text:
Talk:London congestion charge/Archive 1

Collection of un-sectioned comments
Anecdotal I know, but I went into the CC zone last Monday, forgot to pay, called them a week later and they didn't want to fine me. So much for all those cameras!! 86.133.163.191 11:01, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

This is one of the best pages I have seen. Excellent use of photos. --grouse

Could somebody add a brief description of Central London and its zoning? Is it mainly residential, commercial, industrial, etc.? DanKeshet 01:48 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

I have added a short description. Do you think it is sufficient? Pcb21
 * It's good! :) Nevilley 14:55 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)
 * Thanks! DanKeshet 18:49 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

Congratulations on an amazingly well-written, informative and encyclopaedic article! Looking at its history, I see that it's a real collaborative project as well, so what more could we want? Just one minor thing: Shouldn't we explain who Ken Livingstone is when he is first mentioned in the text? --KF 19:07 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

 * I think the article could also be improved by including a map of the zone. I have written to Transport for London asking for permission to use one of theirs and am waiting to hear back. Also, there is now talk of expanding the zone (to the west, to include Kensington). If this talk continues as the charge settles down beyond the first week, we should probably add a "Future Developments" section which talks about this. --Pete\Pcb21

Liveness and metaphor ...

I know maybe this article should not be quite so "live", in the long term, but as things develop I thought it might be valuable to have these little updates on progress. Then once it has settled down (if ever!) we can go back and make a more settled version, and take out my (and others') little temporary weeblings. Oh of course if it doesn't ever settle down I will probably be living in a tent near the burnt out ruins of my office and eating dogs and rats, so it won't matter too much to me then. By the way, if there are still quotes or italics or whatever round the use of "bedded down" or whatever was said (if it's still there) I'm removing them, hope you don't mind - it's a perfectly servicable standard metaphor and I can't see why it would need exceptional treatment like a novelty or a piece of a foreign language. :) Nevilley 18:31 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

 * The CC situation has been consistent in my experience for several weeks now. So perhaps its time to re-consider the "Early Experience.." section. The current offering is upbeat. If I were to make changes they would be less positive... this is largely because my bus (damn that Central line still not reopening!) journey from Tottenham Court Road to Liverpool Street now takes longer than ever - this is due to roadworks rather than more traffic than ever. However I can't believe there is still a 20% reduction, certainly in this area of town. Unfortunately the CC is not in the press any more so I can't find any definitive thanks. Anyone fancy a stab at an update? Pcb21 17:34 Mar 27, 2003 (UTC)

---

Do they really send the images to Swansea to do the OCR? I would have thought they would do the OCR locally, then only send the details of the non-paying licence plates to Swansea for registered owner data. Otherwise, there's several 100s of camera video streams to send to Swansea: that's a lot of comms, even given dedicated dark fibre to Swansea. On the other hand, the non-payers data could be done accessed over a 2 Mbit link with no problems.

 * Mmmm, good point. I can't find any evidence either way, but what you say sounds likely. Nevilley 07:21 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)

Here are a couple of refs from the DVLA site. None of them seem to support the idea that all the raw image data goes to them. What do you think? Nevilley 07:33 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)

http://www.dvla.gov.uk/public/business_plan_2002/bp_innovation.htm London Congestion Charging Scheme 7.12. The Mayor of London has decided to proceed with the scheme with effect from February 2003. Under this scheme, we will provide details of vehicle keepers for vehicles identified in the central zone where the relevant charge has not been paid. We will also supply details to enable Transport for London to administer their charging exemption arrangements, for example, for disabled drivers.

http://www.dvla.gov.uk/public/Annual_report_02/ar_char7.htm London Congestion Charging Scheme 7.15 In February 2002 the Mayor of London announced his decision to proceed with the scheme to tackle chronic road congestion in central London with effect from February 2003. Under this scheme the Agency will provide details of vehicle keepers for vehicles identified in the central zone where the relevant charge has not been paid. DVLA will also supply details to enable Transport for London (TfL) to administer their charging exemption arrangements, for example, for disabled drivers.

7.16 Significant development work was undertaken during the reporting period to enable the Agency to supply information to support the scheme. It is the ultimate intention that TfL will provide reciprocal information to assist with improved accuracy of the Agency's database.

http://www.dvla.gov.uk/public/Annual_report_02/ar_char2.htm launched the Automatic Number Plate Reader (ANPR) system on the road in support of VED enforcement; developed systems and processes to support the introduction of congestion charging for vehicles within London;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/congestion/technology.shtml is also non-definitive but suggests raw video/image data does not go far, at least not as far as Swansea! I am about to change the article so that it fits in with the facts we've collectively unearthed (and they seem surprisingly hard to find - TfL and Capita don't appear to want to tell people exactly how things work!) and hopefully it won't be too vague. Pcb21/Pete

--

There was a (Time Out? Guardian?) article recently which suggests that Capita have two large Congestion Charge data centres in London (live and a backup), which suggests that processing is done locally. The Anome 09:34 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

Aha! Here's a definitive reference: from http://www.londontransport.co.uk/tfl/cc_fact_sheet_enforcement.shtml

Fair-use excerpts:
 * "The main hub site where the camera data arrives is located in central London."
 * "the main ANPR system is housed at the hub site"

and it confirms the existence of a back-up site. Also: "All payment data is stored at two data centres just outside the M25." so that's up to four data centres in all. The Anome 09:37 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

Well done you two, that's brilliant. It did seem daft if they were really shipping out all the raw video down the M4 (or maybe by train). btw I saw the mobile unit in Aldersgate St recently (see photo) and it was quite interesting - you could see inside where a huge monitor showed the camera view - a lot of number plates driving past, basically! :) Nevilley 09:58 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

-

A question: since (I believe) the charge applies to all vehicles moving within the zone, do they also check for cars exiting the zone? That way, they get two chances to capture the plate info, greatly increasing reliability. Also, do they try to capture both front plates and back plates (look forward, look back)? If they do both, this would give up to four chances for a successful capture of the plates of a car that both enters and exits, and opens the possibility for a lot of extra consistency-checking given the redundant data. The Anome 09:54 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

 * I am fairly sure they don't look at the front of the cars. This is (apparently) a big issue in the Data Protection world. See The Register article linked to in the article for a fuller discussion (which I haven't quite fathomed yet! Pcb21/Pete

Yep I am sure there are cameras pointing OUT, the mobile certainly was and the permanent installtion in Aldersgate St seems to be about 50/50 each way. Nev

Oops, sorry The Anome I managed to start editing just as you were. I will hold fire until you are happy as you've found the really good info! Pcb21/Pete

 * OK, I've stopped now. I guess our "I Spy" daily task is now to estimate the sight-lines of the CC cameras, to see if the speculation above is true. Does anyone have any definitive evidence, like pictures given as evidence for a fine? The Anome 10:05 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

 * I might have a look round there at lunchtime. Just to clarify, is your thesis that they might be trying to get front and back on the same car at the same time - that is, that cameras on pole X will be looking at Y Rd southbound side in TWO places, fore and aft?? I sort-of-doubt this, feeling it's more likely that they are doing Y rd north and southbound only and that it doesn't matter whether they are getting front or back off the car in one hit, because it is likely that some other camera will get the other. I suspect there must be quite a lot of redundancy on all but the shortest journeys. But, I'll stop speculating, and go and see what I can learn! :) Nevilley 10:10 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

 * PS while I took the mobile photo an old chap came up to me and said "I'd set it on fire if I was you." Wasn't entirely sure how to respond so grinned weakly. Nevilley

 * I removed Oslo from the list of congestion charged cities, as the toll plaza ring of Oslo has a completely different goal, namely to fund road construction that would otherwise be heavily delayed, rather than reduce traffic. There has, however, been a discussion on whether toll rates should be higher in rush hours, but this has not (yet) been implemented.

chrmb
 * Seems fair enough! :) Nevilley 21:12 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

Well done Pete for "early exp" rewrite! :) Nevilley 21:12 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

I notice the article mentions a five-pound fee and then (in parentheses) gives conversions to euros and dollars. It seems to me that this conversion will be out of date rather quickly as the conversion rates change. Is there a Wikipedia standard on references to monetary units? It would be nice to have a way to refer to quantities of money by including a year, so that instead of saying 5 British pounds, we can say "5 British pounds (2003)" or something similar and have it do conversions automatically. It will also help put currency references into proper historical perspective. Chadloder 21:14 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

 * Interesting point but how long will they take to become wildly inaccurate? At the moment they are just approximations anyway (certainly, the ones I did include roundings etc) and I think the intention is just to give foreign readers a flavour of the order of magnitude of the charge rather than trying to give them a precise figure. Nevilley 21:38 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

I removed the sentence that claimed Steven Norris had stopped promising to scrap the CC since the apparent success of the scheme. He  hasn't  stopped - I heard him call it a plague the other day - it's just that the CC isn't in the spotlight anymore Pcb21 16:28 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)

Good news! I have received permission from TfL to use one of their maps showing the zone. The image is embedded inside a PDF so I will have to spend a little time extricating it to a JPG/PNG before adding to article (Any experts at this feel free to email me so that it can be done more quickly) Pcb21 16:28 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)
 * If you give me the URI and page number/etc. of the map, I can extract it (very) easily.
 * James D. Forrester 04:10 May 9, 2003 (UTC)

