The Gray Monk: All right for some ....

August 08, 2006

All right for some ....

Our legislators having knocked off for the summer, the news media are obviously desperate for stories, so now that the thought police are no longer at home to stop them, all the really awkward reports and recommendations are making it into the papers. Like the fact that MP's want to make us pay by the mile to use our cars, or that they want to increase airport and air travel taxes to levels that may well double airfares. Oh, and then there are proposals to reduce speed limits on all our roads to really stupid levels guaranteed to slow everything down and extend journey times, increase pollution and driver frustration.......

Taking the first item, the proposal is for "Road Pricing" a system of digital cameras that would monitor every road and charge you for taking your car anywhere. One analyst suggests that this could cost the "average" motorist £16k a year to use their car for transport to and from work. Naturally the Whitehall Wankers and Politicians behind this will be exempt, it will be the rest of us that will pay for their free and easy use of the roads. Clearly the object of the exercise is to drive people off the roads and render it uneconomic to use your car. The excuse is that they can then do away with fuel taxes and road tax as it is, replacing it with a "user tax". It sounds reasonable until you realise that it will hit the rural communities extremely hard. My current abode and my place of employement are some thirty miles apart - getting from one to the other is possible, but impractical. Ergo, I will be forced to change abode or employment if this were to come in. As ever the morons in Westminster think only in terms of the impact on the city traffic with its good transport infrastructure - assuming you like travelling in crowded dirty trains and busses full of obnoxious teenagers and standing cheek by jowl with someone who desperately needs to have a bath - or at least be introduced to deodorant.

Of course, the benefit for the Whitehall and Westminster gang of thieves is that they alone will be able to afford to travel by private car, the rest of us will be forced off the roads so they won't have to suffer from the congestion - nor will they have to endure the discomfort of expensive and uncomfortable trains. I hate travelling by train for the simple reason that, at over six feet and being fairly wide in the shoulders (I also suffer with a bad back!) the seats are designed for pygmies - or at the most generous, for the pre-war British person who was an average of 5 foot 5 inches and narrow shouldered. Try sitting three men in a row on any modern British train - you all wind up with aches because the damnded seats are too small - but that's alright because the Civil Servants who draw up the standards and codes for these and their political cronies won't have to travel on them. If they go by train we, the tax paying public are paying for their First Class Fare.

In case anyone thinks the Road Pricing equipment is still years away, think again, it is currently under test and will be available by the end of the year. The equipment is already being installed, so this is not a matter for discussion or consultation - its a matter of when the Civil Service decide to turn it on.

Next the move to lower speed limits. According to the pundits for this moroninc proposal, it will make travelling safer and less polluting. I don't buy the last since all modern cars are only less polluting when operating at their optimum engine speed - which at the speeds proposed they will not be. Ergo, pollution will go up. Second, the claim it will be safer. Garbage, it will be safer when all the self appointed traffic regulating merchants who hog the centre lanes and jump into gaps in the inner lane whenever they fancy slowing that down, are taken off the road and forbidden driving licences. There are few things worse than having to travel across country and being obstructed by someone determined to drive as slowly as possible while his or her children run riot in the back seat. Or worse, the OAP's who can barely see over the dashboard and have never exceeded 30mph anywhere, but who insist on hugging the white lines on roads where the speed limit is 60 or more.

The "safety" lobby - read anti-private car and individual freedom - are campaigning to have a blanket 40 mph on all rural roads. Again this is punted as "less polluting" and "safer". The fact of the matter is that almost all accidents on these roads are caused by inconsiderate driving by one of two groups - young and foolish going very much too fast and the "safety" fanatic driving everywhere at least 20 mph under the speed limit. A pity they are allowed to obstruct others to the extent that eventually someone will be driven to overtake in an unsafe position. It is a sad fact that these are the two most common causes of accidents around my area - the "average" motorist doesn't have a problem travelling at the perfectly reasonable existing speed limits.

It is obvious that the onslaught on the motorist is coming from the usual suspects - all of them with a vested interest in depriving the rest of us with the freedom of movement our cars give us and further restricting our freedom of choice in a whole range of things including our ability to travel anywhere outside of the UK. Consider the effect of increased air travel taxes. As airfares are pushed upwards by this latest blatant grab for more of the money in our pockets the excuse is yet again, "saving the environment", but the impact will be less environmental and more economic. Tourism will be reduced in the UK, and incase you think this doesn't matter, it does, as recent downturns on those areas dependent on tourist revenue have shown. Of course, if we can't travel because the Whitehall Wankers have rendered it too costly, it means that the resorts and destinations we would have spent money in are also going to feel the pinch - except of course, that our Whitehall and Westminster cronies will now have them to themselves without the rest of us to clutter up the beaches. And the long term affect? More of our freedoms of choice removed by Whitehall Nanny, more frustration and no overall reduction in the "environmental damage either, because the traffic will simply go elsewhere.

It is the first lie of the budding dictatorship that in order to preserve the "greater good" the "individual must give up his freedom". Time to throw the entire Whitehall and Westminster crew out of office, off the payroll and restore freedom and democracy.

Posted by The Gray Monk at August 8, 2006 02:37 PM

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