The Autoshite Mass-Debating Society

[ashmicro]

Well said Hirst.

 

Greenies don't like it when you mention overpopulation, yet even one of their heroes has mentioned it (David Attenborough).

 

Old cars and emissions. I told some rice-botherer (at a party) that I had a 10 year old Rover. "Ohh, you'll have to get rid of that. It'll kill the baby Jesus (or something). Horseshit. My car is obsessively maintained, and at the time it was manufactured it was one of only 2 engines that could pass a UK emissions test with NO cat (which don't really work anyway). In fact when I had the decat pipe on the car I got Chris Shankley to run it on his gasalyser, and indeed it was WELL under. (Shankley owns a tyre and exhaust place. I mentioned his name as everyone round here knows him)

 

She actually said I was "a bit of a Fascist". These days a Fascist is anyone who is winning an argument with a liberal.

 

I neglected to tell the soya-muncher we'd been dropped off at the party in an AMG Merc S Class

[dollywobbler]

I'm seriously green. My commute is on foot, from the bedroom to our dining room/office. That's even greener than these do-gooders on bicycles as I need far fewer calories to get to work and there's no manufacturing pollution from building a bicycle. Yet I'm sure enviro-lovers would get shirty with me for owning four vehicles, one of which is OMG WURST THAN NOO-CLEAR 4x4. That said, they'd hate me for DESTROYING THE COUNTRYSIDE by travelling down perfectly legal Byways in it as well, ignoring how farming to feed us millions is what's really destroyed the countryside.

[worldofceri]

The problem with the environmental argument is that conjecture, speculation, opinions and theories are all presented as facts.

 

For example, it is not a proven fact that we have a finite supply of fossil fuels.

 

I read recently that the Russians have for many years worked on the basis that the planet is, actually, still producing fossil fuels. That they are apparently more successful than Europeans and Americans at predicting where new reserves can be found may or may not be coincidence.

[catsinthewelder]

I could catch a bus to work from literally outside my door to 30yds from my work, clean modern bus's and a 70p fare. I've used it once in 2 years as it takes 20 mins and I can cycle it in 10. Also I work late shifts most of the time and the bus's predictably stop at 6. It is handy for Ms C though as we try not to drive into town unless we're carrying heavy stuff.

 

We use trains if they make sense for the journey, I went to a funeral in South London last year by train as I didn't feel up to driving there and back in a day and it didn't cost much more in real terms. I wouldn't have arrived as fresh if I'd been driving down on unfamiliar roads either.

[MrDuke]

In all honesty, does it even matter whether or not our cars are more/less polluting? We'll continue to use them as long as the law allows in any case.

I used to have numerous smart-arse responses lined up to use whenever a pseudo-green DM-reader questioned my choices, but to be honest I'd probably just tell them that it was none of their damn business. As blinkered as they are, they wouldn't think any differently even if I did win the argument.

[Pete-M]

Even if I departed from the Claim family residence on The Wirral, which is the same county as Huyton

 

It's not you know.... Same country, yes.

 

I do almost as many miles on trains as I do in cars at the moment, and on some trips there's not much in it.

Liverpool > Cardiff takes me 3h20 by car and 4h00 by train.

Liverpool > Birmingham by car 1h40, same by train.

Liverpool > London 3h20 by car, 2h15 by train. (but it takes 25 mins to get to the train station...)

Then there's the exceptions.

Liverpool > Hartlepool by car 2h30, 5h00 by train.

 

And the cost. An off-peak return bought on the day from Cardiff to Liverpool is £79, so to match that for a return trip you need to be getting 40+ mpg from a petrol or diesel.

[messerschmitt owner]

1. 1357

(prev. day) 1528

(prev. day) 1 01:31 FootpathBusFootpathTrainFootpath

2. 1450

(prev. day) 1600

(prev. day) 1 01:10 FootpathBusFootpathTrainFootpath

3. 1657

(prev. day) 1826

(prev. day) 1 01:29 FootpathBusFootpathTrainFootpath

4. 0608 0731 1 01:23 FootpathBusCoachFootpath

 

There you go, the commute from what will hopefully be my new house to my job to get there by 6-30am.

 

Public transport = fail!

 

three arrive the day before and the only option is to get to work over an hour late.

[Luxobarges_Are_Us]

Public transport in the UK is a complete joke.

