greenorelse wrote:
People used to live with very little transport apart from sail, animals and feet.
Sails in town was a reference to this above. People may have done this in the past but not now and some of use can't go back to this even if we wanted to as it is not feasible. I'd love to walk 1/4 mile again but can't. I'd love to drive an electric nissan leaf car [ £25k+] but can't. The law prohibits me using a horse and cart if I'm on my own.
gregorach wrote:Big Al wrote:All may be valid arguments on their own but try doing it all together and much more besides from a different persons point of view and you will soon realise how ************** hard life is! (my asterix's)
Some people need to wake up and smell the coffee... oh sorry the dandelion coffee because real coffee has to be imported on those nasty poluting, oil guzzling ships that have engines and not sails...
Nobody's saying it's not
hard, Al, but that doesn't change anything. There are people in this world
dying for the simple lack of clean drinking water - the fact that their lives are hard doesn't make clear springs appear by magic, and the fact that your life is hard (and getting harder) won't bring the price of oil down. Reality does not owe any of us an easy life, especially not on terms of our choosing.
I find it odd that so many seem to be taking the poor availability of public transport as an unalterable fact of life, seemingly set in stone by the Gods, whilst simultaneously seeming to think that the availability of oil, or the long-term viability of car culture, can be influenced by wishful thinking. We certainly
can change
one of these things - it shouldn't be hard to see which.
We
can change how we organise our lives, but, to quote the great engineer - "Ah cannae change the laws o' physics".
Oh the poor darlings dieing of thirst. If they had bought into the consumer revolution then they would be able to buy the oil to power deep water wells..... Oh I forgot, many of them, live in oil rich countries who's dictators sell the oil to the western world or buy arms to oppress their people.
I'm not bothered if the price of oil comes down. My concern is the very imediate effect it is having on me and many like me and I don't have a choice to negate that effect short of over throwing the government to reduce the taxation.
Nor do I want or assume that I am owed an easy life whatever that is. Your comment is, at best disparaging and hateful. I do not choose to be a spacka on benefits and would much more like to contribute to society and plan for a more sustainable future but without better health I can't hold down any job at the moment let alone a decent job to get more money to be in a position
to choose what to do such as walk, ride a bike or buy a smaller more earth friendly form of transport.
I don't think that wishful thinking can change anything but cars will survive, they may change shape, engine type, even run on auto rails but there are to many companies and people involved to see the demise of personal transport such as a car.
You really are living in a world of your own if you think we as a population can change the Public
Transport Situation (PTS). We are a car dependant culture in the western world whether we like it or not. In the 50's the majority of people used busses or bikes to get to work, shop, see friends etc. Now people use cars and so the busses stop running because they are a privatised company who have ot make a profit for their shareholders and not run by the local councils as they used to be.
To get a "usable" PTS busses will have to run from 5.30 am to 12 midnight as a very minimum on a 10 minute service time. They will have to be cheaper than cars and also people will have to stop being snobs and think using busses is a lower class thing. Roads will have to be re engineered to make it darn difficult to drive a car on compared with busses.
I don't know which one of your points we can change. Maybe you would like to enlighten us all on how you would or rather we all can change the right point.
As for doing something about the situation greenorelse, I don't know what i can do. I've wrote a lot on here about my personal circumstances maybe YOU can tell me what I need to do!!