UK's Biggest Push to Cut Car Use

Whaaaaat!

Oh. My. God. What a horrible headline?!!

This news arrived in our e-mail inbox from UK greenwashing quango SUSTRANS, who are big on attention grabbing headlines (obviously).

A read of the article here, though, soothed our minds, apparently, this "biggest ever push" consists solely of the fact that, for one year only:

Around 63,000 homes in Cardiff and Penarth are being offered personalised travel advice from Sustrans to help them plan their local journeys on foot, by bike and on public transport. 

After the initial year, if they can get funding, then they might do something else similar in another small corner of somewhere else in Wales.

Can you imagine our relief? Firstly, this "initiative" is in a small local area, in far away country full of people of whom we know nothing. But secondly, and much more significantly, this "project" does not involve doing anything which experience in other countries shows would actually reduce the use of cars: It does not involve a moratorium on the creation of car-parking spaces in towns; it does not involve road-pricing or congestion-charging; it does not involve road closures or roadspace-reallocation; it does not involve a carbon tax and it does not involve the sequestration of our road-taxes for a segregated cycling infrastructure building-programme. In short, this "biggest ever push" to get UK drivers to "just leave the car at home" consists of a couple of hand-wringing veggie do-gooder volunteers schlepping around with carrier bags full of leaflets (see below), knocking on doors in Cardiff, needily begging tax-payers and wealth-creators not to use the car once in a while. And to think, when we saw the headline, we were afraid that SUSTRANS were getting serious!

Of course, we should have known better, because all the evidence points to SUSTRANS being on-side with the Hard-Pressed Motorist. After all, SUSTRANS  heavily promulgate the facts that walking is a special activity, which requires special planning, special food, special equipment and special authorisation. See the SUSTRANS "Stride Guide" (pdf) info-sheet on "how to walk".

http://www.sustrans.org.uk/assets/files/Safe%20Routes/resources/toolkit/SRS_Stride_Guide.pdf

In this amazing anti-walking pamphlet which includes a 5-week countdown checklist for getting ready to walk, SUSTRANS suggests that walkers should consider singing a special song, be made to write poetry, wear fancy dress and eat veggie sausages. And we didn't even make any of that up.

While, of course, it is true that most people who walk are oddly-dressed vegetarian poetry-writers, if anything, we think that SUSTRANS has gone a bit too far this time in lampooning the vegan anti-car fanatics; its difficult to suspend disbelief when reading this satirical broadside. They even go so far as to say that walkers should carry passports!

We're all glad to know that SUSTRANS has a pro-status-quo greenwashing agenda, but this time they have gone too far, they need to calm down their frothy-mouthed rhetoric. We all know that hippy layabout tax-dodging oblimovist walkers and cyclists need to be shown that their so-called "sustainability" is harming the economy, but what we question is whether pushing against them and ranting about their vegan, poetry-writing funny-clothes-wearing is the most considered approach. Baiting walkers in such an immature and hostile way is only going to result in a big "**** you" rather than a considered "yes, you're right, walking is ridiculous, I should be supporting the economy by using our nice cars whenever we can, thus providing much employment and contributing greatly in taxes and giving the place a real 'buzz' of activity."

One thing we do agree with SUSTRANS on, though, is their insistence that walkers carry "a special passport" - like the pass-papers carried by black, asian and mixed-race people in apartheid-era South Africa, it will allow the authorities to swiftly identify the trouble-makers and flag them up for processing.


Look: This is the sort of thing we were afraid that SUSTRANS were about to announce. Thank god that what's happening in Wales just turned out to be a leafletting exercise.

Free Range Kids? Vegitarian Political Correctness, That's What!

More blood-boiling anti-motorist polemic from Sustrans:

Free Range Kids

What can decongest our roads, reduce CO2 emissions, and help improve levels of every day physical activity? Free range kids.

Cast your mind back to your childhood. What memories make you smile? Riding your bike, exploring new and unfamiliar places? Probably, because these are the things that today's adults enjoyed as children, with 70% experiencing most of their adventures outdoor. Nowadays only 29% of children are experiencing adventures outdoors, often closely supervised by adults.

In the early 1970's 80% of seven and eight year olds travelled to school without an adult. By 2009, only 11% of seven to ten years olds did the same, with 42% of primary school children now being driven to school.

They've put out this mad report (PDF): Free Range Kids - Creating tomorrow’s low-carbon, active travellers.

Note Sustrans' lefty leaning use of the words "free-range" - typical of the sort of dangerous knit-your-own-beans sandal-wearing hippy agenda we've come to expect from this anti-car, anti-growth, anti-Aberdeen organisation.

Of course, what Sustrans fail to acknowledge is that most people aspire to the convenience of personal motor transport, pay dearly for the privilege, provide much employment, contribute greatly in taxes, and then people like silly Sustrans expect them to ‘leave the car at home’, while their money is spent creating cycle lanes and the like for freeloading cyclists. We also worry that the "free-range kids" agenda exposes children to peedofiles. It's bound to.

In this context, the precipitous drop in children walking to school is a veritable triumph. And what's more, Aberdeen leads the way.

But, unfortunately, backward places like the City of Westminster are busy implementing the "Free-range kids" agenda with sineage like this:

Watch out for the impoverished children
of the City of Westminster. Shame...

To us, that sign just says: "Watch out! Poor area where few people can afford an nice car in which to drive their children to school, so be careful they don't scratch your lovely car out of sheer spiteful envy at your success."

Now, don't get us wrong, we're not monsters! We appreciate that there might well be perfectly reasonable explanations why parents sometimes might not be able to drive their kids to school in the proper manner (though we can't think of any just now). And when these kids have to walk, because we care so much about their safety, we prefer to see them behind suitable pedestrian barriers and wearing hi-vis jackets. That way our no-claims bonuses are safe.