The dinosaurs roaming the streets of London are legends of civil disobedience and common sense, and true champions of the people:

Not all heroes wear capes, some wear inflatable dinosaur costumes to block ULEZ cameras from identifying and fining non-compliant drivers.#ULEZ #SadiqKhan #NetZero #BladeRunners pic.twitter.com/0WmIrMVYCV

— Olivia Murray (@americaliv1) October 12, 2023

From a report out at MyLondon last week:

A trend has been spreading in London of ULEZ opponents using inflatable dinosaur suits to block the view of mobile camera vans. It has proved a light-hearted way of protesting the £12.50 a day clean air zone.

If you haven’t heard, the ULEZ system is an “eye-in-the-sky” surveillance network that identifies, tracks, and fines drivers of vehicles that aren’t compliant with current emissions standards—unless these are Ministry of Defense vehicles, or other vehicles used by government elites, which are exempt from the rules because their occupants are important and sacrifices are for the little people.

Paul Sullivan, the dinosaur in orange, said he came across the idea on social media, and was happy to get involved, given the public’s overwhelmingly negative response to the ULEZ system. From a News Shopper article out Monday:

We spoke to Paul Sullivan, the man behind the dinosaur costume, who explained that he noticed that the ULEZ expansion was causing great concern in his community and so decided to take action after it was implemented on August 29.

Paul, 36, told the News Shopper: ‘My biggest gripe that I had with it is when it was spoken about, the majority of people decided they didn’t want it expanded but the audacity of the mayor forced it out to the edges of Greater London. For the people that live on the outskirts or people have to drive into London, whether be that traders, self-employed, small businesses, or even carers for elderly family members – for the majority of people that £12.50 a day is just unachievable financially.’

To put it into perspective, one £12.50 fine per day would equate to more than $450 a month, which is a massive, and yes, “unachievable” bill to add in on top of everything else—people are already drowning, largely due to the fallout of big government policies, the last thing they can do, even if they wanted to, is budget in nearly five hundred dollars a month to fork over for government fines.

Now, I have to say this because I know stupid socialists love to co-opt the Robin Hood tale as a claim to the morality of socialism and I want to take the wind out of their sails early, but Robin Hood taking from the “rich” to give to the “poor” wasn’t an act of theft because in the story, the “rich” didn’t acquire the wealth through consensual and mutually-beneficial business dealings—it was a time of feudalism, not capitalism—instead, they wielded an aristocratic system and government against the little guy via exorbitant taxes and oppressive measures; Robin Hood was returning to the people what was forcefully and wrongfully seized from them.

However, the socialists’ concept of taking from the “rich” means stealing wealth from countless people who rightfully earned the money or property, to which they had a legitimate claim, and redistributing it to greedy little non-producing loafers. (To be fair, this argument is becoming less and less valid as crony capitalism proliferates and wealth comes via government corruption.)

But… Paul Sullivan and his gang are like the new-and-improved Robin Hood and his Merry Men, because they’re preventing the initial theft from taking place, all without breaking any laws.

Not all heroes wear bycockets, because some wear inflatable dinosaur costumes.

Image: Walter Crane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.