 * Oh thanks for agreeing to do this, James. The pdf is at . It is very detailed so I'll leave it you to figure out the best way to display it. Pcb21 07:22 May 9, 2003 (UTC)

 * I can't believe TfL have agreed for it to come under the the GNU Free Documentation License, did they actually agree to that? -fonzy

 * I agree that it does seem a little unlikely; as such, I have made available the image in four different sizes and two different formats (PNG and JPG) on my personal server (located here), so access will be a little slow. Which one(s) should I upload? Also, I think we should wait to upload them, so as to shield Wikipedia from possible action, until we are sure that TfL actually did agree to the GFDL, and did understand what that meant.
 * James D. Forrester 16:58 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

 * I am away from my home PC at the moment and as such don't have access to the email exchange I had with TfL. Basically I explicitly asked ( a la boilerplate request form ) for GFDL permission. Their response mentions Wikipedia but not the GDFL specifically, IIRC. Tomorrow I will post the emails here and we can make a decision whether they bothered to understand the GDFL before saying yes. Incidentally, I believe the copyright situation for images is not the same as text. Where do maps come into this? Further, out of interest, why do you think TfL would be against the GFDL in this matter? Pcb21 13:30 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

As promised the emails re use of congestion charge maps:

--- My email ---

Dear Mr Livingstone,

Firstly please accept my apologies for bothering you with a relatively unimportant query. A copy of this email was originally sent to a more appropriate address (webmaster@tfl.gov.uk) but received no response. Please forward to a member of your team as you deem appropriate.

Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/) is a free online encyclopaedia that is collaboratively-edited by volunteers from around the world. The content of the encyclopaedia is entirely free for anyone with an internet connection to use and comes without time-limitations or advertisements.

The Wikipedia currently contains an article about the London Congestion Charge (it may be viewed at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge). The contributors believe the article is a balanced and informative article about the Charge. However we believe the article could be greatly improved if we included a map showing where the zone of operation. TfL produce such maps (e.g. at https://www.cclondon.com/WebCenterBrandedTR4/StaticPages/DetailMapCCZ.pdf ) and we would very much like to incorporate that or similar material designated by you into the article. We can only do so if you are willing to grant us permission to use it under terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. This means that viewers of the page will have the right to copy the map. You can read the text of the license in full at: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License. We believe a good article would also be beneficial to the aims of TfL and the Mayor's office, promoting public awareness of their aspirations and achievements.

This license also expressly protects authors "from not being considered responsible for modifications made by others" while ensuring that authors get credit for their work.

If you agree, we will credit you for your work in the resulting article's references section by stating that the article was based on your work and is used with permission. We do and will continue to provide a link to both Transport for London and the Congestion Charge homepages. Thank you for your time. Yours sincerely, Peter Bartlett, Wikipedia author

--- Their reply ---

Dear Mr Bartlett Transport for London hereby give permission for you to use our map of the congestion charging zone on the Wikipedia website and you may also use the congestion charging logo if needed. Please find attached a copy of the Congestion Charging Map, you will need Adobe Acrobat version 5 or higher to access this. If you have any questions, please contact us on 0845 900 1234 or visit our website www.cclondon.com. Thank you for contacting Transport for London.

Yours sincerely

MAGGI CORBY

Customer Services Manager

--- End of emails

So should we use the maps or not? Pcb21 20:12 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

 * YES. It's a very clear permission as I see it. It's great! Use the maps! :) Nevilley 21:04 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

 * OK, well, they're now uploaded to [[Media:London-CC-map-small.png]] and [[Media:London-CC-map-large.png]] and I've made a first stab at putting them in the article. Comments, anyone?
 * James D. Forrester 22:55 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

 * I think you've done a fantastic job, James. The small map in the article looks very good IMO. I added a couple of empty lines so that the 'Enforcement' header is below the map but other than couldn't think how to make it better! Pcb21 08:08 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

 * Thank you very much; it was really no problem, though. I'm happy to provide similar services for other articles; if anyone knows of one, please leave a message on my talk page pointing me towards it.
 * James D. Forrester 10:58 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

 * Will do, James.
 * Incidentially out of curiousity I googled for 'London Congestion Charge'. The wikipedia article comes 25th hit. Googling for ' "London Congestion Charge" ' (i.e. with the quotes) gets it in at 19. Not bad for a subject that has a lot of pages written about it!
 * Pcb21 12:41 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

 * I just re-did the Google search to see where the Wikipedia article comes -- Googling with the quotes now makes us the 5th hit, and we're the 6th hit without quotes! :) Arwel 11:03, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * Hey, hey. The competition from the big news websites must be fading away, and Wikipedia's star must still be rising. I added this page to Top_10_Google_hits,_L-Z. Pete 19:55, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

(to Village Pump) There's currently a (very minor) edit-war going on in the London congestion charge page about whether the caption on the final picture, which shows a one of the signs that indication one is leaving the charge scheme area, should read "'London Congestion Charge Zone Ends' sign", which is just a re-reading of the content of the picture, after all, or "You are now leaving the London Congestion Charge article", or some an otherwise similar wording of either. There's a vote going on on the talk page over whether it should be changed to the former from the latter after remaining as it was for many months; the primary charge against keeping the wording is that wikipedia should remain bereft of humour and human touches, as they smack of improfessionalism. Of course, the wording I've just used is somewhat POV, but we're getting tired of people editing it back and forth. Would anybody else like to weigh-in with their vote? James F. 16:49 18 May 2003 (UTC)

 * Professionalism is a *bad* thing, but even if it weren't, the British convention is to put humourous captions on all photos even in The Economist, newspapers, etc. While the issue is a wonderful one to help dolts self-identify, it should be resolved in your favour, especially for such a UK article.  "You are now leaving..." is the reader's POV, one for which there is little enough respect around here as it is.

I noticed that Patrick has twice changed the 'You are now leaving the Congestion Charge article' picture title to 'You are now leaving the Congestion Charge sign'. I think the former, allowing a little humour, is slightly better, as apparently does the originally writer, Nevilley, who reverted Patrick's initial change. But no point in having an edit war of something so trivial, so what is the majority opinion? Pcb21 16:57 16 May 2003 (UTC)
 * Apologies, have just read the history and it was actually fonzy who reverted back to 'sign' from 'article' (not Patrick a second time).

Votes for "sign":
 * fonzy
 * Patrick
 * Tarquin
 * AnonUser1
 * mav (this is just silly)

Votes for "article"  :
 * Nevilley
 * pcb21
 * James F.
 * AnonUser3, crikey another anonymous user, how remarkable
 * Martin

 * I can see that the article is ending, I do not need a message to tell me. Also Wikipedia is not a joke book. Altough it is not a very funny joke anyway.
 * I am an anon user so will now call myself: AnonUser2
 * Those last two sentences show that you appear to have missed the point. No it isn't supposed to be a laugh out loud joke. That sort of thing would actually be more inappropiate than what was actually there - a little witticism, almost like a little present to the reader who's got this. This sort of thing is extremely common in 'professional' publications. Pcb21 14:34 23 May 2003 (UTC)

 * Fonzy is correct in saying that it is not professional. No other encylopedia would do this. Also it is an image caption and should say what the image is. And when writing an enyclopedia you have to assume everyone is very stupid. If I was stupid I would still not know what that sign was. All I would know is that the article is finishing, which like the previous anonuser said is very very obvious.
 * Yes, but Wikipedia isn't "any other encyclopedia", it's different. What others do should not your, and does not my, life run. Wikipedia is different, it can be quirky, and we should work within that framework, not seek to destroy it and render it into, as Nevilley says (below), a po-faced tome of endless soliloquy voyaging on the sea of eternal ennui. Humour is a form of rhetoric that can be considered a very powerful tool of language; especially when trying to keep the interest of the reader up to the extent required to urge him (or her) to contribute. I find it difficult to believe that people will be discouraged from the project, in either a passive user capacity or active contributor role, by suchwise idle use of 'unprofessional' wordings. To remove all humour would be to start down the slippery slope that would, one day, rent the very fabric of Wikipedia and destroy its 'soul', and I see no especial reason in favour of doing so, given the justification merely that all the cool kids are doing it or somesuch nonsense.
 * James F. 12:06 17 May 2003 (UTC)
 * I don't think Wikipedia should be "quirky". Could we move this chunk of debate out of the vote list? -- Tarquin 08:35 19 May 2003 (UTC)
 * Quirky is perhaps the wrong word. But please remember Tarquin we are writing an encyclopedia in the hope that other humans will read it. Slipping in the occasional slightly humourous turn of phrase, whilst remaining entirely factual(!), is very common in publications whose 'professionalism' is undoubted (The Economist,The Daily Telegraph). Pcb21 14:34 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Just a couple of points:
 * 1) I don't know where it says no humour - even if it's not very funny - is allowed on Wikipedia. It's not even a joke, really, just a gentle way of leaving the article which might make someone smile a little, in which case, good.
 * 2) Please stop lambasting me with this term "professional". It is not having the desired result, believe me.
 * 3) "Although" is spelt thus. Fonzy and AnonUser1 both please note.
 * 4) The replacement caption proposed does not work. Think about it. It doesn't say you are now leaving anything anywhere in real life, so half-arsed attempts to modify the current caption are doomed to failure. The picture is actually self-captioning, if you think about it.