 

Unless the train is on a route to/from London, it's going to be a miserable and slow experience, and most of the time they're quite expensive, too (anytime return Sheffield to Oxford is 137 pounds...for a distance of as many miles!). However, the worst thing about trains is that suburban networks are effectively inexistent. Try a Google search for 'Cercanias'. 12 metropolitan areas across Spain benefit from a comprehensive system of frequent, affordable, decent quality suburban trains, operated by the same organisation as the one running the intercities, whereas here you'd have to find change for a bus that departs from the bus station, which is 800 metres away from the train station...and the bus only turns up every half an hour and only until 6pm.

 

Which nicely leads us to the next part of the rant, i.e. urban public transport. Which is also SHITE. Most of the time, routes go from/to, as opposed to across, the city centre, meaning that you're almost guaranteed to have to change buses in order to travel between any two points outside of the centre. Then you find that the routes are operated by two separate companies, so you have to buy two expensive single tickets or an even pricier all-operator one. Which, in turn, means that the only people who bother with this urban transit 'system' are the pensioners who have unlimited time and get free travel, which just reinforces the current state of affairs, since operators have little incentive to actually study the market and offer a coherent product...

[catsinthewelder]

Well yes public transport is not much use to get you to shift work, especially in the sticks. Would you fancy the govenment subsidies required to pay for providing services to suit everyone?

[Cavcraft]

Trains are pretty muck ok, I quite like a journey on them to pick up shite. Can't rely on pub(l)ic transport for work though despite living in a fairly big city and working in a fairly large town due to my shifts and the location of works.

[Luxobarges_Are_Us]

Well yes public transport is not much use to get you to shift work, especially in the sticks. Would you fancy the govenment subsidies required to pay for providing services to suit everyone?

 

You've answered your own question there. The fuel tax and VAT on fuel tax effectively work as subsidies for public transport by artificially raising the cost of motoring. Then we pay for infrastructure for trams, trains etc and, on top of that, for the OAP travel passes, student travel for the kids who use public bus routes, PTE employee passes and who knows what other concessions there might be out there. It would be much more efficient to just dismantle the whole fucking thing and invest a bit more on road construction and then pay for taxi journeys for those who really need them (disabled people, those on benefits who need to visit doctors etc). (The above don't apply to London- it is the only place where public transport works reasonably well and gives a decent ROI on the subsidies)

 

It would also help if the government and local councils finally realised that the suburban sprawl needs to be phased out and replaced by taller buildings and denser neighbourhoods which will, in turn, make it much easier for public transport to economically sustain itself.

[fiatdaft]

Could be worse,we could live in Greece.

[Pete-M]

It would also help if the government and local councils finally realised that the suburban sprawl needs to be phased out and replaced by taller buildings and denser neighbourhoods which will, in turn, make it much easier for public transport to economically sustain itself.

 

Didn't work in the '60s, won't work now.

[Luxobarges_Are_Us]

Could be worse,we could live in Greece.

 

I see you're keen to copy best practice from all over the world. In that case, Bangladesh might be even better as a field trip.

 

Didn't work in the '60s, won't work now.

 

Why not? It works in loads of places, from Bratislava to Tokyo...it just requires a bit of planning and a way of ensuring decent standards of build quality.

[Pete-M]

Didn't work in the '60s, won't work now.

 

Why not? It works in loads of places, from Bratislava to Tokyo...it just requires a bit of planning and a way of ensuring decent standards of build quality.

 

It has been tried here, it doesn't need trying again as with virtually no exceptions it ended in disaster. It may well work in Bratislava or Tokyo, it doesn't work here. Englishmans home is his garden etc.

 

Basically, it's a small island with over 60 million people on it, which is far too many. Doesn't matter how to dress it up, how high you build the houses, there are too many people here.

 

I would never consider living on the 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th or 30th floor of somewhere.

[Luxobarges_Are_Us]

While I agree that most people in the UK (including myself) prefer to live in a house as opposed to a flat, the only way of being able to sustain such a population is by building taller buildings. It doesn't have to be 30-storey skyscrapers, they could just be mini-blocks, 4 storeys, 2 flats on each level, something along the lines of this, which is in a suburb of Madrid:

 

 

This way, you can have 15 people living in the same area footprint that normally houses 5. Multiply that by a few hundreds of thousands, and you've got a decent way of managing increases in population while also lightening the load of mortgage slavery and making public transport more attractive.

[Cavcraft]

Pah, we've got millions of those bloody horrible places already. The majority are rented out to people or empty because not many fancy paying £130,000+ for some one bedroomed shoebox.

[Luxobarges_Are_Us]

That's right. My landlord is losing money on this place. They were being sold at the same price as similarly-sized houses and, of course, that's a non-starter. Prices are coming down and they will eventually reach realistic levels (assuming that the various governments stop trying silly schemes to prop them up).

