First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

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snibgo
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by snibgo »

The parents are both out working to pay the mortgagae and save like crazy to buy the first car for the teenagers, and first year's insurance.
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CREPELLO
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by CREPELLO »

al_yrpal wrote:As the organiser and a regular driver of our local community bus, i see many old people trapped in remote rural homes unable to get out anywhere without our help. Think I will suggest they all get bikes

As the community bus organiser, I don't understand why you would say this? (yes, I know it was your slightly droll response to John W). Nobody would seriously suggest that infirm old people must cycle, but would you have them all driving instead? That's not very realistic is it?

What you do is an invaluable part of community life and there should be more funds for many more community buses. That would be the response of a civilized society to alleviate social isolation.
JohnW
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by JohnW »

CREPELLO wrote:..............there should be more funds for many more community buses. That would be the response of a civilized society to alleviate social isolation.


Yup!
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horizon
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by horizon »

danfoto wrote: we earned our living as wedding photographers covering most of the bottom half of England.


Shame about the photos then... :wink:
When the pestilence strikes from the East, go far and breathe the cold air deeply. Ignore the sage, stay not indoors. Ho Ri Zon 12th Century Chinese philosopher
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horizon
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by horizon »

karlt wrote: And rather limited horizons; for example, Mrs KarlT intends to visit her sister 35 miles away this evening. Impossible without a car to get there and back.


(karlt: I don't want to split hairs here - I do take your point - so this is meant as a general comment.)

When someone says that they cannot do something without a car what they mean is that they have arranged their life such that everything is possible with a car. If Mrs KarlT couldn't drive and Mr KarlT didn't want to or couldn't then Mrs KarlT might not have decided to live so far from her sister. What I am saying here is that all these consequences of a car based society manifest as necessities when in fact they were never anything of the sort. People used to visit their sisters long before cars were invented.
When the pestilence strikes from the East, go far and breathe the cold air deeply. Ignore the sage, stay not indoors. Ho Ri Zon 12th Century Chinese philosopher
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meic
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by meic »

Unfortunately the same thing applies to many people who fly to see their relatives all over the world. Though once upon a time "Goodbye" actually meant "Goodbye".
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CREPELLO
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by CREPELLO »

I hope that energy prices continue to rise. It will force everyone and maybe, just maybe, politicians to make some hard choices that have been deferred for too long.

What we have at the moment is a society that is really vulnerable to any knocks, whether they are economic, globally market driven (eg, IMF policy, dependency on globally sourced food supplies), climatic (that those food supplies may become wildly expensive through crop failure) and many others too.

What we need is a society that is resilient to these many varied knocks. So that we can continue to earn a living when recession is the backdrop to our lives. So that we can obtain and keep a roof over our heads at reasonable cost, rather than fear repossession or eviction. Have easy access to a small plot of land to grow some food and get some fresh air and excercize, have access to substantial local/regional food, rather than find we have to drive to the out of town supermarket all the time for our sustenance.

Does the car or the bicycle feature as part of creating this resilience in society? Which one seriously increases the social glue of a community? Which one is a sustainable utility that we can relie on?

On the face of it the car appears to open up many opportunities. But pursuing those opportunities comes at many increasing costs. It always did, but I guess we could afford to overlook those costs, back in the day. So we over extend ourselves and over commit to opportunities that reliance on the car provides. Before we know it, we're utterly dependent, locked into all these obligations we've signed up to.

Eventually we'll have to unlock ourselves from some of these obligations and that's where chucking the car for a bike is pivotal.

The pursuit of life and happiness through owning a car is a Pandora's box of the unforeseen, for the car owner and for everyone else on the planet.
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by Vorpal »

meic wrote:Unfortunately the same thing applies to many people who fly to see their relatives all over the world. Though once upon a time "Goodbye" actually meant "Goodbye".


:lol:

There were some advantages to that... :wink:

I do fly to see my relatives. Once every couple of years. And I wouldn't want to go without seeing them. I also wouldn't want to go entirely without a car. A car means that my kids can see their Granny and Grandpa. And many other things are much easier by car.

We walk and cycle more than we drive. And we don't use the car for journeys under 5 miles. I do occasionally make a journey for which I feel guilty; usually just on the basis that if I had planned better, I could have ridden my bike.

JohnW wrote:
Vorpal wrote:................So the teens who can't get out of the village hang around the shops and intimdate the pensioners who can't get out of the village..................


Where are their parents?


Actually, I don't think there is anything wrong with the teens hanging out in front of the shops, other than the fact that they should have other options, and I don't find anything particularly intimidating about them. I've never seen them behaving in an intimidating manner, nor actively bother anyone.

Some people do seem to find them intimidating; and villagers talk about them as if it is a problem that they hang out there. I think the real problem is the criminalisation of youth, rather than anything the youngsters in the village actually do (that's another thread). The youth who have mischief in mind, go somewhere else, rather than hanging out in front of the shops.
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CREPELLO
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by CREPELLO »

Those Segways..... :lol:

I sincerely hope they do not take off as a popular form of transport (yes, I know they're illegal on public roads at present). They don't seem designed to carry loads very well, they are horrendously expensive - c£5000 :o, the battery range isn't very good - c20 miles, compared to 35-40 miles on an e bike. There isn't an option to extend either the battery range or personal fitness, which is a big plus for the e bike owner.

