Fuel prices

[gbnz]

There's no doubt,for obvious environmental reasons that vehicle emissions and private vehicle use needs to be reduced but until a viable alternative is in place,which isn't anytime soon,people will have to use their cars to get around.

Are you suggesting that a viable alternative, isn't in place?

I found when I became Partially Disabled four years ago, that I was simply told to stop driving, because I can walk - the 17 miles from town to get home, or the 13 miles from my mothers to get home, or the 5.5 miles to the railway station. Or as an alternative, I can spend 14 hours travelling on a public service bus to go somewhere, rather than spending 1.5 hours in a car doing the same journey.

Suppose the obvious question, is why is it viable for a Partially Disabled person to have to walk 17 miles home, but it isn't viable for someone who doesn't have a disability?

[reohn2]

There's no doubt,for obvious environmental reasons that vehicle emissions and private vehicle use needs to be reduced but until a viable alternative is in place,which isn't anytime soon,people will have to use their cars to get around.

Are you suggesting that a viable alternative, isn't in place?

I found when I became Partially Disabled four years ago, that I was simply told to stop driving, because I can walk - the 17 miles from town to get home, or the 13 miles from my mothers to get home, or the 5.5 miles to the railway station. Or as an alternative, I can spend 14 hours travelling on a public service bus to go somewhere, rather than spending 1.5 hours in a car doing the same journey.

Suppose the obvious question, is why is it viable for a Partially Disabled person to have to walk 17 miles home, but it isn't viable for someone who doesn't have a disability?

Firstly not all disabled people can walk or walk far if they can,MrsR2 can just about manage 170metres which is set to worsen due to her degenerative disability.
Secondly try walking 17miles to work and back after a day's work or have the time to.
Tell a care worker who has to do 10 or more home visits to housebound disabled people sometime twice a day,to walk or cycle with all their necessary equipement,or the various delivery vehicles,or tradespeople needing their vans to work,etc,etc,etc.
We can all play silly beggars with examples and take the moral high ground with our own but the fact is due to societal structures many people do need their car and squeezing those people to make huge profits for fuel companies(quadruple profits for the last quarter this year) is immoral IMHO YVMV mine won't!

[Stevek76]

Someone I know well pays over £100,000 per annum income tax, never mind VAT, fuel taxes, VED etc. Please tell me how her driving is being subsidised by anyone else.

I think that's conflating aggregate level assessments (where motoring taxes do not cover motoring costs and as such, driving is a subsidised activity) with individual accounting which can obvious vary from person to person.

Individual accounting also is dabbling in a wider socio-political-economic discussion on taxation and wealth redistribution generally. You could consider that someone on £100k generally subsidises others but at the same time that brings up questions of whether that wealth and income is appropriate and simply a function of lower income jobs being undervalued and under paid. What is the appropriate amount of redistribution in a society, the dog eat dog land of the US or the more egalitarian societies of northnern continental europe?

The other thing to consider with individual accounting is that whilst vehkm travelled is strongly correlated with income on an aggregate level, there are still plenty of higher rate tax payers like me who drive a couple of thousand miles a year, or not at all. So who's getting my 'share' of driving?

[Stevek76]

We can all play silly beggars with examples and take the moral high ground with our own but the fact is due to societal structures many people do need their car and squeezing those people to make huge profits for fuel companies(quadruple profits for the last quarter this year) is immoral IMHO YVMV mine won't!

Some do need to drive yes and carers are quite a good example, but the solution is not direct subsidisation of driving as a whole as that is very economically inefficient, large inflationary increase (via a subsidy that disproportionately ends up in the pockets of those with higher income, who still are perfectly content to idle some daft 4x4 thing outside the local school to keep the air con going) for relatively low support for those who need it. A carer who needs to drive for work is still going to be under a significant financial burden whether fuel is £1/l or £2/l. The problem there is that the care industry is privatised for no apparent reason or benefit (is care really a sector that can benefit from 'market competition'?) and carers are paid a daftly low wage for what they do. In a sane country they shouldn't even be paying for their own transport, that should be expensed.

[axel_knutt]

The people who insist that a car is necessary seem oblivious to the fact that plenty don't get the choice, I don't see many blind people saying that they can't live without a car. People choose lifestyles that require a car, then argue that a car is required. People commute further in search of a better job, then having improved their standard of living, it becomes taken for granted, and non-negotiable.

I was a bit miffed when I lost my licence, but by the time I got it back again I'd grown used to doing without the car, so I never put it back on the road.

pricing people off the road will just disproportional affect poorer people, and that would be wrong.

