouTube, SciManDan who does a lot of Flat Earth debunking. This is a good recent video of his, explains why it's not harmless and why / how people get into it:
Absolutely agree about the newbuild estates though. They are popping up all round the outskirts of most towns and cities, and there appears to be a distinct lack of joined up thinking going on, plus a bare minimum spend by the housebuilding companies. It's going to be messy once all the houses are occupied.
There are a number of challenges in this area.
1) Desperation for new build means planning regs and requirements are relaxed a bit, anything to get houses built. So you can bang up identikit tat everywhere quickly with no provision for anything other than the basic accommodation and a road in and out. (doesn't help either that a lot of what is being built is low-density, the sort of 2-up, 2-down semi with a driveway that planners assume everyone wants but which makes it very difficult to achieve the population density for a truly workable 15-min city concept).
2) Bus companies (already stretched to breaking point) are unwilling to put in a bus route to a half-occupied estate cos there'll be very few people wanting to use it. They'd rather wait until it's full, then think about provision. The problem is that by the time it's full, everyone has already settled into their routine of driving everywhere for everything.
3) The same happens with shops - no-one wants to open any shops (or schools / GP / leisure centre etc) while the place is still being built and people are still moving in. So by the time the estate is built, there's little space for anything else and, as before, everyone has got used to driving everywhere for everything. So the few shops that do open are invariably the tacky little corner shop type places with inflated prices for everything.
So you've created this scenario where everyone drives everywhere, the local roads can't cope, the local buses get snarled up in all the congestion and then you need to try and undo it all by using the sticks (bus gates, fines, LTNs, School Streets, retrospective installation of cycle lanes...)