Above all, there's just something ungainly about the stance of the thing. To me they really do look like something from one of those old futurist/sci-fi comics - just ill conceived and also slightly sinister. They make the person look like a robot, standing bolt upright in such an undynamic pose.
JohnW
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by JohnW »

horizon wrote:
karlt wrote: And rather limited horizons; for example, Mrs KarlT intends to visit her sister 35 miles away this evening. Impossible without a car to get there and back.


(karlt: I don't want to split hairs here - I do take your point - so this is meant as a general comment.)

When someone says that they cannot do something without a car what they mean is that they have arranged their life such that everything is possible with a car. If Mrs KarlT couldn't drive and Mr KarlT didn't want to or couldn't then Mrs KarlT might not have decided to live so far from her sister. What I am saying here is that all these consequences of a car based society manifest as necessities when in fact they were never anything of the sort. People used to visit their sisters long before cars were invented.


I really am with you horizon. The truth is very clear. People make their choice, but it's invalid of them to argue that they haven't got one. If cars were an absolute necessity, then human kind would have died out before they discovered goatskins to cover their naughty bits. None of us would be here now.
Nettled Shin
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by Nettled Shin »

JohnW wrote:OK then Al - you direct your exhaust pipe into your car and breath the poison yourself - don't inflict it upon others.


Huh? What's going on here, then? I hope you don't use any electricity from coal fired power stations. It would be pretty hard to not, but you might be off grid, and somehow consume no products with embodied coal energy. If you don't lead such an ascetic lifestyle, you are inflicting your particulates, toxic metals, and radioactivity on others, and contributing towards millions of deaths around the world. There are over 20000 premature deaths in the US each year alone through respiratory problems from particulates from coal fired power stations.


On a lighter note, wasn't George Bush jnr one of the few men to have fallen over whilst on a Segway?
Image
I think he forgot to turn it on.
Last edited by Nettled Shin on 13 Apr 2012, 3:58pm, edited 1 time in total.
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danfoto
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by danfoto »

CREPELLO wrote:I hope that energy prices continue to rise. It will force everyone and maybe, just maybe, politicians to make some hard choices that have been deferred for too long.


Sorry, but I can't let this opportunity pass. I'm not one for going about wailing and gnashing my few remaining teeth about The End being Nigh, nor for losing any sleep about the State Of Society and so forth, but I was persuaded by my Lady Wife to read a book, which I enjoyed so much that I now commend it to the patrons of this forum.

Get on your bike, go to the library before your local council pleads poverty and closes it, and borrow "Reinventing Collapse" by Dmitri Orlov. A most entertaining and thought-provoking book, which is also well written.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
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Mick F
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by Mick F »

reohn2 wrote:
Mick F wrote:We were in Pisa or Florence - I forget which - ..........


:shock: :shock: :shock:
Ermm there is a difference!

Did you go to Lucca?
I forget which place it was that we saw the Segways. It could have been either.
Lucca?
No. We took the train to Pisa, then on to Florence. Not enough time to see much of Florence, but we had lunch there!
Mick F. Cornwall
reohn2
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by reohn2 »

Nettled Shin wrote:
JohnW wrote:OK then Al - you direct your exhaust pipe into your car and breath the poison yourself - don't inflict it upon others.


Huh? What's going on here, then? I hope you don't use any electricity from coal fired power stations. It would be pretty hard to not, but you might be off grid, and somehow consume no products with embodied coal energy. If you don't lead such an ascetic lifestyle, you are inflicting your particulates, toxic metals, and radioactivity on others, and contributing towards millions of deaths around the world. There are over 20000 premature deaths in the US each year alone through respiratory problems from particulates from coal fired power stations.


Or wear any man made fibres,use the train,or the toilet,or buy food from abroad,etc,etc.
Its all very well to point the finger because something doesn't suit our particular view of the world.
FWIW the car is a very useful machine,manunkind has unfortunately taken it to extremes like he's done with so much of the planet's resourses,or anything else he can make a fast buck on.
We are in the situation we are where the car's concerned because of its conveniency.Its the most natural thing in the world to take the line of least resistance when its available and man has made some pretty big strides in that direction.
Any self determined form of transport widens horizons for its owner,contracting those horizons is a hard decision and a limiting one especially if you're not as fit as you once were for whatever reason.
Its hard to turn the clock back once convenience has been experienced.
I admire someone who's taken the conscious descion to "give up" their car on moral grounds,less so those who've never had a car and complain about anyone who has one on the grounds that it inconveniences them or pollutes when they are every bit guilty of that pollution in other ways.
I've said on here many times,good,clean,affordable public transport could relieve much of local and commuter traffic congestion if its run as a service,unfortunately this country is run as a businesss where "market forces" decide the infrastructure,that is our main problem,everthing can't be run as a business somethings need to morally be run as services (the utilities are another example)and not used to line the pockets of their shareholders.
Thank you Margaret Thatcher for moving this country in the opposite direction to that simple fact.
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"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
reohn2
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Re: First day of NOT owning a car tomorrow

Post by reohn2 »

Mick F wrote:
reohn2 wrote:
Mick F wrote:We were in Pisa or Florence - I forget which - ..........


:shock: :shock: :shock:
Ermm there is a difference!

Did you go to Lucca?
I forget which place it was that we saw the Segways. It could have been either.
Lucca?
No. We took the train to Pisa, then on to Florence. Not enough time to see much of Florence, but we had lunch there!


Personally we find Florence a madhouse,you missed a treat not going to Lucca,maybe next time :)
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"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
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