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Yet another person who has this crazy idea, for which there is no
evidence whatsoever (except in pretty much every large town and city
centre), that motorists are being systematically persecuted by the
authorities. Just as well the trolls are here to set us straight, by
repeating "Motorists aren't being persecuted" and "We're not anti-
motorist" over and over again and not backing up those assertions with
any evidence (probably because there isn't any).
Chapman has herpes, Spindrift is made of slime and Jaded is actually
Gollum. I'm not going to back up those statements with any evidence,
but hopefully if I say them often enough then people will start to
believe that they're true. Talking of which, speed kills.
Mike Vandemar
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-maga...cided-that-all-motorists-were-criminals.thtml
(Yes, I'm afraid it's the Spectator, which that dreadful non-car-
hating mayor used to edit, which makes all articles therein
automatically invalid)
Who decided that all motorists were criminals?
Bryan Forbes sees in the persecution of drivers a terrible metaphor
for England’s decline: ministers hide in limousines while the police
waste their time on minor road offences
Do others like me wake every day angry that we are unwilling members
of a persecuted majority? At the risk of becoming a serial whiner, it
seems to me that the unholy trinity of the Treasury, local authorities
and the police forces are intent on intimidating and fleecing anybody
who has the effrontery to own and drive a car. So vindictive and petty
are some of the laws framed specifically against motorists that I am
resigned to the fact that any time now the Ministry of Transport will
be renamed the Ministry of Fear.
I learned to drive during army service in 1943, passing my test on a
Bedford three-ton truck with a beast of a clutch, and have been
driving a variety of cars, large and small, ever since with, happily,
a totally clean licence. So why am I now so fearful whenever I get
behind a steering wheel? My present car is eight years old and I have
just renewed the licence for £220 (bumped up another fiver from last
year). Today I learned that next year a car of this vintage will be
taxed at £440 — yet another piece of duplicity from the Treasury, who
hid this new stealth tax in the fine print of the last Finance Act.
Thus when I and many others wish to exchange our old but roadworthy
cars for new models we will be made victims of negative equity, the
cars worth less than the tax disc.
I recall swooning many years ago when we woke to the realisation that
the price of a gallon of petrol had risen to £1, even though in that
distant time there was somebody on the forecourt to insert the nozzle
and wash our windscreens with a smile. Now we do all the work
ourselves and are fleeced for £1.18.9 a litre of petrol (even more for
diesel) but, unlike the French, are too craven to take to the
barricades in protest. Since 95 per cent of everything we buy in the
supermarkets is transported by road, it does not need a Senior
Wrangler to work out that any increase in the price of petrol and
diesel is inevitably passed on in the cost of food and other
essentials. If the exorbitant tax and VAT were slashed, household food
bills could be dramatically reduced overnight. But will dear listening
Gordon grasp that nettle?
Motorists have been relentlessly brainwashed by the eco-lobby to
believe that they are major contributors to global warming, yet since
China and India are never likely to change their polluting ways,
legislating a few hundred 4x4s off the King’s Road, Chelsea, sadly
ain’t going to save a single polar bear. Taken to its logical
conclusion, cars should be banned, like cigarettes, in public places,
but of course that would mean the Treasury maw would be deprived of
the enormous revenues and unable to pay for the 2012 Olympics
overspend, although 3,500 VIP limousines have been given the green
light to sashay down to the East End on a special prole-free highway
exactly as the Cold War Kremlin hierarchy used to travel in Moscow.
For the average citizen, public transport is so chancy and expensive
that, even with petrol costing £5 a gallon, it is still cheaper for
many of us to take to the roads rather than the often unreliable,
sometimes unspeakably filthy trains, especially since, despite holding
a valid and costly season ticket and being unable to find a seat, you
can be fined for daring to stand in a first-class corridor. If
congestion is bad above ground, try taking the London Underground
where, if animals were transported in the same way, there would be a
national outcry. The rush-hour scenes remind one of the railway exodus
of the displaced population at the time of the partition of India.
