| Archive for The Motor Forum talking cars since 2006 |
| Guitar Zero |
Environmental think tank ? or bucketful of monkey wank ?http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/AllCars/244347/Words fail me. |
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| Blarno |
I read the name as the 'Green Fisting Commission'.
Wankers. |
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| Bob Sacramento |
All part of the Labour Party's plan to remove private transport from the masses and restore car ownership to its rightful place as a reward for senior party members and the wealthy. | ||||
| Boxer6 |
In this case, "bucketful of monkey wank" doesn't come anywhere near what I think of them.
I imagine Prof. Paul Elkins to be some beardy elbow-patched tweed jacket wearing arsehole with straggly hair, bad breath and a vintage bicycle parked outside his two-up two-down on the outskirts of the 'Big Smoke'. That, or a skinny vegan with aspirations of becoming a "Sir". Cunt, either way. |
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| Stuntman |
Heard this on 5 Live this morning. Words failed me too. Green Fisting Commission indeed. Unbefuckinglievable. | ||||
| woof woof |
As a life long Labour supporter it hurts me to say this but they have to go and they have to spend a generation in the wilderness.
The thing is, I remember the Tories and I hold out no hope for a future under them. REVOLUTION!!!!!!!!! |
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| Grampa |
I remember the Labour Government in the seventies - what a complete and utter shower, but didn't mean they couldn't change, so why can't the Tories change from what they were in the early nineties. I know it's difficult to have faith in political parties' ability to change, but isn't basing what a party could offer now on what they were offering two decades ago being a little blinkered? (not referring in particular to the Tories here, as someone who's happy to change my vote, I'm open minded enough to believe that any party can change - for better or for worse) From the end of the Autocar article: "We've had it as a given that energy is cheap, so we have been wasteful. This has to change and the only way to do that is to make the polluters pay," said the report's author, Paul Elkins, a professor at University College London. OK, so sometimes a motoring enthusiast goes for a drive just for the hell of it, but speaking for myself, my journeys in a car are all essential, not wasteful. Possibly you could do without a car in a city, but in a rural area a car is essential to go about your daily business. |
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| woof woof |
Change? Time will tell. I suspect that the Tories occupy more or less the same middle ground these days. The words may be different but I suspect that at best the general direction will remain more or less the same. At worst the Tories may disappoint us all, even on past form. Time will tell.
If we assume for a moment that man is responsible for climate change... A persons carbon footprint and their ability to alter it is almost certainly related to wealth. The less well off have the least control. An increase in green taxes disproportionately affects those least able to change, the less well off. These people are also the least powerful, the most disenfranchised, those more at risk of the ills relative poverty brings. They and wider society deserve better from any thinking government, especially one which historically was thought to represent them. This will only increase misery and support for marginal and more extreme parties. |
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| Matt |
All this environmental change seems like communism in disguise. Bring us dirty planet killers down to the same level as the pious and live their miserable lives. | ||||
| woof woof |
And before I pass out...
woof woof's bitter rap... I'm a Labour supporter staunch and true I believe they're the best for me and you but I'm a white English car driving man just killing the planet as fast as I can I'm to blame for the Empire and slavery too I've done these evils though I never knew I must be some kind of modern scourge destroying the world with my act and word my every waking wasteful thought and deed is a testament to my kinds ingrained greed Africa, Asia, South America, the air and sea will never ever be safe from the likes of me but someone deep in the hallowed halls of power is plotting their revenge on me this very hour if you want to picture the future forget this never a boot stamping on a human face...for ever. Not great...but could you even type when you've drunk as much as me? a? a? |
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| Grampa |
The thing I find most perplexing is that politicians seem to think that ideas such as taxing cars out of existence are popularist notions - why make life a misery for UK car drivers when it will have little or no impact all the time that China and America carry on in their own merry way? |
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| woof woof |
A guy on R2 was arguing that we rich kids in the decadent West must reduce our carbon footprint so that those in China and elsewhere can increase there's.
