I actually found it funny and thought I would post it on here . If I posted it on the general thread , thought it might be moved here anyway . Honest
Nice one, Jasper. It’s quite amusing, I’ll give you. My golfing buddies are totally OTT about the new electric MG and constantly moaning that it wouldn’t suit them because they go to Cornwall every fortnight or France every couple of months, but I want to see what they say when their fuel goes up to £5 a litre and I’m tootling along paying £12 or less for 200+ miles!
I Took one for a test drive the other day , there is a dealership on my walk into work in Southampton . Trouble was , 10 minutes later , I wanted another drive …..
Yes - designed in the UK and built in China. And, no, it doesn’t have the Coronavirus (as my hilarious neighbour asked immediately) and, yes, it came on a filthy, dirty, oil burning car transporter, so it’s not THAT green from that point of view. If only we had our own vehicle industry in this country ..... But, to me, it’s a start - rather like my decision to try and buy only locally (or at least UK) grown veg, fruit and locally reared meat. We all try and do a little to help and who knows, maybe we’ll get somewhere!
Seriously . We TRY to get all our fruit and Veg from the Shop in Wimborne and Meat from the Butcher . Don't always succeed ,but ref the butchers in particular , you pay a little more , get a little less , but the Quality is not even comparable . Buy 4 rashers of bacon from the butchers and fry it , barely shrinks . Try that with an 8 rasher packet of Taste the Difference and you can SEE the difference ! As regards Taste , not even close ...
Individual actions and attitudes do have an effect. I have a chum whose 11 year old daughter shamed into changing his ways. I enjoyed seeing him squirm when see took him to task. He's going EV next change but getting him onto public transport is more of a struggle.
We’ve all said it ... if ONLY public transport in this country were more affordable and more reliable I hardly ever drove when I lived in Stockholm, New York or Brussels because the buses, trams and trains were totally reliable and you could get a monthly ticket for not a huge amount (and that included living outside the city and commuting in). Sure, if I lived in London I probably wouldn’t bother with a car, but out “in the sticks” one has no chance .... I’m sure HS2 will solve all of this though
Totally with you on that, Jasper. Local butchers bacon is magnificent compared to supermarket crap (he says, tucking into his bacon sarnie )
Understand the sticks, I lived in a South Chilterns village for years there's more unicorns than buses. We're living pretty centrally in The Hague so no car just bikes and affordable and reliable public transport. I was trying to convince my Indonesian wife we should go overland to Indonesia in September as much as possible by train. One of the routes was via Beijing so holding back on the planning for that whilst the coronavirus situation clarifies. We will be crossing Java from Jakarta to Bali by train and ferry stopping off at a few places on the way. Much more interesting than flying. This shows the routes unfortunately Beijing is a hub. seat61 is an excellent site https://www.seat61.com/SilkRoute.htm
Dave, here's a thought...how are the govt going to generate the tax revenue currently provided by fuel duty once ICE cars are no longer the mainstay of UK roads? We'll still need the infrastructure, we'll still need to maintain it etc but the roads themselves will have to be funded from elsewhere. My prediction on this is that car ownership will, at some point in the future, become very expensive, possibly using a toll model. The idea that fleets of autonomous cars will be sat in car parks waiting for somebody to use an app and request one is lovely and all that, but a: it only works in an urban model, and b: it would be have to be expensive in order for the fleet owner to make a profit so would start to be prohibitively expensive for normal people. Only the wealthy will be able to afford to own a car, only the wealthy will be able to fly and the rest of us will be left to use what decaying public transport exists. AI will also have taken lots of the jobs that we used to do, and only the wealthy can afford to travel. As food prices rise due to loss of agricultural land, and the population continues to grow, and climate change causes massive migration and overcrowding of habitable areas...etc My original thought is actually: Where is the incentive for people to make massive, sacrificial changes to their lifestyles now if their descendants are just going to be part of the the beaten down, poverty trapped proletariat that will never get a sniff of any of the benefits that the media tells us about? Capitalism is king, and doesn't exist to enrich the poor so as long as we maintain our current economic model of striving for profit, the bulk of the population will continue to be ****ed by the wealthy. Depressing as all that might be, it brings me back to why bother? and also what type of society is going to exist after the oppressed masses have got to the end of their tethers and actually, eaten the rich?
Funnily enough, that joke is taken seriously in the USA by more people than one might think. Let's say I've seen evidence of significant opinion. Then again, their grid is dirtier than the UK's. Still, what they don't get is the argument of the "long exhaust [US: tailpipe]." Street side pollution is killing our populations prematurely, and urban kids are growing up with inbuilt disease. It's measureable. Cars, buses and lorries all belch the toxins out wherever they go. Even the worst coal power plants are way more efficient at producing power than the vehicles. So if your EV gets its power purely from the dirtiest coal power station, 1] it is still way cleaner than a FFV, and 2] the pollution is shifted to the power plant and away from the street - the long tailpipe. And seeing as only 1-3% of electricity is generated by coal in the UK, for instance [Drax], the grid is definitely getting cleaner. So that joke [good cartoon] fails. It's all about mis-perception and direction, of course.
That's a cheerful outlook for the future. Have you got any recipes for the rich. Soylent green? This a part of the solution in The Hague, I haven't signed up yet but will do soon. https://felyx.com/nl/en/thehague
This cuts through to the very heart of the problem RJ. Strip the whole climate change debate back to the root causes and what do we find? When did large-scale environmental pollution first start? The Industrial Revolution. What was the main driver of the Industrial Revolution? Capitalism. Now we are all aware of the climate change arguments, what is the greatest obstacle in the path of slowing and stopping the problem? Short-term economic interests being put in front of long-term solutions. In other words, we’re back to capitalism again. I have come to the conclusion, since the election and the complete absence of any urgency from either Conservatives or Labour do get off their arses and DO SOMETHING that the only answer lies with Extinction Rebellion. The people who branded them a threat to society are absolutely right, but if they threaten the destruction of the capitalist system entirely then they are probably our only hope.
StJ, that looks a good scheme in The Hague with the scooters, but doesn't help rural populations. I also don't see a government in this country investing in something like that because profit... I do have a cook book for when it becomes necessary though, and I think my "Rich Roast" will go nicely with foraged greens
There's a number of cities with centers car free we were recently in Ghent one of the pioneers. I think Birmingham York and others are proposing similar https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190718-car-free-cities https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money...an-ban-cars-introduce-low-emission-zones.html