[MrDuke]

Also, in my old home town, a certain percentage of all newly-built flats have to be made available to housing associations. Cue the dregs of society living on every other floor, making the walls vibrate with bass-lines, scrawling graffiti in the lifts and lighting fires in the stairwells. I'm not making that up, it actually happened in a reasonably smart-looking build which would've sold well otherwise.

[eddyramrod]

Luxo, you live in Sheffield, right? Now I don't know Sheffield, but I'd bet money it's much like many other UK cities, with regard to flat-building projects. How brave are you? Try walking around some of the existing flat developments, I can almost guarantee there will be at least one within walking distance of your home or work. 40-50 years ago these things were flung up as the ultimate solution to the problem of social housing, ie somewhere to put the relatively poor. Within ten minutes you will understand exactly why Brits, especially young ones, have the reputation abroad that they currently have. They positively attract the "undesirables," drug dealers, teenage gangs, etc etc. I knew someone who lived on the top floor (16th) of a tower block in Blackpool, 17 years ago. His flat was burnt out to get him to leave. Which he did, being a quiet, law-abiding type. That's the kind of thing that happens, and it earns these developments a stereotype. That's why these places might work elsewhere but never will in Britain. The people won't let it. Stuff like that has happened from day one and continues to happen, partly because the buildings are still standing; demolition costs money too. It's a damn shame, but it's how things are.

 

Public transport is subject to some of the same concerns, especially at night. I used to commute into Liverpool, mostly by train. I've been on trains held in stations while Transport Police boarded and took someone away. My mate Jeff was a bus driver, working one-man buses (I'm old enough to remember conductors!) and he was raging when Head Office decided to remove the two-way radios buses had been fitted with. One man (paid as little as possible), out on a rough estate with an expensive bus, a dozen innocent passengers, a teenage gang and no communication with base? You can imagine. So the "normal people" use the buses as little as possible, which means fares go up and routes are withdrawn, or made hourly instead of quarter-hourly for example.

 

For far too long there's been no sanity applied, to taxation, to town planning or to public transport. What's needed is a bunch of people who have actually done the job (especially transport-type work) right at the top, in a position to say "Look, you have to be able to do x/y/z, and to do it you need this, so go out and build this" (whatever "this" might be: a road, an access point, a bus station, whatever).

[Luxobarges_Are_Us]

I live in one such mini-block and I have to say that, despite the fact that there are a couple of DSS-supported people, there is not much wrong with it, apart from the fact that the management company charge a fortune in service fees and are very slow when it comes to getting round to fixing things.

 

In fact, I would go as far as saying that I am impressed by the build quality of the place. It has surpassed my expectations (but then again I was expecting a crumbling piece of shit).

 

But I'm in full agreement with your main point. There are a lot of government policies and initiatives that may have good intentions but are so piecemeal and contradicting each other that we end up spending a lot of money on town planning and the welfare state and, with the possible exception of the NHS, getting very little out of it.

 

Edited to add: forgot to say that when I first moved to England, I got a house in a Leicester suburb which had all sorts of problems with degenerates living there despite being rather spread out (Braunstone) and then, after I couldn't stand being the target of small but continuous vandal attacks, moved to another house which happened to be next to a block of 1960s social housing flats but in a slightly quieter area (Braunstone Frith/Glenfield) and didn't see a lot of trouble in the six years I ended up living there! Therefore I don't think that the type of housing plays a massive role in the social problems that may or may not exist.

[Rocket88]

And the cost. An off-peak return bought on the day from Cardiff to Liverpool is £79, so to match that for a return trip you need to be getting 40+ mpg from a petrol or diesel.

 

That "off peak" bit is the crux of the arguement. How many people on here travel to work at "off peak" times, when the cost , in some cases, can be more than double!

[Luxobarges_Are_Us]

And the cost. An off-peak return bought on the day from Cardiff to Liverpool is £79, so to match that for a return trip you need to be getting 40+ mpg from a petrol or diesel.

 

That "off peak" bit is the crux of the arguement. How many people on here travel to work at "off peak" times, when the cost , in some cases, can be more than double!

 

 

Now take off the £1 of fuel tax per litre and, as the Americans would say, 'do the math' again.

[messerschmitt owner]

and the world has too many people still - that's the problem and one no one will tackle (apart from those nice Chinese ones).