It has a sort of logic to it if you're a hand wringing liberal convinced that you personally built the Empire and subjugated higher cultures the world over and now must wallow in self loathing, pay humble penance and beg for re admittance into the human race. I'm sure that many middle class English people do actually think like that. |
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| Guitar Zero |
What annoys me most is the money wasted on these London centric fucks and their " studies " - I mean, two...fucking....years to come up with :
Increase taxation on motor vehicles. If you've had to sit through the Act on C02 fairy tale (is there a happy ending ???) you will no doubt be wondering - " if electricity consumption and car usage are responsible for a collectve 40% of all C02 produced - what the bloody hell are they doing about the other 60% ?. Surely the ultimate goal is for every country to become complete self reliant for all energy production - and since the only way to do this is to develop renewable energy resources - why can't we spend all the environmental money on accelerating these developments as quickly as possible ?. Saving the world will then be a natural by-product and OPEC can go piss up every kind of rope under the sun. |
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| TimR |
Whenever I see these things I wonder what large city the proponents live in.
If we're not allowed cars rural communities will cease to exist. Anyone who lives in the sticks will be fucked over. Your house will be worth nothing and prices in the cities/big towns will go up as all the country dwellers move there. It'd cause more pollution as an extra, say, 5 million houses would have to be built in cities for all the country folk to move to. Where's the provision for that in their report? 
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| Humphrey The Pug |
So as well as giving up driving cars now we should giove up meat, well at least Alan is halfway there!!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6891362.ece Su Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Vegetarian Society, welcomed Lord Stern’s remarks. “What we choose to eat is one of the biggest factors in our personal impact on the environment,” she said. “Meat uses up a lot of resources and a vegetarian diet consumes a lot less land and water. One of the best things you can do about climate change is reduce the amount of meat in your diet.” I think that perhaps Su has another aggenda here!! |
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| Roadrunner |
Exactly. Yet another London-centric policy from a beardy academic, with lots of qualifications and absolutely no common sense. An increase in fuel duty will result in a massive increase in the cost of living for all, since all of our food, clothes, furniture, etc. is moved by road. Surely a better approach would be to apply a little more thought to the problem and encourage more working from home, or local office hubs, the use of locally grown food and to encourage local communities to be more self sufficient. This would have a whole variety of fringe benefits too, in local communities taking greater ownership and responsibility for their own welfare. Instead, in this study, we have the lowest common denominator approach - raise taxes. A bunch of A-Level students could have done better. |
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| woof woof |
I'm all for people making informed and reasonable decisions about what they eat but I wouldn't be too quick to buy the vegi is green argument as quite a bit of what I eat is clearly a manufactured product and that must increase it's carbon footprint.
Roadrunner, I often wonder what the end goal is of all this. Do the extremists want us to return to a medieval type existence? Is their dream that we all live in hemp huts, live off the land and die in our 40's? Would they like to see western civilisation reduced to the level of an African tribal village? |
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| TimR |
She does have a point in some ways as livestock is meant to be a major contributor to gas emissions. However I find that whenever I have a veggie type diet (Mrs Tim is a fairly strict Vegan ) my gas emissions increase as well. 
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| Dr. Hfuhruhurr |
The problem is not that we're eating meat - we've always done it since prehistoric times - but that there are too many of us doing it. Any climate change solution that doesn't address population control is strictly of the one-step-forward-two-steps-back variety. | ||||
| Big TC |
What a oad of old bollocks. How on Earth do they think people in remote areas will cope with such an increase? Thousands of jobs will be lost, as a lot of small haulage firms will go under, the cost of living will sky-rocket to pay for extra transportation costs...it'll be a fucking nightmare. | ||||
| Big Blue |
As breathing out produces a huge amount of CO2, perhaps we can have everyone that thinks CO2 emissions are the cause of global climate change and not just the fact that nature is something so much more powerful that we iddy biddy little ant-people (which would of course be soul destroying to those that think we have some higher purpose and are not just here to enjoy the bounty of the planet as we can and do) to stop breathing?
That would be a far more effective cure and would probably help with the housing and food crises as well. As soon as someone mentions "climate change" and/or "global warming" followed by "tax" you know they're just talking utter bollocks. |
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| Mike Amos |
Looking at this from another direction, surely the worst hit will be the poorer members of our communities. What is going to be done for the disabled (less able) folk who cannot get on a bus etc? Are we going to increase the number of grants for taxi use etc?
From a supposed 'think tank' they are incredibly narrow minded. perhaps we could reduce our cost's by making these idiots redundant, or just fire the useless morons. |
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| Scouse |
Thing is we are assuming that their 'brief' was ways to 'save the planet' when it was actually "ways to ass rape millions more in taxes from the ordinary man & woman without affecting those with real wealth & influence who will be dishing out the jobs to us lot when we get voted out in 2010 and hiding it under the umberella of saving the planet". | ||||
| woof woof |
It's not just people in remote areas that will be hit hard.