Good night. Nevilley 00:03 17 May 2003 (UTC)
 * 1) If we decide that no attempt at a tiny smile is ever allowed on Wikipedia it will be a very sad day. One of its delights is where people have allowed a tiny bit of humour to creep in, without spoiling the sense of the article. It adds rather than detracts.
 * 2) I would give you examples of lots of places where other people - not me - have written things which express precisely what is meant in a perfectly, er, professional way but also permit me a small smile at their way of saying it or at an interesting metaphor. However if I did so this list would undoubtedly be used by some humourless person as an index of articles urgently needing attention to make them into proper WikiNoHumour(TM) articles, so I won't.
 * 3) Professional - whatever it does mean (if anything) does not have to mean po-faced. Po-faced is boring and bad and pompous. Po-faced limits understanding and makes things grey and meaningless.
 * 4) The article has survived, without apparently causing major damage to human understanding of the charge, for months before this current intervention became "necessary".
 * 5) Do I sound pissed off? I am.
 * 6) Saying "Look" at me followed by "LOOK" is also not going to have the desired effect either.
 * 7) There are probably more important things on this entire encylopaedia to worry about. :)

Hi All, this is a really good article and a great example of collaborative editing. Everyone involved with writing, proof reading and copy editing this article should be proud of themselves. This is, however, being slightly tainted by the fact that the most recent 10-15 edits consist mainly of bickering over one unimportant word. A consensus on this needs to be reached after which the chosen word should be left alone. Until this consensus is reached could the word be left alone, filling the edit history with these minor reversions is pretty pointless. Please don't make the edit history here similar to the one at Communist state. Could I suggest that you throw yourselves upon the mercy of the Village pump? Advertise the vote there and get some outside input, the issue of whether small jokes like this are acceptable might have come up before and a precedent may already have been set. Whatever happens, one side is going to have to give in, whichever side it is, it would be nice if they could do so graciously. Personally, I have no interest in which is chosen, I don't think either option will harm the Wikipedia, all I would say is that if the 'article' option is chosen then sometime in the future someone who was not part of this debate will probably change it to the 'sign' option. For this reason it may be better to choose the 'sign' option but as I've siad, neither option will offend me. Please clear this up -- Ams80 10:05 18 May 2003 (UTC)

 * I changeed ti to: "London Congestion Charge Zone Ends Sign" which soem anon IP put, i think it sounds better as its describing teh acutal image better. -fonzy

 * BTW i do not appreciate, my name being indirectly put down in vote with out anyone telling me.

 * Sorry everyone that was not me, it was my "friend" who is with me at the moment. He was imitating me (very well actually, typos and all.), he wrote down my opinions while I was getting some food. He also did one of the things that was on my todo list :-s

I guess the final vote then is 5-4, good game good game. Those who've taken an interest in this article over the last three months or so will have noticed the extensive effort User:Nevilley took in improving this article... going out in his lunch break to take photos of signs and all. It's a shame that he has decided to take a break from the project (see his User page).. I know he has improved a hell of a lot of other pages too... Let's hope it wasn't because of this silly little word! Pcb21 14:34 23 May 2003 (UTC)

 * no vote is ever final ;-)

 * I tried for what might be a way of pleasing both sides - if anyone wants to revert me out of hand, do so :) Martin 22:52 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * (A six week belated reply) You got reverted out of hand pretty quick :-). Interestingly though with your vote and an admission of ballot-stuffing on the other side, it may well be that those in favour of "article" now carry the day... what happens when a vote contradicts policy? (If indeed we have a policy on the total exclusion of all levity from the 'pedia! (note: hyperbole) ) Pete 09:37, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Near the top of the article, it currently states:
 * "...entering, leaving or moving around within the Congestion Charge zone between 7 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., Monday to Friday. From 10:00 pm the charge is doubled to £10 (~?15, US$18): this is intended to cut the number of last-minute payments..."

This is slightly confusing, since the 10pm falls well outside the 7am-6:30pm mentioned in the preceding sentence. Thinking about it, I'm guessing that the point is that you can pay after you leave, as long as it's the same day; or, alternatively, that you are encouraged to pay more than a few hours in advance. Come to think of it, I just plain don't understand. Could somebody add a sentence to clarify please? - IMSoP 15:59, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * You were right first time, you can pay after you leave - before 10pm on day of travel = £5, before midnight = £10, within 14 days = £40,... I tend to pay mine whilst actually sitting in the zone in traffic jams so I don't forget. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 16:44, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying. - IMSoP 17:50, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I just spotted this new BBC story - it seems to have some more stats on the impact on shops etc which you might want to add to the article. fabiform | talk 19:54, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Changed "aim" to "stated aim". The intention being the (perhaps slightly pedantic) point that the real reason and stated reason could be different. For example the real reason could be revenue generation rather than to encourage cycling. --Mat 18:12, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Someone has recently altered all the image markup for this article, using a mass of divs and tags and so on. Now the images look ok, but aren't we supposed to use the wiki image markup for things like this? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:13, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * To be honest, I think the page looks a lot more professional now that the amendments to those images have been made.

 * I don't disagree, but that should be a site-wide decision on how the image markup gets translated into HTML, and not local to this page. Maybe this page should be pointed out to whoever controls the code that creates those ugly grey boxes? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:31, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * One thing I noticed while reading through the article is the line which reads -

 * There are fifty additional camera installations within the zone intended to increase the probability of catching vehicles that have entered the zone without being caught on entry or exit.

 * Wouldn't it make more sense if it was shortened to -

 * There are fifty additional camera installations within the zone intended to increase the probability of catching vehicles that have entered the zone without being caught.

 * ChicXulub 16:20, 31 Mar 2004 (GMT)

 * I will reword that point. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:31, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Ke4roh's edit of 6th August introduced a vast amount of text into the photo captions, much of it simplistic and unnecessary. I have read the article about captions to which Ke4roh refers and while I agree with much of what it says, I do not think it grants carte blanche to reword every caption in this way - the caption edits here, while endeavouring to improve the informational content, have diminished the article's good taste and common sense. As an ex-user with no real further interest in this article I will leave it to others to worry about this but the first one was more than I could tolerate, so I didn't. It didn't need an essay and it didn't need the patronising tone of voice, for example "Drivers at a roundabout can learn which places have congestion charges by reading the signs." That was over the top. 82.35.17.203 10:40, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * I support your edit and your motivations for it. Pcb21| Pete 16:48, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Scooter charges
I hear on the grapevine Ken is even considering starting to charge for scooters? Is that the case? I sold the car to get a scooter... what next??

When will he "scoot off"? (sorry)

Payment?
Can somebody please add to this page explaining how you go about paying for the charge? Cheers.

Public Oppinion
One thing i missed was some information on the public oppinion to the charge, otherwise great job! 137.226.135.138 10:23, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Cambridge Road User Charging
It was suggested by a recent edit that Cambridge had Road User Charging in 1993 using this document as evidence. In fact the only trial which took place was a demonstration in principle. The public were never made to pay a road user charge in Cambridge. --Richard Clegg 08:50, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I saw your made a full revert. Is it not worth mentioning at all then? I don't know either way so wanted to check. Pcb21 Pete 09:26, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Sure -- I wanted to mention it on the talk so you didn't think I was just being rude or dismissing it. There have been several such demonstrations in principle of road pricing.  I am not sure wether the one you mention was the first (I doubt it was, the subject was well studied by 1993 in academic circles though I cannot definively think of an earlier experiment off hand so I may be wrong).  I think the key thing is that they were all with volunteers taking part in an experiment (though I'm not aware of the exact details of that particular experiment).  If it was to be mentioned then perhaps a passing remark about "Experiments on the effectiveness or otherwise of road pricing schemes had been tried in other places." and give the reference. That might be more appropriate on road pricing though?  --Richard Clegg 09:58, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

 * A mention like that on road pricing sounds good to me. Pcb21 Pete 10:03, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Box 3 of the reference says vehicles were charged, and this is my recollection. It was a trial, but it was I think also a real working congestion charge. I left the Singapore 1998 date in just in case this was controversial. Stephen B Streater 10:44, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