Either reduce wealth inequality, or devise progressive methods of pricing cars (or both).

[Pebble]

pricing people off the road will just disproportional affect poorer people, and that would be wrong.

Either reduce wealth inequality, or devise progressive methods of pricing cars (or both).

I can't see wealth inequality improving any time soon, I think it is more likely to go the other way.

And "progressive methods of pricing cars" ? sounds like a political buzz phrase from the left that has no meaning. Car companies which are global like to charge as much as they think the masses will pay, and the 'masses' seem more than happy to spend more money than they have just to own the latest. It is very starange that a large section of the population are quite happy to spend money they don't have to own something they don't need to show off to people they don't know. Everything about car ownership verges on insanity.

[Cugel]

It is very strange that a large section of the population are quite happy to spend money they don't have to own something they don't need to show off to people they don't know. Everything about car ownership verges on insanity.

Ha ha - a perfek summary of The Thatcher Thing's remark concerning older people who travel on buses and their "failure" (aka "loser") status. The central "philosophy" of neoliberalism, we might say. What a load of dafties, all them car poseurs! Dafties in debt - of many kinds. Degraded dafties, even. What a shame the rascals have taken the rest of us with them, down the various slippery slopes to degradation.

Anyway, any fule no that it's the bling of yer bike that defines a person's ultimate worth and status.

Cugel, still in an old Flandria jersey but riding an e-bike. (Another kind of dafty).

[PedallingSquares]

When I walk past drivers sitting in their car with the engine running, or sit in the market place where the waiting taxies are burning fuel, even in this weather, I conclude that some drivers are not finding fuel prices too high. I hope these people do not whinge on about expensive fuel.

Keep the engine running to keep the aircon/inside of the car cool
I start my car 10-15mins before I use it in Winter to defrost the screen and get the seats and interior up to temperature.
The fuel it burns stood still is minimal and worth it to be comfortable.
My current car has the stupid stop/start feature which is turned off!

[mumbojumbo]

Why not scrape ice off the scree-surely it is a simple solution?

[PedallingSquares]

Why not scrape ice off the scree-surely it is a simple solution?

1.Because I'd rather be warm.
2.It's easier to let the car do the work
3.The car and seats are then nice and warm when I get in.

Why get in a freezing cold car and drive with half cleared windows when for the sake of 10/15mins it can be sorted?
The amount of drivers I see at 05:00 on Winter mornings with dangerously obscured vision due to screens/windows being insufficiently clear to drive is quite annoying.

[Mike Sales]

When I walk past drivers sitting in their car with the engine running, or sit in the market place where the waiting taxies are burning fuel, even in this weather, I conclude that some drivers are not finding fuel prices too high. I hope these people do not whinge on about expensive fuel.

Keep the engine running to keep the aircon/inside of the car cool
I start my car 10-15mins before I use it in Winter to defrost the screen and get the seats and interior up to temperature.
The fuel it burns stood still is minimal and worth it to be comfortable.
My current car has the stupid stop/start feature which is turned off!

I've just come back from the papershop, pleasantly cool in my T-shirt. I passed a car which the driver had left idling while he nipped into the Post Office. This is illegal, of course.
When I mention sitting in the market place, I am sitting on the nearest bench to the bus stops. It is very seldom too hot or cold to wait there wearing my normal clothing. If the driver is too hot he could join me on the bench, if too cold he should be fine if he closed the windows and doors. It is an irritation that he just carelessly carries on polluting the air I breathe.
I do not believe these drivers give any thought at all to saving fuel, especially when I observe their heavy-footed driving.

[reohn2]

We can all play silly beggars with examples and take the moral high ground with our own but the fact is due to societal structures many people do need their car and squeezing those people to make huge profits for fuel companies(quadruple profits for the last quarter this year) is immoral IMHO YVMV mine won't!

Some do need to drive yes and carers are quite a good example, but the solution is not direct subsidisation of driving as a whole as that is very economically inefficient, large inflationary increase (via a subsidy that disproportionately ends up in the pockets of those with higher income, who still are perfectly content to idle some daft 4x4 thing outside the local school to keep the air con going) for relatively low support for those who need it. A carer who needs to drive for work is still going to be under a significant financial burden whether fuel is £1/l or £2/l. The problem there is that the care industry is privatised for no apparent reason or benefit (is care really a sector that can benefit from 'market competition'?) and carers are paid a daftly low wage for what they do. In a sane country they shouldn't even be paying for their own transport, that should be expensed.