After a decade of putting up with Gordon Brown being overpleased with
himself, it is legitimate to ask whether he has ever experienced even
a twinge of self-doubt. So fond of telling the rest of us how we
should conduct our lives, his grasp of the problems of everyday
existence seem to me to be minimal at best. As he undertakes his long
and arduous journeys between Number 10 and the Houses of Parliament,
is our Prime Minister troubled by the carbon footprints his bevy of
motorised escorts leave behind? When did he last endure London’s
traffic gridlock on his way to catch a VIP flight at Heathrow in an
armour-plated Jaguar, travelling through the emission zone while a few
yards away 747 after 747, oblivious to the zone’s existence, climbs
into the sky every few minutes? Smugly enjoying their overprivileged
status, the inhabitants of Village Whitehall now invite comparison
with the worst excesses of the Sun King’s court at Versailles. How
many members of the Cabinet do a weekly shop for groceries and then
stagger home on a bendy bus with a heavy clutch of soon-to-be-illegal
plastic bags? Which of them personally fill the petrol tanks of their
official cars and worry about the amount of taxpayers’ money they are
clocking up? Do they really believe that inflation is only 2.5 per
cent when the council tax bill drops through the letter box of their
second, all-expenses-paid-for home?
Waking up everyday in an England I often scarcely recognise, I have
become accustomed to the daily massaging of truth and the vendetta
conducted against the motorist which has now reached absurd heights.
Eleven years of Labour have not solved our growing gun and knife
culture, nor child poverty, to which it is so closely linked, but
neither seem to be tackled with the same relentless evangelist fervour
as the hounding of the motorist. The real ills of society remain to be
defeated despite the millions of pounds flung at quangos, committees,
judicial inquiries, jobs for the boys etc., a goodly proportion of
them financed by the aforesaid poor bloody motorist.
We remain mute while CCTV and police enforcement cameras infiltrate
every corner of this island, making us the most spied-upon society
outside North Korea. The police, virtually emasculated by layers of
bureaucracy, are seldom in evidence when we need them most but,
miraculously, can be produced in large numbers to protect Chinese
thugs during the progress of the Olympic torch through London’s
streets. They should not exist just to trap and fine everybody on four
wheels but to be highly visible every day and ensure that the ordinary
citizen can go about his legitimate business and sleep soundly at
night.
It is but a modest request and I hope that the new Mayor of London
will unravel some of the idiocies of Livingstone’s fiefdom and inject
some much-needed common sense into the governance of our principal
city, to be emulated throughout the land.
evidence whatsoever (except in pretty much every large town and city
centre), that motorists are being systematically persecuted by the
authorities. Just as well the trolls are here to set us straight, by
repeating "Motorists aren't being persecuted" and "We're not anti-
motorist" over and over again and not backing up those assertions with
any evidence (probably because there isn't any).
Chapman has herpes, Spindrift is made of slime and Jaded is actually
Gollum. I'm not going to back up those statements with any evidence,
but hopefully if I say them often enough then people will start to
believe that they're true. Talking of which, speed kills.
Mike Vandemar
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-maga...cided-that-all-motorists-were-criminals.thtml
(Yes, I'm afraid it's the Spectator, which that dreadful non-car-
hating mayor used to edit, which makes all articles therein
automatically invalid)
Who decided that all motorists were criminals?
Bryan Forbes sees in the persecution of drivers a terrible metaphor
for England’s decline: ministers hide in limousines while the police
waste their time on minor road offences
Do others like me wake every day angry that we are unwilling members
of a persecuted majority? At the risk of becoming a serial whiner, it
seems to me that the unholy trinity of the Treasury, local authorities
and the police forces are intent on intimidating and fleecing anybody
who has the effrontery to own and drive a car. So vindictive and petty
are some of the laws framed specifically against motorists that I am
resigned to the fact that any time now the Ministry of Transport will
be renamed the Ministry of Fear.
I learned to drive during army service in 1943, passing my test on a
Bedford three-ton truck with a beast of a clutch, and have been
driving a variety of cars, large and small, ever since with, happily,
a totally clean licence. So why am I now so fearful whenever I get
behind a steering wheel? My present car is eight years old and I have
just renewed the licence for £220 (bumped up another fiver from last
year). Today I learned that next year a car of this vintage will be
taxed at £440 — yet another piece of duplicity from the Treasury, who
hid this new stealth tax in the fine print of the last Finance Act.
Thus when I and many others wish to exchange our old but roadworthy
cars for new models we will be made victims of negative equity, the
cars worth less than the tax disc.