 * [Oops -- fumbled thumbed editing there -- good job this is only the talk page. Sorry].  In studies I have seen a pool of volunteers were given money, had devices fitted to their car and then had some of the money they were given taken back. I think this is what is being referred to here. I worked briefly on computer modelling of congestion charging in Cambridge in 1995 and at no point was it ever mentioned to me that there was or had ever been a real charge in place. This doesn't mean it didn't happen of course. The Durham charge scheme was widely reported as the first in the UK (that was a year before London I think). If charge had been implemented on the public in Cambridge then I'm amazed it wasn't more widely reported (especially since I've attended many presentations about road charging). I'm certainly not an expert and it could be that it has somehow escaped my attention but to me the linked article seems to refer to a demonstration in principle not a trial to the public. --Richard Clegg 11:16, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I've moved the Cambridge mention to Road pricing, and added a mention of its experimental nature. It may need a bit of integration into the article. Stephen B Streater 18:05, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I am a year 11 doing coursework on the congestion charge, what are the positive economics with the charge in terms of busses and trains?????? <3 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.253.192.37 (talk) 11:34, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Tax or toll?
I see someone has added the category "Motoring tax in the UK". The authority claims it is a toll, not a tax (see dispute with embassies). Was this resolved? Stephen B Streater 08:22, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Unless I missed the resolution in the paper, it is still on-going, and worthy of a mention here. Pcb21 Pete 08:32, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Portal link
Is it typical to link to the London portal at the top of the page? Seems strange to me. -Joshuapaquin 03:06, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Criticisms of the charge - off topic?
In the "Criticisms of the charge" section of the article there are sections about the company that implements the charge (Capita). References are provided, but these make no reference to the charge. I've already deleted the paragraphs about Capita once. Surely they belong in the Capita Group article only, not here? Alex Sims 00:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I would say that it is perfectly valid to discuss the pedigree of a company with which TfL chooses to associate itself over the charge. -- de Facto (talk). 09:14, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 * It's not valid to discuss the pedigree of anything. That would be violation of NPOV. You should cite someone who relates Capita and its bad pedigree and the London Congestion Charge. It's not our job to build arguments (thats OR). And another thing (after re-reading the NPOV policy). It would be good if the criticism section could be eliminated and folded into the article. A separate section acts to marginalise the criticism. Alex Sims 11:37, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, if it's someone else's "synthesis", as this is, it is OK. Perhaps we need a section about the choice of 'provider' to put it in. -- de Facto (talk). 13:43, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

How do you pay?
I might have missed it in the article, but how does one pay for the toll? Is it through the internet, or are their physical places where you can pay the toll? Regards, -- Jeff3000 00:05, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Covered under "Unusual aspects" --Redaktor 22:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Back to at least good article status
As a former featured article it is a shame that this seems to have fallen so far behind. I have undertaken quite a bit of work on it today, but they are loads of unreferenced statements and bits of POV in there. I have also restructured the article to bring the various bits together to try and make it more coherent. Does anyone have any good sources for the rest of the fact tag? Regan123 15:10, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

 * OK. I have referenced the article now except for the 1970s scheme.  Does anyone have a reference for that? Regan123 03:03, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

 * By the date I am guessing it formed part of the Greater London Development Plan which according to is available in at least one library in every borough. MRSC • Talk 10:46, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Oops, not watching this for some reason. I will get along to a library in a few weeks. Thanks for the info.  Cheers, Regan123 17:19, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

GA review

 * GA review (see here for criteria)

 * 1) It is reasonably well written.
 * a (prose): b (MoS):
 * 1) It is factually accurate and verifiable.
 * a (references): b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR):
 * 1) It is broad in its coverage.
 * a (major aspects): b (focused):
 * 1) It follows the neutral point of view policy.
 * a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
 * 1) It is stable.
 * 2) It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
 * a (tagged and captioned): b (lack of images does not in itself exclude GA):  c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
 * 1) Overall:
 * a Pass/Fail:
 * a Pass/Fail:

It's still a bit messy, but seems to have stabilised. Bits of it still wander off topic slightly, and I won't sign it off as stable given the number of recent edits, but there's no recent signs of edit warring so it doesn't seem to be a concern. My only concern is that it doesn't properly discuss the western extension - a casual reader would be left unaware of the huge controversy this generated - but other than that I have no hesitation in passing it —  irides cent   (talk to me!)  20:00, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi and thanks for the review. I want to expand the Western Zone definitely which is my next plan to get this back to FA status.  What sections do you think wander off a bit as I would like to tighten the prose there as well.  Cheers, Regan123 20:13, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

 * If I were rewriting this, my concerns would be:
 * Not until quite far down the article is it actually explained what the CC is, and the lead paragraph is misleading; the CC isn't a charge for entering the zone - that would be a New York-style toll - but for being in the zone. A car entering NYC and staying for a week would only pay once, while leaving a car parked on the street in the CC zone would result in a nasty surprise when you got home
 * ✅ - i've rearranged the article. Hope it is still logical.
 * The "history" sections wanders a bit; while I do think it's necessary, to illustrate that road pricing isn't a wholly alien concept in England, it includes parts that would be more suited to further down (such as what's done with the money). Also, in discussing the Severn Crossing etc it leaves off the most obvious predecessor, the Durham City congestion charge.
 * ✅ - rewritten to be a bit more general, removed some minor commentary, added brief ref to Durham and created new income / expenditure section. It probably wanders a bit, but I hope it is more logical.
 * The map is out of date and doesn't include the western extension; the caption's also misleading as the zone boundary doesn't exactly follow the inner ring road
 * - fixed the caption but am not sure where to get a map from.
 * My personal opinion - and this is just an opinion - is that there's no point listing every road that constitutes the boundary. If they are going to be listed, the short roads that will never warrant an article probably shouldn't be redlinked, as it looks messy and also could encourage people to waste time trying to create stubs for them. (You of all people should be aware of what would happen were someone to write Edith Grove (A3220 road))
 * ✅ - These seem to have reduced a bit and I've summarised them a bit more.
 * Technical nerdy point - the statement about "residents of the zone receive a discount" is incorrect; the discount zone has different boundaries to the CC zone itself
 * ✅ - I have not defined the zone, but added references to it as I think it will end up like the original boundary lists.
 * If it can be sourced, I'd suggest adding to the "Effects" section a bit about the rise in false number plates and non-standard font plates, since this is one of the most visible effects of the charge.
 * ✅ partly on what I can source. Will continue to look for more info the dodgy fonts - have heard about this, but cannot find anything - even in the pounce on anything anti Ken Evening Standard.
 * As previously mentioned, the debate over the western extension ought to be covered in a lot more detail; at present one of the main criticisms - that it extended the discount to residents of London's wealthiest area while effectively cutting off the poorer half of Westminster from the rest of London - isn't addressed.
 * - I've added a bit more. I'm looking for sources on the rest. I'm doing this backwards - search for sources and then write from them, rather than the other way around.
 * All of these are fairly minor points though - it's good to see the article back on track
 * OK thanks. Will try and address these over the next few days if I get chance.Regan123 21:41, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

History- Toll Roads
I'd like to add the Mersey Tunnels, or possibly one of the articles about the specific tunnels, into the opening of the history section, to show that there's more than bridges that are tolled in the UK. However, I think adding it to the statement probably means too many examples, so which of the bridges do people think should be dropped, or should the status quo be held?Enlightened Bystander 20:51, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I've made it a bit more general. Hope you prefer this version, but as always I welcome comments. Regan123 (talk) 20:54, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * for a more relevant London-based example you could cite the Dulwich College estate's turnpike road that leads off the South Circular.Ephebi (talk) 11:50, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
 * ✅ I've added a link in the introduction. Regan123 (talk) 15:35, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

misleading statistics
The key "Effects" section was using partial statistics extracted from the annual reports. It also seemed to confuse congestion with traffic numbers. I found the 2007 report quite interesting (am I that sad?) so I've gone through it and reworked the section for accuracy. Also it would inform the political view if there was a figure that identified the %age of the mayor's income that is derived from this source. Does anyone know this? Ephebi (talk) 11:50, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm still looking for it. I was going to tabulate or graph the figures this weekend. Regan123 (talk) 12:05, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I've found the audited accounts in the TfL website, and noted the values in the Costs & expenditure section. Problem is, when you can get comparable figures from the comparison table (which would seem to have been extracted from the annual impacts monitoring report for 2007, page 122) they bear only a passing relationship to the statement of accounts (note 26)! They say these are provisional figures but even so they are way out in operational expenses & other costs. Ephebi (talk) 18:58, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I looked at them last night and couldn't make head nor tail of which is more accurate. I worry that we have differing figures though. I will try and look at some news sites or elsewhere to see if anyone has worked their way through them. Regan123 (talk) 22:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I looked at the official figures cited for both sets of numbers. I suspect the problem is three-fold - 1) the table is based on provisional figures before the Statement of Accounts was produced. 2) IME the table's figures were probably produced by some hapless oik who had to build up his figures from scratch, and so uses a different basis, and then has to perpetuate this format to measure trends. 3) the Accounts had to withstand an auditor, so had to include a more thorough set of expenses, financing & depreciation costs. In many businesses someone would have picked this up when some smart Alec inside tried to marry the working figures to the Accounts, but not here. Then again, as I have gone through the report I have also noticed a little bit of "wishful thinking" creep into the summaries, which makes me wonder how well they really want to understand the numbers. Ephebi (talk) 18:13, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Copy edit question
From the Longer term effects section: "The original zone is showing a 4% increase in congestion following expansion of the congestion charge and the introduction of extended to discounts to residents of the new zone and buffer zone."

