File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9803, message 1265


From: "Paul Wight" <wight-AT-globalnet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Traffic
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 01:12:18 +0100


Oh for heaven's sake.  Where to start....
Hugh writes:


>Gary D writes the following nonsense:
>
>>It ain't a 'bourgeoise preference'; it's the choice of
>>30 million British adults - and it's not hard to see
>>why, when you consider the remarkable flexibility of
>>the car.
>
>A car in a big city is about as flexible and manoeuverable as a hot air
>balloon. For most trips a bike or the bus or tube will be faster -- and for
>close trips walking'll do the trick.
>
>>I used to have an acquaintance who insisted that
>>using public transport was a concession to 'communism'.
>>I don't agree, but it is was certainly crap and
>>inflexible.
>
>London Transport has been brilliant for as long as I can remember -- and in
>the decades following the war it was better than it is now after all the
>hacking and vandalism of the Thatcher years. The network of buses, tubes
>and trains is unbeatable, and given adequate frequency and sane pricing it
>could drive lots of unnecessary car trips off the road.

There are no "unneccessary" car trips.  What are we to ask for our lives to
be - just
what is neccessary?  Eating, sleeping and shagging (strictly reproduction)
are neccessary, everything else is human.  Everything you say is just an
argument
for better transport.  Great.  But its not the car that is at fault, nor any
of those
selfish masses that drive it.  They're just getting on with their lives as
best they can and
struggling with the same crap and decaying infrastructure as you and me are.
And as it happens, better public transport does _not_ have to be at the
exclusion of improving
roads.  I want it all, and I want it now.

>Stockholm transport is brilliant too, and the pricing is fairly sane.
>
>The cost in money and time and the inconvenience of keeping a car have kept
>me from ever bothering to learn to drive (I had a learner's licence for a
>motorbike once). The occasions on which I miss having a car a too few and
>far between to spur me to change. If I did decide to get one, it would be
>pure luxury consumption on my part.
>

Well, people have a way of finding great new "luxury" needs, and of finding
marvellous
and unexpected ways of using new inventions.  When the telephone was
first invented, the standard reactionaries' reply when told that it would
allow
them to talk to friends 50 miles away was "but I don't know anybody 50 miles
away".

>Others have other needs and feel more at home in cars.
>
>When you think of the number of deaths and crippling injuries that pro-car
>people take in their stride (very reminiscent of Albright and the children
>of Iraq -- "it's a price worth paying") you can see how political and
>ideological the priorities and arguments on this issue are.

As it happens, this raises a great question.  Road deaths in Britain are at
an _all time low_ -
they are even less than in 1926 when records started (about 3500 per annum).
And that was in
the days when the working class didn't have cars. (Sorry American cousins,
maybe you can
quote me American figures).  So, why, when road deaths are falling is there
an increased
fear/concern over them?  That's not to say I don't welcome new technology
that genuinely
makes cars safer, just that I don't like the reactionary trend of
irrationely holding back something
of great benefit to my fellow humans.  Especially when it appears on almost
moralising (and spurious)
grounds of safety.

>Still, the coming disappearance of petrol will concentrate minds
wonderfully.

I've got news.  Petrol is not going to disappear, there's no shortage of it.
I'm a chemist by trade, so I can tell you that petrol is Carbon and
Hydrogen.
We're surrounded by the potential for some evil inventor to provide
limitless quantities
of the stuff.  Plants are basically made out of CO2, water and sunlight.
Petrol is too.
Even as early as WWII, the Germans were making synthetic oil.  Now, the
maker
of my Saab 9000 Turbo (air conditioned) insists on the superior qualities of
synthetic oil.
I only wish I lived in a world where everyone had one (or 2,3.....)

regards,
Paul



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