[John F]

Luxo, you live in Sheffield, right? Now I don't know Sheffield, but I'd bet money it's much like many other UK cities, with regard to flat-building projects. How brave are you? Try walking around some of the existing flat developments, I can almost guarantee there will be at least one within walking distance of your home or work. 40-50 years ago these things were flung up as the ultimate solution to the problem of social housing, ie somewhere to put the relatively poor. Within ten minutes you will understand exactly why Brits, especially young ones, have the reputation abroad that they currently have. They positively attract the "undesirables," drug dealers, teenage gangs, etc etc. I knew someone who lived on the top floor (16th) of a tower block in Blackpool, 17 years ago. His flat was burnt out to get him to leave. Which he did, being a quiet, law-abiding type. That's the kind of thing that happens, and it earns these developments a stereotype. That's why these places might work elsewhere but never will in Britain. The people won't let it. Stuff like that has happened from day one and continues to happen, partly because the buildings are still standing; demolition costs money too. It's a damn shame, but it's how things are.

 

+1... couldn't agree more.

 

Public transport is subject to some of the same concerns, especially at night. I used to commute into Liverpool, mostly by train. I've been on trains held in stations while Transport Police boarded and took someone away. My mate Jeff was a bus driver, working one-man buses (I'm old enough to remember conductors!) and he was raging when Head Office decided to remove the two-way radios buses had been fitted with. One man (paid as little as possible), out on a rough estate with an expensive bus, a dozen innocent passengers, a teenage gang and no communication with base? You can imagine. So the "normal people" use the buses as little as possible, which means fares go up and routes are withdrawn, or made hourly instead of quarter-hourly for example.

 

 

 

I used to commute 108 miles per day when I worked in Sheffield. It took less time, and cost about the same, for me to drive alone in a 2.5 litre car as it did for me to go by train... and on the couple of occasions I did use the train, I had to stand up for the entire journey and listen to the music, phone calls and loud conversation of a load of twats whose company I'd not choose to be in if circumstances were otherwise.

 

Basically, unless your journey is predominantly within a large city, public transport is a joke.

[Richard]

And the cost. An off-peak return bought on the day from Cardiff to Liverpool is £79, so to match that for a return trip you need to be getting 40+ mpg from a petrol or diesel.

 

That "off peak" bit is the crux of the arguement. How many people on here travel to work at "off peak" times, when the cost , in some cases, can be more than double!

 

 

Now take off the £1 of fuel tax per litre and, as the Americans would say, 'do the math' again.

 

And in the time it takes to do the math the petrol companies will have the £1 added back on, with a bit added for luck.

[Luxobarges_Are_Us]

Nah, not true. The oil companies want to sell more of the stuff and even supermarkets could want to use fuel as a loss-leader, so prices would be kept in check like they are in the States and other places charging low taxes.

[M'coli]

No, I believe they'll just ramp the prices up - in the same way that I reckon the forecourt makes more money on 50 litres of LPG than 50 of Petrol.

[Richard]

It actually happened this week in Scotland. There's some kind of discount scheme coming in for the islands and other outlying areas, the petrol companies put their prices up ahead of the scheme starting. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-17218395

[Luxobarges_Are_Us]

No, I believe they'll just ramp the prices up - in the same way that I reckon the forecourt makes more money on 50 litres of LPG than 50 of Petrol.

 

Of course LPG is mega-profitable on a per-litre basis, but that's for a completely different reason: the lack of competition.Morrisons in Hyde sell it for 65.9ppl, whereas Morrisons Catcliffe (midway between Sheffield and Rotherham) 69.9, despite the fact that (AFAIK) it all comes from Immingham (therefore being cheaper to transport to Catcliffe), because there's only one LPG station in Sheffield proper, and I'm told it's just upped the price to 79.9ppl, a cool 18p more than what Flogas sell it for at their depot (10 miles from here).

 

I'm quite obsessed with fuel prices and especially its taxation- I believe I've got LPG figured out quite well, so bear with me while I go into the tedious numbers of autogas. AFAIK, Flogas sell propane for heating at about 40ppl+5% VAT, and the fuel duty for Autogas is 15ppl. Therefore you've got 55ppl+20% VAT, works out to about 66ppl, as against the 62ppl which they charge for autogas at their depot. Which means that:

i) Flogas make pretty much exactly the same profit for every litre of LPG that they sell, regardless of whether it's used as autogas or heating gas (the 4ppl difference probably just about covers the 'free' delivery to customers in the rural middle of nowhere),

ii) There is no way of Morrisons making a profit of more than 7-8 pence when they sell at 65.9ppl, and

iii) If there were more places selling the stuff, the pump price wouldn't be much higher than 65.9ppl (which is exactly what's happening in places like Bradford and Birmingham where LPG is quite popular, particularly among Pakistani cabbies). Even BP would have to drop to 70ish.