Re: Cuckoo land
‘no benefit to driving’ - spoken like someone privileged comfortably inside Zone 1-2, who’s never endured the slow, grinding misery of commuting beyond Zone 3.
No. Sounds like someone who lives in the West Midlands whose commute used to take between 25minutes and 2 hours depending whether some tosser had been watching a movie on the M6 instead of... y'know... driving. Not that my commute involved the M6, but when someone spilled their car/caravan/HGV and closed the motorway, the traffic looking for a parallel route would bring the region to a standstill. Happened about once a month.
Like I say, WFH is preferable, but I wish I had had the option of taking a tram, or a bus with dedicated bus lanes. But like many, I'm in the position where public transport would have taken 90minutes vs. 25.
Sure, you ‘save’ a grand, but you trade it for something far more valuable: your time, your energy, your sanity.
I mean, I've just been to Brussels and back via Avanti and Eurostar. It was much less effort and much saner taking the train than driving up to Manchester airport, arsing around in a crowded departures lounge, being sandwiched into a teeny seat (even basic Eurostar is a step up from airline Premium Economy) and then having to drive home again on the way back (as it happens, I was in Eurostar Plus, which meant I got fed and had a glass of wine, so I really wouldn't want to be driving at the other end).
Sitting on a bus or metro for half an hour reading is a much saner use of my life and my time than braving the roads and all the lunatics who have forgotten how to drive (particularly since 2020). Even if I save 5 minutes on the journey, I've gained half an hour of reading time vs driving.
And this is the point really. People say "public transport is slower". And sometimes it's catestrophically so. But if the choice is 20minutes driving or 35minutes reading... actually I'm good with reading? Driving is "lost" time. Reading isn't.
As for the claim that needing a car is ‘madness’ or ‘discriminatory’ - no. What’s madness is pretending that Britain’s fragmented, underfunded, decaying transport system can actually serve everyone.
Sure, so f- the disabled then. If you can't drive, suck it up and spend your life being a political whipping boy as politicians decide whether or not to allow you benefits, whilst also denying you the infrastructure to actually access education of employment. What sort of vile rhetoric is this? The answe to Britain's public transport infrastructure is to fix it. Not to give up and say "Those who can, drive. Everyone else, tough titties".
For countless people, a car isn’t luxury or preference - it’s survival.
And you don't see any problem with that?
And stripping away that option under the banner of ‘fairness’ only deepens inequality - turning mobility into a privilege, cutting off access, and pushing more people into hardship.
Wait.... you haven't read the f-ing post have you. What a troll you are. I didn't propose stripping anything away. I said public transport should be so good that people would willingly forego a second car because they didn't need it. Reading comprehension.
For reference, this line in particular:
Not out of an authoritarian "we'll tax the bejesus out of second cars", but because public transport should be cheaper and of comparable speed for getting a worker, laptop and their lunch to a place of work.