The Importance of Being Idle

A Little Bit Of Politics/Tree Hugging Hippy Rant

So the government wants to do away with road tax altogether and charge all drivers based on how far they drive. They intend to do this by monitoring us all by satellite. Now for a start, I don't want the government knowing where I (or my car) is at all times, its none of their business where I go and when I go there. Ignoring the civil liberties angle, I do understand the very very urgent need to do something about pollution, but this isn't the way to do it. Firstly, the technology isn't there no matter how much the government tells us it is. Secondly, over the past decade the government has done an awfully good job of dismantling both our national economy (it no longer creates wealth, it merely recycles it), and our public transport system (although to be fair every government fucks this up). Now we have an economy of short-term, low pay jobs, which the government smuggly proclaims give us a flexible economy. Obviously no MPs have actually worked any of these 'flexible' jobs, or they'd know what its like to earn less than you need to cover even the basic costs of living on a monthly basis... Still, my point is that the low-paid workforce, and make no mistake these are the people who are going to suffer under this new scheme (I can't imagine any high-mileage salesmen will actually be paying their own bills, that'll be paid for by their employers), who need to be 'flexible' are going to be charged for that flexibility when they drive to their place of employment everyday. Nice eh?
How do we do things differently?
Well it needs a massive change in the way this country (and lets face it, all other developed countries) do business. We need a proper national policy for a fully integrated transport system, expansion and improvement of the rail network, trams, more buses, more cycle and pedestrian friendly town centres... And we need to change where we live. Once upon a long ago, people used to live right near where they worked. People lived in towns and cities, and worked in those same towns and cities. They lived in communities. Now people live tens of miles away, in little villages and drive to and from work everyday. This has two effects. Firstly it has pretty much gutted our towns, leaving them with collapsing and abandoned facilities, shops and what have you, and run down housing. It also means that rural communities suddenly find themselves priced out of the market in the very place their family has lived for generations, displacing that population to the run-down cities... All this leads to the insular, dissociated and damaged country we live in today, a place where there are no more communities, just individuals.
I know its a big problem, and this is only one little country. We need to think about new forms of transport, worry less about performance and be more concerned with pollution. Who needs a car that goes from 0-60 in 4.6 seconds, or has a top speed in excess of the speed limit in any country you care to name? We need to change the way we buy our goods, the amount of non-recyclable packaging thats used. We need a proper recycling culture. We need to restrict the pollution from our industries, and by extension the industries of other nations. I don't for one second think that we could destroy the earth, or all live thereon, but I think we can make it uninhabitable for us, our children and our childrens children ad infinitum.
We need to protect this small blue/green marble floating in space, its the only planet we've got.

posted by BadMonkey @ 6:02 PM