Not sure what that's trying to say. --Malleus Fatuarum (talk) 16:50, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

 * The extended zone is far more residential than the original zone, so more people are eligible for the residents' discount, in addition, some areas just outside the extended zone have also been made eligible for the discount. Following the expansion of the zone, traffic congestion has increased by 4% in the area that was covered by the original zone.  David Underdown (talk) 17:25, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

 * Does this statement actually mean there are longer journey times? Technically congestion is being used here in the context of an average increase in "standard" journey times that were measured by TfL when compared to the time before the zone. However I've noticed that journalists have often got confused and use this same term to describe an increase in traffic volume (which may, or may not, result in delays to journey times). For that reason, my edits have ignored news reports & been based on the original reports which were precisely worded. Ephebi (talk) 17:59, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

title: Talk:London congestion charge/Archive 1


text:
Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis's expertise was in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West.

Lewis served as a soldier in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern history.

In 2007, Lewis was called "the West's leading interpreter of the Middle East". Others have said Lewis's approach is essentialist and generalizing to the Muslim world, as well as his tendency to restate hypotheses that were challenged by more recent research. On a political level, Lewis's detractors say he revived the image of the cultural inferiority of Islam and of emphasizing the dangers of jihad. His advice was frequently sought by neoconservative policymakers, including the Bush administration. His active support of the Iraq War and neoconservative ideals have since come under scrutiny.

Lewis was notable for his public debates with Edward Said, who said Lewis was a Zionist apologist and an Orientalist who "demeaned" Arabs, misrepresented Islam, and promoted Western imperialism, to which Lewis responded by saying Orientalism was a facet of humanism and that Said was politicizing the subject.

Lewis was also known for denying the Armenian Genocide. His argument that there was no evidence of a deliberate genocide carried out against the Armenian people by the Ottoman Empire is rejected by other historians. He said that the mass killings resulted from a mutual struggle between two nationalistic movements, a view that has been criticized as "ahistorical."

Family and personal life
Bernard Lewis was born on 31 May 1916 to middle-class British Jewish parents, Harry Lewis and the former Jane Levy, in Stoke Newington, London. He became interested in languages and history while preparing for his bar mitzvah. In 1947 he married Ruth Hélène Oppenhejm, with whom he had a daughter and a son. Their marriage was dissolved in 1974. Lewis became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1982.

Academic career
In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplôme des Études Sémitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History.

During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940–41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS, where he would remain for the next 25 years. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1963, Lewis was granted fellowship of the British Academy.

In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990.

In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East".

In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam.

Research
Lewis's influence extends beyond academia to the general public. He began his research career with the study of medieval Arab, especially Syrian, history. His first article, dedicated to professional guilds of medieval Islam, had been widely regarded as the most authoritative work on the subject for about thirty years. However, after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, scholars of Jewish origin found it more and more difficult to conduct archival and field research in Arab countries, where they were suspected of espionage. Therefore, Lewis switched to the study of the Ottoman Empire, while continuing to research Arab history through the Ottoman archives which had only recently been opened to Western researchers. A series of articles that Lewis published over the next several years revolutionized the history of the Middle East by giving a broad picture of Islamic society, including its government, economy, and demographics.

Lewis argued that the Middle East is currently backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from both culture and religion, as opposed to the post-colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment mainly due to the 19th-century European colonization. In his 1982 work Muslim Discovery of Europe, Lewis argues that Muslim societies could not keep pace with the West and that "Crusader successes were due in no small part to Muslim weakness." Further, he suggested that as early as the 11th century Islamic societies were decaying, primarily the byproduct of internal problems like "cultural arrogance," which was a barrier to creative borrowing, rather than external pressures like the Crusades.

In the wake of Soviet and Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel as a racist country, Lewis wrote a study of anti-Semitism, Semites and Anti-Semites (1986). In other works he argued Arab rage against Israel was disproportionate to other tragedies or injustices in the Muslim world, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and control of Muslim-majority land in Central Asia, the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian Civil War (1992–1998), and the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988).

In addition to his scholarly works, Lewis wrote several influential books accessible to the general public: The Arabs in History (1950), The Middle East and the West (1964), and The Middle East (1995). In the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the interest in Lewis's work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Three of his books were published after 9/11: What Went Wrong? (written before the attacks), which explored the reasons of the Muslim world's apprehension of (and sometimes outright hostility to) modernization; The Crisis of Islam; and Islam: The Religion and the People.

Abraham Udovitch described him as "certainly the most eminent and respected historian of the Arab world, of the Islamic world, of the Middle East and beyond".

Columbia University historian Richard Bulliet said that Bernard Lewis "looked down on modern Arabs." and suggested that he considers them "worthy only to a degree they follow a Western path." Edward Said called him a Zionist apologist and an orientalist who "demeaned" Arabs.

Armenian genocide
The first two editions of Lewis's The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961 and 1968) describe the Armenian genocide as "the terrible holocaust of 1915, when a million and a half Armenians perished". In later editions, this text is altered to "the terrible slaughter of 1915, when, according to estimates, more than a million Armenians perished, as well as an unknown number of Turks". In this passage, Lewis argues that the deaths were the result of a struggle for the same land between two competing nationalist movements.

The change in Lewis's textual description of the Armenian genocide and his signing of the petition against the Congressional resolution was controversial among some Armenian historians as well as journalists, who suggested that Lewis was engaging in historical negationism to serve his own political and personal interests.

Lewis called the label "genocide" the "Armenian version of this history" in a November 1993 interview with Le Monde, for which he faced a civil proceeding in a French court under the Gayssot Law. The prosecution failed because the court determined that the law did not apply to events before World War II. In a 1995 civil proceeding brought by three Armenian genocide survivors, a French court censured Lewis' remarks under Article 1382 of the Civil Code and fined him one franc, and ordering the publication of the judgment at Lewis' cost in Le Monde. The court ruled that while Lewis has the right to his views, their expression harmed a third party and that "it is only by hiding elements which go against his thesis that the defendant was able to state there was no 'serious proof' of the Armenian Genocide". Three other court cases against Bernard Lewis failed in the Paris tribunal, including one filed by the Armenian National Committee of France and two filed by Jacques Trémollet de Villers.

Lewis's views on the Armenian genocide were criticized by a number of historians and sociologists, among them Alain Finkielkraut, Yves Ternon, Richard G. Hovannisian, Robert Melson, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet.

Lewis did not deny that large numbers of murders took place, but he denied that they were a purposeful Young Turk government policy and therefore they should not be categorized as a genocide. In 2002, he argued for his denial stance:"This is a question of definition and nowadays the word 'genocide' is used very loosely even in cases where no bloodshed is involved at all and I can understand the annoyance of those who feel refused. But in this particular case, the point that was being made was that the massacre of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was the same as what happened to Jews in Nazi Germany and that is a downright falsehood. What happened to the Armenians was the result of a massive Armenian armed rebellion against the Turks, which began even before war broke out, and continued on a larger scale. Great numbers of Armenians, including members of the armed forces, deserted, crossed the frontier and joined the Russian forces invading Turkey. Armenian rebels actually seized the city of Van and held it for a while intending to hand it over to the invaders. There was guerilla warfare all over Anatolia. And it is what we nowadays call the National Movement of Armenians Against Turkey. The Turks certainly resorted to very ferocious methods in repelling it. There is clear evidence of a decision by the Turkish Government, to deport the Armenian population from the sensitive areas. Which meant naturally the whole of Anatolia. Not including the Arab provinces which were then still part of the Ottoman Empire. There is no evidence of a decision to massacre. On the contrary, there is considerable evidence of attempt to prevent it, which were not very successful. Yes there were tremendous massacres, the numbers are very uncertain but a million nay may well be likely. [and] The massacres were carried out by irregulars, by local villagers responding to what had been done to them and in number of other ways. But to make this, a parallel with the holocaust in Germany, you would have to assume the Jews of Germany had been engaged in an armed rebellion against the German state, collaborating with the allies against Germany. That in the deportation order the cities of Hamburg and Berlin were exempted, persons in the employment of state were exempted, and the deportation only applied to the Jews of Germany proper, so that when they got to Poland they were welcomed and sheltered by the Polish Jews. This seems to me a rather absurd parallel."

Lewis has been labelled a "genocide denier" by Stephen Zunes, Israel Charny, David B. MacDonald and the Armenian National Committee of America. Israeli historian Yair Auron suggested that "Lewis' stature provided a lofty cover for the Turkish national agenda of obfuscating academic research on the Armenian Genocide". Israel Charny wrote that Lewis's "seemingly scholarly concern ... of Armenians constituting a threat to the Turks as a rebellious force who together with the Russians threatened the Ottoman Empire, and the insistence that only a policy of deportations was executed, barely conceal the fact that the organized deportations constituted systematic mass murder". Charny compares the "logical structures" employed by Lewis in his denial of the genocide to those employed by Ernst Nolte in his Holocaust negationism. Lewis has also falsely implied that the Armenians had military and police forces at their disposal, whom they could have called upon, when, in reality, they had no such forces at all.

Views and influence on contemporary politics
In the mid-1960s, Lewis emerged as a commentator on the issues of the modern Middle East and his analysis of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the rise of militant Islam brought him publicity and aroused significant controversy. American historian Joel Beinin has called him "perhaps the most articulate and learned Zionist advocate in the North American Middle East academic community". Lewis's policy advice had particular weight thanks to this scholarly authority. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney remarked "in this new century, his wisdom is sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media".

