bullitt:
I was born and bred in South London, living there through the 60s,70s,80s and 90s. The last 10 years of that time I saw a huge decline. The area I lived in went from a reasonably nice area with an average mix of cultures and social groups, to a complete (zb) hole! A run down dump, rife with drugs, gang culture, and with masses of illiterate and ignorant immigrants with absolutely no regard or understanding of our British way of life and with no intention of “integrating”! Even the London accent is disappearing!When I hear a young person from South London speak now, there is no South London accent. It has been replaced with this “street” accent. This fake, Caribbean, African, Asian blend…y`get me blud, innit?I got out in 2000 and im glad I did. London used to be a fantastic and vibrant place but now it seems to be a cultural soup kitchen run by the self serving, self regarding, liberal, PC elite who have absolutely NOTHING in common with, or interest in, the true, born and bred Londoners from the last century.
Sorry, this has nothing to do with a war on diesel, just me having a rant about the decline of my home City.
Ironically the 1960’s/70’s were more about respectful segregation.IE different ethnic groups preferred to live in their own respective areas and it all worked out mostly ok with the choice of mixing if/when we felt like it,including the workplace and keeping our distance if/when we didn’t.In which if you went into those areas you’d expect to be surrounded by the ‘real’ Caribbean or Asian language styles but proper estuary English in most of the rest including the outside counties like Essex and Kent etc. 
While what you’re describing is actually the results of what happened in areas which tried the large scale integration route and that was often the result in addition to the understandable issue of indigenous flight.Or even just flight from over development and further expansion of London regardless in the fringe and home counties areas.Which as kr says is still going on now even further out into what remains of the surrounding Counties.In which case the key point is all about numbers,distribution and how much population do they intend to put into the place and when do they intend to say enough.
While I’d guess that the issue of London being taken over by a Liberal Elite carrying out a social engineering experiment on a massive scale and increasingly acting like a self serving,self governing enclave.Seems to be the real agenda and this seems like just another example of it in the form of yet another local taxation rip off scam to fund any of its latest political crusades.Nothing to do with just the probably sensible idea of gradually phasing out diesel fuelled vehicles which could be done easily by national government policy with no need for hitting anyone with punitive taxation to do it.