I can't argue with any of that,especially about the care sector.
My point is that £2per litre hasn't stopped people driving or significantly reduced car use,but due to transport costs has driven up the cost of living whilst the fuel companies have made quadrupled their profits as crude oil prices have fell.
There is no alternative transport other than the car for most people and won't be for the foreseeable due a titally inadiquate public transport system which like the care sector is currently is run for profit not as a service to the public.

[Mike Sales]

My point is that £2per litre hasn't stopped people driving or significantly reduced car use,but due to transport costs has driven up the cost of living whilst the fuel companies have made quadrupled their profits as crude oil prices have fell.
There is no alternative transport other than the car for most people and won't be for the foreseeable due a titally inadiquate public transport system which like the care sector is currently is run for profit not as a service to the public.

True, as far as it goes, but reducing car use has to be a part of our zero-emission future.
The present unsustainable situation has grown up over many decades of encouraging car use, not least by ignoring the external costs, many of which are paid by the carless. Eviscerated public transport is a product of this.
One of the sticks driving the change has to be increased costs. The necessity to run a car is itself a cost of our disfunctional system, and yes, better public transport is important. However, the present distribution of work, shopping, housing and schooling is a product of the distorted economics etc. over many years, and will not be easy to reverse, but it is imperative, for the future of all that it is reversed.
Actually, I suspect that the age of many of the forum members makes only the near future relevant!

[Cugel]

My point is that £2per litre hasn't stopped people driving or significantly reduced car use,but due to transport costs has driven up the cost of living whilst the fuel companies have made quadrupled their profits as crude oil prices have fell.
There is no alternative transport other than the car for most people and won't be for the foreseeable due a titally inadiquate public transport system which like the care sector is currently is run for profit not as a service to the public.

True, as far as it goes, but reducing car use has to be a part of our zero-emission future.
The present unsustainable situation has grown up over many decades of encouraging car use, not least by ignoring the external costs, many of which are paid by the carless. Eviscerated public transport is a product of this.
One of the sticks driving the change has to be increased costs. The necessity to run a car is itself a cost of our disfunctional system, and yes, better public transport is important. However, the present distribution of work, shopping, housing and schooling is a product of the distorted economics etc. over many years, and will not be easy to reverse, but it is imperative, for the future of all that it is reversed.
Actually, I suspect that the age of many of the forum members makes only the near future relevant!

It seems inevitable that many people now expecting all sorts of car-enabled conveniences, freedoms and opportunities will have to lose them if we as a society (a species, even) want to avoid various forms of ever-accelerating environmental damages. But the car is a very seductive technology, like all dangerous technologies. They become most dangerous as their glamour first attracts then suborns us into a semi-hypnotised state in which we enjoy their pleasures en masse whilst ignoring their slow destruction of much else we enjoy.

A certain member here is quite gloaty about the conveniences his chrome-bomb offers. It even heats his posterior! Another has found the car an understandable compensation for other deteriorations in his life even as he recognises the car's dangers to yet other aspects of life. Most of us, I guess, will use a car based on a list of conveniences, pleasures and even essential services that we're loathe to give up ..... .

Yet the things are killing us; always have done; and will do so at an increasing rate as the longer term deleterious effects blossom like a plague.

Nothing much will change, though. Vested interests in car culture are enormous, with a corresponding enormous inertia in our thinking about, and behaviour around, them.

Cugel

[reohn2]

My point is that £2per litre hasn't stopped people driving or significantly reduced car use,but due to transport costs has driven up the cost of living whilst the fuel companies have made quadrupled their profits as crude oil prices have fell.
There is no alternative transport other than the car for most people and won't be for the foreseeable due a titally inadiquate public transport system which like the care sector is currently is run for profit not as a service to the public.

True, as far as it goes, but reducing car use has to be a part of our zero-emission future.
The present unsustainable situation has grown up over many decades of encouraging car use, not least by ignoring the external costs, many of which are paid by the carless. Eviscerated public transport is a product of this.
One of the sticks driving the change has to be increased costs. The necessity to run a car is itself a cost of our disfunctional system, and yes, better public transport is important. However, the present distribution of work, shopping, housing and schooling is a product of the distorted economics etc. over many years, and will not be easy to reverse, but it is imperative, for the future of all that it is reversed.
Actually, I suspect that the age of many of the forum members makes only the near future relevant!

I totally agree,there isn't the infrastructure or the political will generally to get people out of theirs cars for unnecessary use,which is what I've been saying.
Things won't change easily in the UK due to the outlook of the public and politics.