A harsh critic of the Soviet Union, Lewis continued the liberal tradition in Islamic historical studies. Although his early Marxist views had a bearing on his first book The Origins of Ismailism, Lewis subsequently discarded Marxism. His later works are a reaction against the left-wing current of Third-worldism which came to be a significant current in Middle Eastern studies.

During his career Lewis developed ties with governments around the world: during her time as Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir assigned Lewis's articles as reading to her cabinet members, and during the presidency of George W. Bush, he advised administration members including Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bush himself. He was also close to King Hussein of Jordan and his brother, Prince Hassan bin Talal. He also had ties to the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, the Turkish military dictatorship led by Kenan Evren, and the Egyptian government of Anwar Sadat: he acted as a go-between between the Sadat administration and Israel in 1971 when he relayed a message to the Israeli government regarding the possibility of a peace agreement at the request of Sadat's spokesman Tahasin Bashir.

Lewis advocated closer Western ties with Israel and Turkey, which he saw as especially important in light of the extension of the Soviet influence in the Middle East. Modern Turkey holds a special place in Lewis's view of the region due to the country's efforts to become a part of the West. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Turkish Studies, an honor which is given "on the basis of generally recognized scholarly distinction and ... long and devoted service to the field of Turkish Studies."

Lewis views Christendom and Islam as civilizations that have been in perpetual collision since the advent of Islam in the 7th century. In his essay The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990), he argued that the struggle between the West and Islam was gathering strength. According to one source, this essay (and Lewis's 1990 Jefferson Lecture on which the article was based) first introduced the term "Islamic fundamentalism" to North America. This essay has been credited with coining the phrase "clash of civilizations", which received prominence in the eponymous book by Samuel Huntington. However, another source indicates that Lewis first used the phrase "clash of civilizations" at a 1957 meeting in Washington where it was recorded in the transcript.

In 1998, Lewis read in a London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi a declaration of war on the United States by Osama bin Laden. In his essay "A License to Kill", Lewis indicated he considered bin Laden's language as the "ideology of jihad" and warned that bin Laden would be a danger to the West. The essay was published after the Clinton administration and the US intelligence community had begun its hunt for bin Laden in Sudan and then in Afghanistan.

Some of his views have been likened to the Eurabia thesis, such as warning that Europe would turn Muslim by the end of the century, becoming "part of the Arab West, the Maghreb", and his 2007 pamphlet Europe and Islam said demographic changes could be realized "in the foreseeable future."

Jihad
Lewis writes of jihad as a distinct religious obligation, but suggests that it is a pity that people engaging in terrorist activities are not more aware of their own religion: "The fanatical warrior offering his victims the choice of the Koran or the sword is not only untrue, it is impossible. The alleged choice—conversion or death—is also, with rare and atypical exceptions, untrue. Muslim tolerance of unbelievers and misbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom until the rise of secularism in the 17th century.

Muslim fighters are commanded not to kill women, children, or the aged unless they attack first; not to torture or otherwise ill-treat prisoners; to give fair warnings of the opening of hostilities or their resumption after a truce; and to honor agreements. At no time did the classical jurists offer any approval or legitimacy to what we nowadays call terrorism. Nor indeed is there any evidence of the use of terrorism as it is practiced nowadays.

The emergence of the by now widespread terrorism practice of suicide bombing is a development of the 20th century. It has no antecedents in Islamic history, and no justification in the terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition."As'ad AbuKhalil, has criticized this view and stated: "Methodologically, [Lewis] insists that terrorism by individual Muslims should be considered Islamic terrorism, while terrorism by individual Jews or Christians is never considered Jewish or Christian terrorism."

He also criticised Lewis's understanding of Osama bin Laden, seeing Lewis's interpretation of bin Laden "as some kind of influential Muslim theologian" along the lines of classical theologians like Al-Ghazali, rather than "the terrorist fanatic that he is". AbuKhalil has also criticized the place of Islam in Lewis's worldview more generally, arguing that the most prominent feature of his work was its "theologocentrism" (borrowing a term from Maxime Rodinson)—that Lewis interprets all aspects of behavior among Muslims solely through the lens of Islamic theology, subsuming the study of Muslim peoples, their languages, the geographical areas where Muslims predominate, Islamic governments, the governments of Arab countries and Sharia under the label of "Islam".

Debates with Edward Said
Lewis was known for his literary debates with Edward Said, the Palestinian American literary theorist whose aim was to analyze and criticize Orientalist scholarship. Said, who was a professor at Columbia University, characterized Lewis's work as a prime example of Orientalism in his 1978 book Orientalism and in his later book Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (1981). Said asserted that the field of Orientalism was political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study, a form of racism, and a tool of imperialist domination. He further questioned the scientific neutrality of some leading Middle East scholars, including Lewis, on the Arab World. In an interview with Al-Ahram weekly, Said suggested that Lewis's knowledge of the Middle East was so biased that it could not be taken seriously and claimed "Bernard Lewis hasn't set foot in the Middle East, in the Arab world, for at least 40 years. He knows something about Turkey, I'm told, but he knows nothing about the Arab world." Said considered that Lewis treats Islam as a monolithic entity without the nuance of its plurality, internal dynamics, and historical complexities, and accused him of "demagogy and downright ignorance". In Covering Islam, Said argued that "Lewis simply cannot deal with the diversity of Muslim, much less human life, because it is closed to him as something foreign, radically different, and other," and he criticised Lewis's "inability to grant that the Islamic peoples are entitled to their own cultural, political, and historical practices, free from Lewis's calculated attempt to show that because they are not Western... they can't be good."

Rejecting the view that Western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as a facet of European humanism, independently of the past European imperial expansion. He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, yet not in an organized way, but long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; and that much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism. In his 1993 book Islam and the West, Lewis wrote "What imperial purpose was served by deciphering the ancient Egyptian language, for example, and then restoring to the Egyptians knowledge of and pride in their forgotten, ancient past?"

Furthermore, Lewis accused Said of politicizing the scientific study of the Middle East (and Arabic studies in particular); neglecting to critique the scholarly findings of the Orientalists; and giving "free rein" to his biases.

Stance on the Iraq War
In 2002, Lewis wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal regarding the buildup to the Iraq War entitled "Time for Toppling", where he stated his opinion that "a regime change may well be dangerous, but sometimes the dangers of inaction are greater than those of action". In 2007, Jacob Weisberg described Lewis as "perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq". Michael Hirsh attributed to Lewis the view that regime change in Iraq would provide a jolt that would "modernize the Middle East" and suggested that Lewis's allegedly 'orientalist' theories about "what went wrong" in the Middle East, and other writings, formed the intellectual basis of the push towards war in Iraq. Hirsch reported that Lewis had told him in an interview that he viewed the 11 September attacks as "the opening salvo of the final battle" between Western and Islamic civilisations: Lewis believed that a forceful response was necessary. In the run up to the Iraq War, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney several times: Hirsch quoted an unnamed official who was present at a number of these meetings, who summarised Lewis's view of Iraq as "Get on with it. Don't dither". Brent Scowcroft quoted Lewis as stating that he believed "that one of the things you've got to do to Arabs is hit them between the eyes with a big stick. They respect power". As'ad AbuKhalil has claimed that Lewis assured Cheney that American troops would be welcomed by Iraqis and Arabs, relying on the opinion of his colleague Fouad Ajami. Hirsch also drew parallels between the Bush administration's plans for post-invasion Iraq and Lewis's views, in particular his admiration for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's secularist and Westernising reforms in the new Republic of Turkey which emerged from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Writing in 2008, Lewis did not advocate imposing freedom and democracy on Islamic nations. "There are things you can't impose. Freedom, for example. Or democracy. Democracy is a very strong medicine which has to be administered to the patient in small, gradually increasing doses. Otherwise, you risk killing the patient. In the main, the Muslims have to do it themselves."

Ian Buruma, writing for The New Yorker in an article subtitled "The two Minds of Bernard Lewis", finds Lewis's stance on the war difficult to reconcile with Lewis's past statements cautioning democracy enforcement in the world at large. Buruma ultimately rejects suggestions by his peers that Lewis promotes war with Iraq to safeguard Israel, but instead concludes "perhaps he loves it [the Arab world] too much":

"It is a common phenomenon among Western students of the Orient to fall in love with a civilization. Such love often ends in bitter impatience when reality fails to conform to the ideal. The rage, in this instance, is that of the Western scholar. His beloved civilization is sick. And what would be more heartwarming to an old Orientalist than to see the greatest Western democracy cure the benighted Muslim? It is either that or something less charitable: if a final showdown between the great religions is indeed the inevitable result of a millennial clash, then we had better make sure that we win."

Hamid Dabashi, writing on 28 May 2018, in an article subtitled "On Bernard Lewis and 'his extraordinary capacity for getting everything wrong'", asked: "Just imagine: What sort of a person would spend a lifetime studying people he loathes? It is quite a bizarre proposition. But there you have it: the late Bernard Lewis did precisely that." Similarly, Richard Bulliet described Lewis as "...a person who does not like the people he is purporting to have expertise about...he doesn't respect them, he considers them to be good and worthy only to the degree they follow a Western path". According to As'ad AbuKhalil, "Lewis has poisoned the Middle East academic field more than any other Orientalist and his influence has been both academic and political. But there is a new generation of Middle East experts in the West who now see clearly the political agenda of Bernard Lewis. It was fully exposed in the Bush years."

