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Not Our Future: Alleged scammer behind conspiracy group against Oxford’s 15-minute city plan [1]
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Date: 2023-02
A conspiracy group that claims a new green initiative is a front for “everlasting surveillance” is led by an alleged scam artist whose company was dissolved after taking donations for an “audit” of Covid deaths that has not been published, openDemocracy can reveal.
Not Our Future (NOF) was founded by marketing and sales professional David Fleming, 57, last year “to fight for the survival of our way of life as we know it”. Its key target is Oxford City Council’s ‘15-minute city’ scheme, which states that all vital services should be no more than 15 minutes by foot or bicycle from your front door.
Oxford’s £6.5m plan will see six traffic filters placed across the city, with drivers who do not hold permits issued fines for driving through those areas at certain times of the day.
While the plan has its detractors, NOF appears to want to drum up further objections with a bizarre conspiracy theory that this is the beginning of an “everlasting system of surveillance”, designed to forcibly prevent people from travelling outside their assigned “zone”.
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The group is supported by high-profile right-wingers, including climate sceptic writer James Delingpole, ‘anti-woke’ activist Laurence Fox, archaeologist and GB News presenter Neil Oliver, and the Fairbrass brothers of Right Said Fred fame.
It is not the first time a business owned by Fleming has promoted a conspiracy theory. In 2020, he founded Covid19 Assembly Limited, an outfit that sought “to end all Covid-related restrictions forever”, claiming they were “based on unscientific information”.
In March 2021, Covid19 Assembly announced its plan for a “Covid death audit”, claiming “there is an increasing amount of evidence that at least some deaths have been misattributed [as Covid]”. Fronted by Covid sceptic pathologist Clare Craig, the audit would “investigate every death where possible” to determine the actual cause of death.
To carry out this work, the group asked for donations, saying: “All funds are gratefully received and will go towards helping us get back to normal.”
But in April last year, Covid19 Assembly was dissolved on Companies House, the UK’s official business registrar, without ever publishing an audit or filing any accounts.
Since then, people have taken to Twitter to ask what happened to the donations. One person wrote: “With the @C19Assembly dissolved, having never filed any accounts, their ‘Covid Death Audit’ fronted by @clarecraigpath looks increasingly like fraud.” Another asked: “Where is the death audit and where is the money?”
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oxford-15-minute-not-our-future-city-david-fleming-conspiracy-theory-covid-death-audit-fraud-scam/
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