I live on the outskirts of a large town and yet getting to work by anything other than car would be pretty much impossible for me or at best very expensive, very inconvenient and very time consuming and there must be many thousands of others in built up areas in exactly the same predicament. |
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| maz |
I think they are right. We need to get people out of cars and onto mopeds, motorcycles and cycles.
I guess there are many of us who would like to use these means of transport but is made very difficult due to the amount of cars on the roads. Lets remove the cars and everyone use cycles ! I might even be able to get some weight off being a fat bastard. |
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| ALF |
So they want to do this to fuel duty - already a proportionately very high form of taxation - when other things like heating our homes generate more CO2? What motorists need to make more noise about is the relative taxation levels of the different causes of CO2 because we're already the hardest hit. I honestly do thing some other areas that cause emissions do need to have their prices raised a lot - electricity and gas for our homes in particular. Petrol costs make most of us think about the necessity of journeys. Electricity and gas prices don't make people even on low incomes think that much about excessively heating their homes, and budget flight costs are ridiculous. | ||||
| Big Blue |
I ride a motorcycle in congested London and to help me use less fuel, make less congestion and get fit to stay a healthy taxpayer for longer Westminster Council make me pay to park my bike in a motorcycle bay outside my club and fine me if I don't. THEY ARE NOT INTERESTED IN CLIMATE ANYTHING. THEY JUST WANT YOUR FUCKING MONEY |
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| Bob Sacramento |
If someone organised a whip round to get that put on a big poster opposite the Houses of Parliament I would chip in big style. |
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| Giant |
You are possibly right, getting people to commute on bikes, motorised or pedal powered would reduce emissions and congestion. However a bike is not suitable as a single mode of transport for a household. People could be encouraged to use transport suitable for each journey. By encouraged I absolutely do not mean tax and fine the shit out of us for using cars but with incentives etc. However the government seem to hate motorbikes even more than cars so this will never happen. |
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| maz |
BUY A BICYCLE, DON'T PAY FOR PETROL, DON'T GIVE THEM YOUR FUCKING MONEY
I do understand, probably the fuckers would want road tax for cycles next |
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| DaveGibson |
They seem to manage in India.
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| TimR |
I'm just about to pop out to the shop.
I could take my bike but it's absolutely pissing down so I think I'll take the car.
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| gonnabuildabuggy |
Alan - I'm interested to hear you are a "lifelong labour supporter" - what's that based on? Surely you should vote for the party (and politicians comprising "the party" that best meets your requirements at the time?
I'm a Rolling Stones fan but frankly they've produced nothing of any great worth since 1974 so I would be voting for them today. |
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| PG |
Ah the glorious future.
We will all have to live in cities where we can be monitored and controlled (and huddle together for warmth in the winter). Personal transport will be banned. Curfew will be at sundown so that we don't need lights. Our rulers will live outside the city in nice large houses surrounded by lots of empty space for "security reasons". Now about this eating no meat to save the planet rubbish. The reason that most vegetables are grown in the flat parts of the countryside (rather than up the side of hills) is that you need very productive land (like flood plains, good arable land) and a lot of large expensive machinery (that runs on fossil fuels and does not do well on the side of steep hills). And unless you have a lot of animal manure (which of course we won't have under this brave new world) you need an awful lot of chemical fertiliser (as vegetables take a huge amount of goodness from the soil) which is made using a lot of fossil fuel. ie we'd all starve. As Dr H said - could less people be an answer worth considering? |
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| woof woof |
gonnabuildabuggy - "Alan - I'm interested to hear you are a "lifelong labour supporter" - what's that based on? Surely you should vote for the party (and politicians comprising "the party" that best meets your requirements at the time?"