Alleged nuclear threat from Iran
In 2006, Lewis wrote that Iran had been working on a nuclear weapon for fifteen years. In August 2006, in an article about whether the world can rely on the concept of mutual assured destruction as a deterrent in its dealings with Iran, Lewis wrote in The Wall Street Journal about the significance of 22 August 2006 in the Islamic calendar. The Iranian president had indicated he would respond by that date to U.S. demands regarding Iran's development of nuclear power. Lewis wrote that the date corresponded to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427, the day Muslims commemorate the night flight of Muhammad from Jerusalem to heaven and back. Lewis wrote that it would be "an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world". According to Lewis, mutual assured destruction is not an effective deterrent in the case of Iran, because of what Lewis describes as the Iranian leadership's "apocalyptic worldview" and the "suicide or martyrdom complex that plagues parts of the Islamic world today". Lewis's article received significant press coverage. However, the day passed without any incident.

Death
Bernard Lewis died on 19 May 2018 at the age of 101, at an assisted-living care facility in Voorhees Township, New Jersey, twelve days before his 102nd birthday. He is buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv.

Awards and honors

 * 1963: Elected as a Fellow of the British Academy
 * 1973: Elected to the American Philosophical Society
 * 1978: The Harvey Prize, from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, for "his profound insight into the life and mores of the peoples of the Middle East through his writings"
 * 1983: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
 * 1990: Selected for the Jefferson Lecture by the National Endowment for the Humanities
 * 1996: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, for The Middle East (Scribner)
 * 1999: National Jewish Book Award in the Israel category for The Multiple Identities of the Middle East
 * 2002: The Thomas Jefferson Medal, awarded by the American Philosophical Society
 * 2002: Atatürk International Peace Prize on grounds that he contributed extensively to history scholarship with his accurate analysis of Turkey's and in particular of Atatürk's positive impact on Middle Eastern history.
 * 2004: Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement
 * 2006: National Humanities Medal, from the National Endowment for the Humanities
 * 2007: Irving Kristol Award, from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
 * 2007: The Scholar-Statesman Award from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Bernard Lewis


text:
Doris Miller

Doris "Dorie" Miller (October 12, 1919 – November 24, 1943) was a U.S. Navy sailor who was the first Black recipient of the Navy Cross and a nominee for the Medal of Honor. As a mess attendant second class in the United States Navy, Miller helped carry wounded sailors to safety during the attack on Pearl Harbor. He then manned an anti-aircraft gun and, despite no prior training in gunnery, officially shot down one plane (according to Navy Department Records), but Miller and other eye witnesses claimed the ranges of four to six.

Miller received the Navy Cross from Admiral Chester Nimitz on May 27, 1942, but many sailors and naval officers believed that Miller's heroism deserved a Medal of Honor. Miller was nominated for a Medal of Honor by a congressman from Michigan and a Senator from New York, and the Black press enthusiastically campaigned for Miller to receive this decoration. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, who opposed Black sailors serving the United States in any combat role, recommended against Miller receiving the Medal of Honor. No Black sailor, soldier, or Marine was awarded the Medal of Honor between 1941 and 1945, and in 1996 Vernon J. Baker was the only Black veteran of World War II to be awarded this decoration while yet alive.

In June 1943, Miller was promoted to Cook Petty Officer, Third Class. In November 1943, Miller was killed in action when his ship, the escort carrier USS Liscome Bay, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine during the Battle of Makin in the Gilbert Islands.

The destroyer escort/Knox-class frigate USS Miller (reclassified as a frigate in June 1975), in service from 1973 to 1991, was named after him. On January 19, 2020, the Navy announced that a Gerald R. Ford-class nuclear powered aircraft carrier, CVN-81, would be named after Miller. The ship is scheduled to be laid down in 2026 and launched in 2029.

Early life and education
Miller was born in Waco, Texas, on October 12, 1919, to Connery and Henrietta Miller. He was named Doris, as the midwife who assisted his mother was convinced before his birth that the baby would be a girl. He was the third of four sons and helped around the house, cooked meals and did laundry, as well as worked on the family farm. He was a fullback on the football team at Waco's Alexander James Moore High School. He began attending the eighth grade on January 25, 1937, at age 17; he repeated the grade the following year because of poor performance, so he decided to drop out of school. He filled his time squirrel hunting with a .22 rifle and completed a correspondence course in taxidermy. He applied to join the Civilian Conservation Corps but was not accepted. At that time, he was 6 ft tall and weighed more than 200 lb. Miller worked on his father's farm until shortly before his 20th birthday.

Miller's nickname "Dorie" may have originated from a typographical error. He was nominated for recognition for his actions on December 7, 1941, and the Pittsburgh Courier released a story on March 14, 1942, which gave his name as "Dorie Miller". Since then, some writers have suggested that it was a "nickname to shipmates and friends".

Naval career
Miller enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a mess attendant third class at the Naval Recruiting Station in Dallas, Texas, for six years on September 16, 1939. Mess attendant was one of the few ratings open at the time to black sailors. He was transferred to the Naval Training Center, Naval Operating Base, Norfolk, Virginia, arriving on September 19. After training school, he was assigned to the ammunition ship USS Pyro (AE-1) (AE-1) and then transferred on January 2, 1940, to the Colorado-class battleship West Virginia (BB-48). It was on West Virginia where he started competition boxing, becoming the ship's heavyweight champion. In July, he was on temporary duty aboard USS Nevada (BB-36) (BB-36) at Secondary Battery Gunnery School. He returned to West Virginia on August 3. He advanced in rating to mess attendant second class on February 16, 1941.

Attack on Pearl Harbor

Miller woke up at 6 a.m. on December 7, 1941, aboard West Virginia. He served breakfast mess and was collecting laundry at 7:57 a.m. when planes from the JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Akagi fired the first of seven torpedoes that hit West Virginia. The "battle stations" alarm went off; Miller headed for his battle station, an anti-aircraft battery magazine amidships, only to discover that a torpedo had destroyed it.

He then went to "Times Square" on deck, a central spot aboard the ship where the fore-to-aft and port-to-starboard passageways crossed, reporting himself available for other duty and was assigned to help carry wounded sailors to places of greater safety. Lieutenant Commander Doir C. Johnson, the ship's communications officer, spotted Miller and saw his physical prowess, so he ordered him to accompany him to the conning tower on the flag bridge to assist in moving the ship's captain, Mervyn Bennion, who had a gaping wound in his abdomen where he had apparently been hit by shrapnel after the first Japanese attack. Miller and another sailor lifted the skipper but were unable to remove him from the bridge, so they carried him on a cot from his exposed position on the damaged bridge to a sheltered spot on the deck behind the conning tower where he remained during the second Japanese attack. Captain Bennion refused to leave his post, questioned his officers and men about the condition of the ship, and gave orders and instructions to crew members to defend the ship and fight. Unable to go to the deck below because of smoke and flames, he was carried up a ladder to the navigation bridge, where he died from blood loss despite the aid from a pharmacist mate. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

Lieutenant Frederic H. White had ordered Miller to help him and Ensign Victor Delano load the unmanned number 1 and number 2 Browning .50 caliber anti-aircraft machine guns aft of the conning tower. Miller was not familiar with the weapon, but White and Delano instructed him on how to operate it. Delano expected Miller to feed ammunition to one gun, but his attention was diverted and, when he looked again, Miller was firing one of the guns. White then loaded ammunition into both guns and assigned Miller the starboard gun.

Miller fired the gun until he ran out of ammunition, whereupon he was ordered by Lieutenant Claude V. Ricketts to help carry the captain up to the navigation bridge out of the thick oily smoke generated by the many fires on and around the ship; Miller was officially credited with downing at least two hostile planes. "I think I got one of those Jap planes. They were diving pretty close to us," he said later. Japanese aircraft eventually dropped two armor-piercing bombs through the deck of the battleship and launched five 18-inch (460 mm) torpedoes into her port side. When the attack finally lessened, Miller helped move injured sailors through oil and water to the quarterdeck, thereby "unquestionably saving the lives of a number of people who might otherwise have been lost".

The ship was heavily damaged by bombs, torpedoes, and resulting explosions and fires, but the crew prevented her from capsizing by counter-flooding compartments. Instead, West Virginia sank to the harbor bottom in shallow water as her surviving crew abandoned ship, including Miller; the ship was later raised and restored for continued service in the war. On West Virginia, 132 men were killed and 52 were wounded from the Japanese attack. On December 13, Miller reported to the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35) (CA-35).

Commendation
On January 1, 1942, the Navy released a list of commendations for actions on December 7. Among them was a single commendation for an unnamed black man. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had asked President Franklin D. Roosevelt to award the Distinguished Service Cross to the unknown black sailor. The Navy Board of Awards received a recommendation that the sailor be considered for recognition. On March 12, an Associated Press story named Miller as the sailor, citing the African-American newspaper Pittsburgh Courier; additional news reports credited Lawrence D. Reddick with learning the name through correspondence with the Navy Department, with these news reports becoming influential aspects in giving the Double V campaign greater legitimacy In the following days, Senator James M. Mead introduced a Senate bill [] to award Miller the Medal of Honor, and Representative John Dingell Sr. introduced a matching House bill [].

