Net Zero: The ultimate folly

RIDLEY Scott's dystopian masterpiece, Blade Runner, was set in 2019 - and now we have the real-life version in 2024.

- DONNA RACHEL

But this time it's not the Harrison Ford-type of Blade Runner who retires replicants - it's that daring band of Englishmen and women who are fighting against the London Mayor's Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) scheme.

ULEZ is seeing motorists driving older cars charged £12.50 a day for travelling within London (electric vehicles and newer cars are currently exempt).

Like the rebels who followed Wat Tyler to London to press their claims in the Peasants' Revolt, or Robin Hood's Merry Men, these plucky souls say they are reclaiming their rights in the only way open to people whose governments are deaf to their concerns - with direct action.

Dressed in balaclavas and hoodies, armed with little more than wire cutters, screwdrivers, and canisters of spray paint, more than 100 blade runners are busy disabling and dismantling the ULEZ road cameras as fast as they are being put up.

One of them, a dad in his 40s, told MailOnline: "We are going to take down every single one no matter what." He had already removed 34 himself, with hundreds more having been dismantled by fellow blade runners.

"Snipping, damaging with hammers, painting, disabling on a circuit level and removing. They are unbolted and they are snipped. The tools they use to install them are the ones we use to remove them," he said.