I suppose that a lot of it is down to family and upbringing. My parents and all of my family were staunch Labour supporters when I was growing up as was pretty much everyone around me. Everyone worked for British Steel, ICI or the docks and Labour was our party and was supported by the unions. The Tories were the party of the rich, bosses, farmers and southerners, certainly not the party of industrial workers in the north east. They were seen as being anti union, anti workers rights and pro employers rights, and generally regarded as being bad for the workers job security and standard of living. They were also regarded as a party of tax cuts, a bad thing as it would lead to poorer public services which the less well off use more than the richer. The rich could be expected to do better under the Tories whilst the relatively poorer working class could be expected to do worse and see their income, standard of living and general well-being fall. The Tories were seen as a party of poor social justice. Labour was seen as pro industrial worker, pro tax to support public services and pro general social justice. A party containing conviction politicians who would understand the problems PLU faced and who would work for the betterment of those least able to succeed and most in need of help and support. The Maggie years saw industry decimated, that's a hard thing to overcome. While governments in France and Germany actively supported traditional industries from farming, through mining and on to manufacturing the Tories just seemed intent upon smashing unions, selling off the family silver, maximising profit and making their supporters richer. As for me personally, most of this probably passes me by these days. There is a real chance that I'll stop working in the very near future so jobs and wages are less relevant to me. I'd rather not vote for what's best for me personally anyway, I'd honestly rather vote for what's better for our society. I look around me and I see people struggling and I see relative poverty and all that goes with it, I see poor education, I see unemployment and hopelessness and all that goes with that and I still believe that despite it's faults the Labour party and it's core values (if they can get back to them) still represent the best hope for social justice and a well balanced and healthy society. They've plainly lost touch and gone mad and sadly they need some time in the wilderness but despite all their faults I'd still look to them in the future unless the Tories genuinely surprise me, and I still seriously doubt that they will. |
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| Big Blue |
Alan, you don't think the unions abused their position under Labour governments in any way then 
They think they can do it now but in times such as now, when private sector and public sector workers are being reamed strike action is as popular and relative as a black and white TV license. The Postal strike thinks they have a point, but what? An opened up market means that other companies can deliver certain items at least as efficiently as the Royal Mail; e-mail, Twatter, Arseface, SMS, mobile phones et al mean that personal mail is close to irrelevant; on-line banking, internet shopping, credit cards, the BACS system etc mean that business post is at deaths door which leaves junk mail. The thing propping up the Royal Mail delivery and sorting offices is the stuff we throw straight in the bin. And the unions think a public that are fearing for their jobs on a daily basis support strike action for junk mail. Hmmmmmm When there are transport strikes in London people make MORE effort to get to work to prove that unions can't use the public as negotiating tool. |
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| woof woof |
Some did for sure for personal gain maybe, maybe political gain, some stuck to the task and did a good job, some continue to do so.
BB, have you ever been ordered into a life threatening situation by an employer more interested in profit than your life? |
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| Giant |
Th unions were/are good for preventing those situations but all they seem to do now is try to force disproportionate payrises for their members. Most seem to be completely out of touch with the country in general. Post 1000! 
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| gonnabuildabuggy |
One large upside of the current health and safety focus is that this is rare nowadays. Most factories I visit in paper/packaging have a large electronic sign saying "time since last injury" keeps the mind focussed. A mate runs Cement factories, any serious injury requires him to call the Chief Exec directly. Where I lived Maggie decimated the declining industries, Coal but brought far more new industry to the area and with it large investment in infrastructure - the welsh valleys in 1989 where a better place than 1979. They were also better in 1989 than today where a benefits culture is taking hold. I think some policies to do with Labour (support the working man, etc) are good but some (government command and control over all areas of society) are bad. Taken to it's extreme I'd rather live in the US than Russia - but I think the conservatives better represent the middle ground today than Labour. I can't think (prompt for lots of repsonses) of many areas where the tories are against the worker in favour of the employer today. |
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| Martin |
Yes, H&S is transformed in the UK, which the unions have supported to be fair. Mind you, with dwindling membership they need to do what they can to keep the members they have!
The unions were very supportive and understanding when we were working through the pay reviews this year and understood the need to keep wages flat. We obviously built a good, factual case to support our plans, but at least they listened and made the right recommendation to their members. |
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| Big Blue |
As has been pointed out above, legislation has meant that if it ain't safe, you can refuse to do it and can't be sacked, and I assume you are not referring to military service
The unions were a driving force behind such legislative change but then so were the MPs that supported the papers proposed in parliament to pass the legislation. We have an active policy that says you can stop the entire worksite even as a labourer if you see bad practice, we have an anonymous industry-wide whistleblowing newsheet called CIRAS and H&S is number 1 on any agenda at any meeting anywhere in the business. The unions have done well in the past to achieve this position (albeit it is the threat of penal servitude to the bosses that has led to it) but when you hear the RMT demanding £60-100k per annum for tube drivers they lose all credibility. |
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| woof woof |
"but when you hear the RMT demanding £60-100k per annum for tube drivers they lose all credibility."
There are bad union leaders who give the rest a bad name, just as there are bad employers and bad politicians, that should not detract from the good work that good people do. Get rid of all unions because a few are mad or bad and you'll deprive a lot of people of good help, support and protection. |