Blair's government once again losing the plot...

[Provost Harrison]

Yeah, that sounds a highly plausible explanation. I am not too keen on the idea of the electric car - sure, they produce less pollution when you drive, but surely the generation and transmission of the power from power stations and through the grid would produce even more pollution! Unless we switch to all alternative power sources or nuclear then it just doesn't sound like a feasible idea. I think we should start to look at sources of fuel that are grown - eg, ethanol or oil...

[Dauphin]

Fuel cells!

[Odin]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp


Exactly. These moves will take years to implement, by which time we'll have far more energy-cell cars on the roads.

Electric cars means you either shift the pollution to where the power stations are (unpopular with the Greens), or build more nuclear power stations (unpopular with the Greens), or build more wind farms (unpopular with other groups). Therefore it's a forward-planning step to shift to new ways of reducing car use.

You can never please the Greens, they'd b*tch if thier ice cream was cold.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Dauphin
Fuel cells!

Hybrids do seem to be far more energy efficient and are a good idea...

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Odin


You can never please the Greens, they'd b*tch if thier ice cream was cold.

I've heard that some of the eco-nuts have launched court cases over wind power.

It seems the turbines are 'visual pollution' and they could be bad for birds who smack into the blades.

What it amounts to is that eco-nuts will not be happy til humans once again live in caves.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by MikeH


Isn't the whole point of this scheme that you pay to use the busy roads and the ones in the countryside say are free. So it shifts the cost to city drivers who have less excuse and away from the people who need them.

Of course you pay to use the busy roads. Only the people who really need to use them will use them, reducing congestion. It works.

[el freako]

Originally posted by reds4ever
Bullsh1t, those figures in the mid 80's were way out, the real figure was closer to 6 million.

The 3.4m figure I quoted was using the International Labour Organizations's definition of unemployment, which is 'has actively sought work within the last 4 weeks but been unable to find it', the rate was around 12% in 1983/84 (compared with 4.5% now)

6m would mean 20% unemployment in the 1980's, now unless you are actually going to include as unemployed people who don't actually look for jobs then 6m is a figure from cloud-cuckoo land!

[Dinner]

So a car owner pays registration taxes, gas taxes, toll booth taxes, and basically keeps a large portion of the national economy going yet this is deemed insufficient? I thought the purpose of all those other taxes was to pay for road construction and maintaince. If the government is so incompetitent that it spends the roads money on other things then punish the bums by voting them out of office but don't agree to pay still more taxes for services you''ve already paid trice over. Make them cut some other worthless program and deliver on the programs you value most.

[notyoueither]

You miss the point, Oerdin.

Many people want to see over taxation of autos to discourage their use.

[MikeH]

Well that's what we have now. We live on a tiny island and there just isn't the space to keep building more roads for all the potential traffic - nor can we cope with the increasing concentrations of pollution.

Realistically (although some car nuts might disagree they are in a fantasy world) the debate in the UK is on how to disuade car use whenever there's a viable alternative.

Even if the cars were run on totally clean energy there is still a huge environmental cost in construction/disposal of cars and we still don't enough space - congestion is a huge problem.

It's the stupid pointless journeys that need to be cut out more than anything. The quarter mile drive to the shops to buy milk instead of walking. Driving the kids down the road to school etc.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Oerdin
So a car owner pays registration taxes, gas taxes, toll booth taxes, and basically keeps a large portion of the national economy going yet this is deemed insufficient? I thought the purpose of all those other taxes was to pay for road construction and maintaince. If the government is so incompetitent that it spends the roads money on other things then punish the bums by voting them out of office but don't agree to pay still more taxes for services you''ve already paid trice over. Make them cut some other worthless program and deliver on the programs you value most.

Additional to nye's point. Its not incompetence in not spending money on roads and maintenance as the roads are well maintained and often road plans are redesigned to be more efficient (traffic light sequencing, roundabouts designs, speed restrictions, bypasses etc). The problem is that that alone is not keeping up with the growth in car use. The incompetence therefore is in not spending enough money on generating decent public transport alternatives.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Dauphin


Additional to nye's point. Its not incompetence in not spending money on roads and maintenance as the roads are well maintained and often road plans are redesigned to be more efficient (traffic light sequencing, roundabouts designs, speed restrictions, bypasses etc). The problem is that that alone is not keeping up with the growth in car use. The incompetence therefore is in not spending enough money on generating decent public transport alternatives.

Is not something that you can say exists in the uk, outside of a few cities. And then so many people cruise around in their cars that taking a bus takes a long time. The tube is expensive for what it is.

Thats why i cycle to work these days - a trip that would take me an hour in the car/bus, can be done in 30-40minutes.