Miller was recognized as one of the "first U.S. heroes of World War II". He was commended in a letter signed by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox on April 1, and the next day CBS Radio broadcast an episode of the series They Live Forever, which dramatized Miller's actions. Black organizations began a campaign to honor Miller with additional recognition. On April 4, the Pittsburgh Courier urged readers to write to members of the congressional Naval Affairs Committee in support of awarding the Medal of Honor to Miller. The All-Southern Negro Youth Conference launched a signature campaign on April 17–19. On May 10, the National Negro Congress denounced Knox's recommendation against awarding Miller the Medal of Honor. On May 11 President Roosevelt approved the Navy Cross for Miller.

On May 27 Miller was personally recognized by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6) (CV-6) at anchor in Pearl Harbor. Nimitz presented Miller with the Navy Cross, at the time the third-highest Navy award for gallantry during combat, after the Medal of Honor and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal; on August 7, 1942, Congress revised the order of precedence, placing the Navy Cross above the Distinguished Service Medal in precedence. Nimitz said of Miller's commendation, "This marks the first time in this conflict that such high tribute has been made in the Pacific Fleet to a member of his race and I'm sure that the future will see others similarly honored for brave acts."

Return to United States and the war

Miller advanced in rating to mess attendant first class on June 1, 1942. On June 27 the Pittsburgh Courier called for him to be allowed to return home for a war bond tour along with white war heroes. On July 25 the Pittsburgh Courier ran a photo of Miller with the caption "He Fought... Keeps Mop" next to a photo of a white survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack receiving an officer's commission. The photo caption stated that the Navy felt that Miller was "too important waiting tables in the Pacific" for him to return to the United States.

On November 23 Miller returned to Pearl Harbor and was ordered on a war bond tour while still attached to Indianapolis. In December, and January 1943, he gave presentations in Oakland, California, in his hometown of Waco, in Dallas, and to the first graduating class of black sailors from Great Lakes Naval Training Station. He was featured on the 1943 Navy recruiting poster "above and beyond the call of duty", designed by David Stone Martin.

In February 1943 "mess attendant" was changed to the "steward's mate" rate title by the Navy. On May 15 Miller reported to Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton, Washington, assigned to the newly constructed escort carrier USS Liscome Bay (CVE-56) (CVE-56). He was advanced in rating to cook third class on June 1. The ship had a crew of 960 men, and its primary functions were to serve as a convoy escort, to provide aircraft for close air support during amphibious landing operations, and to ferry aircraft to naval bases and fleet carriers at sea. The Liscome Bay was the flagship for Carrier Division 24 which was under the command of Rear Admiral Henry M. Mullinnix. On October 22, Liscome Bay set sail for Pearl Harbor.

Death
After training in Hawaiian waters, Liscome Bay left Pearl Harbor on November 10, 1943, to join the Northern Task Force, Task Group 52. Miller's carrier took part in the Battle of Makin (invasion of Makin by units of the Army's 165th Regimental Combat Team, 27th Infantry Division) which had begun on November 20. On November 24, the day after Makin was captured by American soldiers and the eve of Thanksgiving (the cooks had broken out the frozen turkeys from Pearl Harbor), Liscome Bay was cruising near Butaritari (Makin Atoll's main island) when it was struck just before dawn in the stern by a torpedo from the JAPANESE SUBMARINE I-175 (which fired four torpedoes at Task Group 5312). The carrier's own torpedoes and aircraft bombs exploded, causing the ship to sink in 23 minutes. There were 272 survivors from the crew of over 900, but Miller was among the two-thirds of the crew listed as "presumed dead". His parents were informed that he was missing in action on December 7, 1943. Liscome Bay was the only ship lost in the Gilbert Islands operation.

A memorial service was held for Miller on April 30, 1944, at the Second Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, sponsored by the Victory Club. On May 28, a granite marker was dedicated at Moore High School in Waco to honor him. Miller was officially declared dead by the Navy on November 25, 1944, a year and a day after the loss of Liscome Bay. One of his brothers also served during World War II.

Military awards
Miller's decorations and awards:

Navy Cross citation
"For distinguished devotion to duty, extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. While at the side of his Captain on the bridge, Miller, despite enemy strafing and bombing and in the face of a serious fire, assisted in moving his Captain, who had been mortally wounded, to a place of greater safety, and later manned and operated a machine gun directed at enemy Japanese attacking aircraft until ordered to leave the bridge."

Legacy

 * Memorials
 * Doris Miller Memorial, a public art installation on the banks of the Brazos River in Waco. A nine-foot bronze statue was unveiled on December 7, 2017.
 * A bronze commemorative plaque at the Doris Miller Park housing community located near Naval Station Pearl Harbor; organized by the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and dedicated on October 12, 1991, which would have been Miller's 72nd birthday.
 * Plaque in the Memorial Courtyard at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas.

 * Schools
 * Dorie Miller Intermediate School, Ennis, Texas
 * Doris Miller Elementary School, San Antonio, Texas (opened 1947)
 * Doris Miller Elementary School, San Diego, California (dedicated April 28, 1976)
 * Dorie Miller Elementary School, Waco, Texas (closed 2012)
 * Doris Miller Middle School, San Marcos, Texas

 * Community-related
 * Bledsoe–Miller Community Center, recreation facility in Waco, Texas, jointly named for Jules Bledsoe
 * Dorie Miller Community Center, recreation facility in San Antonio, Texas
 * Dorie Miller Drive, Champaign, Illinois
 * Dorie Miller Homes, a housing community in Gary, Indiana
 * Dorie Miller Houses, a housing cooperative complex built in 1953 in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, New York
 * Dorie Miller Park, Lewisburg, West Virginia
 * Doris Miller Auditorium, Rosewood Park, Austin, Texas
 * Doris Miller Community Center, Newport News, Virginia
 * Doris Miller Family YMCA, Waco, Texas
 * Doris Miller Loop, Honolulu, Hawaii, with a monument located at north end of street
 * Doris Miller Memorial Park, a cemetery on the border of Waco and Bellmead, Texas
 * Dorie Miller Recreation Center, San Antonio, Texas

 * Military-related
 * USS Miller (FF-1091), a destroyer escort (reclassified as a Knox-class frigate on June 30, 1975) commissioned on June 30, 1973; decommissioned on October 15, 1991.
 * The Bachelor Enlisted Quarters at Naval Station Great Lakes was dedicated to Miller on December 7, 1971.
 * Dorie Miller Galley, the main galley for Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti
 * Doris Miller Dining Hall, Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, Illinois
 * Doris Miller Dining Hall, Naval Air Station Chase Field, Beeville, Texas
 * Doris Miller Park, a housing community for military personnel in Honolulu
 * USS Doris Miller (CVN-81), a future Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier, announced on January 19, 2020.

 * Veteran-related
 * Dorie Miller Chapter 14 – Disabled American Veterans chapter in Washington, D.C.
 * Dorie Miller Post 546 – American Legion post in Racine, Wisconsin
 * Dorie Miller Post 915 – American Legion post in Chicago
 * Dorie E. Miller Post 817 – American Legion post in Beaumont, Texas
 * Doris Miller Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Waco, Texas; includes monument and a road named Doris Miller Circle.

 * Radio
 * In 1942, Miller's actions were dramatized on the CBS Radio series They Live Forever.
 * The April 25, 1944, episode of the CBS Radio series Columbia Presents Corwin, titled "Dorie Got a Medal", starred Canada Lee and Josh White in Norman Corwin's "jazz-and-jive opera" about Miller.
 * On the December 9, 1945, broadcast of his ABC radio series Orson Welles Commentaries, Orson Welles presented a tribute to Doris Miller and spoke to his father, Connery Miller. Broadcast from the U. S. Naval Training and Distribution Center on Treasure Island, San Francisco, the program announced the naming of three theater complexes to honor three World War II heroes killed in action. Theater One was named for Doris Miller; the other two theaters were named for Medal of Honor recipients John Basilone and Edward O'Hare.

 * Film & television
 * Although he is not identified by name, Miller is portrayed by Elven Havard in the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!.
 * In Michael Bay's 2001 film Pearl Harbor, Miller is portrayed by actor Cuba Gooding Jr.
 * Miller being awarded the Navy Cross was depicted in the 2019 film Midway.

 * Other

 * Founded in 1943, the Dorie Miller Foundation began giving an annual award in 1947 to an individual or group considered outstanding in the field of race relations. Recipients included Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, and Eleanor Roosevelt. The award later became the American Heritage & Freedom Award.
 * The Gwendolyn Brooks poem Negro Hero (1945) is narrated from Miller's point of view.
 * In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante included Miller on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
 * Miller was honored by the United States Postal Service as one of four Distinguished Sailors, with a 44-cent commemorative stamp issued on February 4, 2010. Also honored were William Sims, Arleigh Burke, and John McCloy.
 * Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson proposed bills in 2016, 2017, and 2020 that would have authorized the Medal of Honor for Miller. None of these bills were voted upon by the House of Representatives.

title: Doris Miller


text: Talk:Daniel Johns

title: Talk:Daniel Johns