From: JNugent on
ChelseaTractorMan wrote:

>> Also they still live
>> in a time warp dating back to the early part of the twentieth
>> century, when only rich toffs drove cars. The proleteriat rode
>> bikes, used buses or travelled 3rd class on railways.
>
> does anybody in the 21st century actually believe that anybody in the
> labour party or anywhere sees cars as a class issue? The whole reason
> politicians try to discourage car use is precisely because everybody
> has one. The idea Blair and Brown did not know that is ridiculous.

To an extent, you are right. For the Labour Party, it is true that
car-ownership and use isn't *only* a class issue.

But it *is* a class issue for them, as well as being other things - such as
their general control-freakery, their desire for protection of
highly-unionised PT workforces, their love of "systems" into which people
have to fit whether they like it or not and their barely-disguised seething
resentment of "inequality".
From: JNugent on
Squashme wrote:

> ChelseaTractorMan <mr.c.trac...(a)hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>> Squashme <squas...(a)gmail.com> wrote:

>>> What would that be, for corner shops, and why can't corner shops do it
>>> now? They have been around for a long time, after all.

>> you cannot carry the variety if you only have a few hundred customers,
>> corner shops are now places you nip out for the stuff you forgot, a
>> paper or a bottle of wine and a lottery ticket.

> How many meals can you eat? How much "variety" do you need? It's not
> necessarily an improved diet.

And you know best as to what other should and should not be eating, eh?
From: JNugent on
Brimstone wrote:
>
>
> "ChelseaTractorMan" <mr.c.tractor(a)hotmail.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:9jicv5hhsdl21bgrvfc0840cvhphdaaauv(a)4ax.com...
>> On Fri, 21 May 2010 01:08:03 -0700 (PDT), Squashme
>> <squashme(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Yes, of course, when our grandparents and grandparents were alive,
>>> very few of them ever managed to get to work.
>>
>> they worked locally, didn't they?
>> --
> In the 1700s people walked 4 to 5 miles to do a full days hard physical
> labour and walked home again.

In the 1960s, I used to get the bus to work (time was of the essence in the
morning), but I would usually walk home the three miles or so.

> People today have become lazy and do things simply because they have the
> tools to do so without thought for the consequences.

These days, the majority of my walking has to be done for health and leisure
reasons. Ther's no way that walking would be any use to me in my work (except
between car-parks and various points).
From: ChelseaTractorMan on
On Fri, 21 May 2010 16:07:55 +0100, JNugent
<JN(a)noparticularplacetogo.com> wrote:

>> places where transport infrastructure is in place and adjacent,
>> preferably in, centres of population. Not 20 miles down a motorway.
>
>Offhand, can you name a shopping centre that is twenty or more miles from the
>nearest town?

It was a figure of speech, Bluewater is about 20 miles from the centre
of London, people now travel round the M25 to visit it.
--
Mike. .. .
Gone beyond the ultimate driving machine.
From: ChelseaTractorMan on
On Fri, 21 May 2010 16:07:17 +0100, JNugent
<JN(a)noparticularplacetogo.com> wrote:

>> do not give planning permission to shopping centres along motorways,
>> zone retail areas in the middle of population centres.
>
>And would people be able to get there easily by car, threading their way
>through bus-lanes, red-for-five-minutes-traffic-lights, sabotaged
>carriageways, spy cameras, etc?

you go into central London by train
--
Mike. .. .
Gone beyond the ultimate driving machine.