Should the government sort out public transport (buses/trains) before taxing us on cars and flights?
The government likes quick fix solutions that wont cos it money. taxing fuel, cars, flights and many other energy using pastimes is its way in trying to get people to change their energy use habits.. What you have to remember is that people vote and by using that vote you can either elect of leave unelected parties that have the more radical views on how to tackle climate Change. To rebuild the damage to the rail road and bus infrastructure caused by previous blundering quick fix funding solutions is going to take a huge amount of money that will have to be found from taxation.. No political party will pledge to spend billions of pounds when they know that it will be easier to tax people rather than build new infrastructure to cope with the obvious demand.
Our present government (including all the opposition), are a total buch of useless morons who are so protected by the salaries and expenses that we pay them, that they are completely out of touch with reallity. Their only answer to almost every problem is to tax people more. You have only to look at Calamity Cameron’s latest wheeze to tax people to use supermarket car parks to see how crass he (and the rest of them), can be. For example, how on earth does he think that anyone could take their kids on the bus to a large supermarket (it doesn’t really matter how near or far the supermarket might be to their home), and then return ON THE BUS with a weekly shop costing £60 to £100 or more, and probably amounting to 20 or more shopping bags full of heavy shopping. It doesn’t matter how good he makes public transport (and I doubt that he would actually be able to make any appreciable difference to it anyway), it simply isn’t practical for people to do what he is suggesting. And that doesn’t
Public transport should be sorted out properly to give a viable, efficient, cost effective choice to the consumer. This will never happen though. Public transport gives you 5 tonnes on your carbon footprint as well, whether you use it or not. Private companies will not spend share-holders money if they don’t have to. People in Government are very clever as they don’t want the public transport systems improved. They are only interested in raising taxes. By not improving public transport, people still have to use their cars ( more taxes ) as there is no realistic efficient way for them to travel unless heavy financial investment is made. Either way they have got us all by the short and curlies, and they know this.
Cars are now VITAL. There is no going back. The little towns and villages which kept people in jobs and food without the need to travel far are long gone. You need a car now just to go to the post office. Buses will never suit everyone, nor are they a civilised way to travel. Cars are now essential in most aspects of life and are very very heavily taxed. If any government was serious the would re phase the traffic lights immediately to make traffic flow. They are now designed to hold you up. I cant think of anywhere where traffic lights are a must. (I was a cab driver in London, so not ignorant to the situation). More roads need to be built urgently, if there were enough roads you wouldn’t have congestion. Look at northern France’s motorways compared to our embarrassing efforts. Politicans are to blame for congestion due to bad management. The solutions are there, the money is taken quick enough in taxes. Now start spending it on roads and stop finding excuses for your failures.