I recall swooning many years ago when we woke to the realisation that
the price of a gallon of petrol had risen to £1, even though in that
distant time there was somebody on the forecourt to insert the nozzle
and wash our windscreens with a smile. Now we do all the work
ourselves and are fleeced for £1.18.9 a litre of petrol (even more for
diesel) but, unlike the French, are too craven to take to the
barricades in protest. Since 95 per cent of everything we buy in the
supermarkets is transported by road, it does not need a Senior
Wrangler to work out that any increase in the price of petrol and
diesel is inevitably passed on in the cost of food and other
essentials. If the exorbitant tax and VAT were slashed, household food
bills could be dramatically reduced overnight. But will dear listening
Gordon grasp that nettle?
Motorists have been relentlessly brainwashed by the eco-lobby to
believe that they are major contributors to global warming, yet since
China and India are never likely to change their polluting ways,
legislating a few hundred 4x4s off the King’s Road, Chelsea, sadly
ain’t going to save a single polar bear. Taken to its logical
conclusion, cars should be banned, like cigarettes, in public places,
but of course that would mean the Treasury maw would be deprived of
the enormous revenues and unable to pay for the 2012 Olympics
overspend, although 3,500 VIP limousines have been given the green
light to sashay down to the East End on a special prole-free highway
exactly as the Cold War Kremlin hierarchy used to travel in Moscow.
For the average citizen, public transport is so chancy and expensive
that, even with petrol costing £5 a gallon, it is still cheaper for
many of us to take to the roads rather than the often unreliable,
sometimes unspeakably filthy trains, especially since, despite holding
a valid and costly season ticket and being unable to find a seat, you
can be fined for daring to stand in a first-class corridor. If
congestion is bad above ground, try taking the London Underground
where, if animals were transported in the same way, there would be a
national outcry. The rush-hour scenes remind one of the railway exodus
of the displaced population at the time of the partition of India.
After a decade of putting up with Gordon Brown being overpleased with
himself, it is legitimate to ask whether he has ever experienced even
a twinge of self-doubt. So fond of telling the rest of us how we
should conduct our lives, his grasp of the problems of everyday
existence seem to me to be minimal at best. As he undertakes his long
and arduous journeys between Number 10 and the Houses of Parliament,
is our Prime Minister troubled by the carbon footprints his bevy of
motorised escorts leave behind? When did he last endure London’s
traffic gridlock on his way to catch a VIP flight at Heathrow in an
armour-plated Jaguar, travelling through the emission zone while a few
yards away 747 after 747, oblivious to the zone’s existence, climbs
into the sky every few minutes? Smugly enjoying their overprivileged
status, the inhabitants of Village Whitehall now invite comparison
with the worst excesses of the Sun King’s court at Versailles. How
many members of the Cabinet do a weekly shop for groceries and then
stagger home on a bendy bus with a heavy clutch of soon-to-be-illegal
plastic bags? Which of them personally fill the petrol tanks of their
official cars and worry about the amount of taxpayers’ money they are
clocking up? Do they really believe that inflation is only 2.5 per
cent when the council tax bill drops through the letter box of their
second, all-expenses-paid-for home?
Waking up everyday in an England I often scarcely recognise, I have
become accustomed to the daily massaging of truth and the vendetta
conducted against the motorist which has now reached absurd heights.
Eleven years of Labour have not solved our growing gun and knife
culture, nor child poverty, to which it is so closely linked, but
neither seem to be tackled with the same relentless evangelist fervour
as the hounding of the motorist. The real ills of society remain to be
defeated despite the millions of pounds flung at quangos, committees,
judicial inquiries, jobs for the boys etc., a goodly proportion of
them financed by the aforesaid poor bloody motorist.
We remain mute while CCTV and police enforcement cameras infiltrate
every corner of this island, making us the most spied-upon society
outside North Korea. The police, virtually emasculated by layers of
bureaucracy, are seldom in evidence when we need them most but,
miraculously, can be produced in large numbers to protect Chinese
thugs during the progress of the Olympic torch through London’s
streets. They should not exist just to trap and fine everybody on four
wheels but to be highly visible every day and ensure that the ordinary
citizen can go about his legitimate business and sleep soundly at
night.
It is but a modest request and I hope that the new Mayor of London
will unravel some of the idiocies of Livingstone’s fiefdom and inject
some much-needed common sense into the governance of our principal
city, to be emulated throughout the land.
