I Hate Bloody Snow

A few people on Facebook et al have been quite pleased that we have had these recent snow falls, and to cut a long and not particularly interesting story short - I'm not one of them. Snow may provide an appropriate background feature to a Quality Street tin, but in reality it is cold depressing and a bit shit. Bing may have dreamed of a White Christmas, but he can keep them as far as I'm concerned. So in a sort of spin on that idiotic Taxpayers Alliance rant about buses, I too explain in explicit detail why this hydrological spawn of Satan gets on my chilly wick so much.

I hate snow because it is cold, and I don't do cold. I hate snow cause it happens in winter, and I don't do winter either. I hate snow because of the damned inconvenience it causes. I have to spend ages in the freezing cold shoveling a clear path to get my car off the drive, something I can accomplish in 7 seconds in clement weather. I don't want to feel like an inmate of the gulag (there's a reason Stalin sent his enemies there) to perform a simple task. I hate snow because it turns the humble pavement into a constant hazard, always on the knife edge of setting up a pedestrian for a nasty fall. I hate snow because it turns the road into a H2O minefield that can sneak up and remove the drivers control of the car without much warning. I hate snow as it is the nomme de guerre of the man who brought us the preposterous 1993 song "Informer" (the "I lick your bum bum now" song), and no word should yield the power to summon that tune to memory. I hate snow because it gives some people an excuse to say "it's character building" when everything gets buggered up and grinds to a halt, it's not character building, it's just fucking annoying. I hate snow because people send in those stupid pictures of bleak snowy vistas in the Peak District to North West Tonight, and Gordon Burns has to pretend to care about them. I hate snow because we have to have a news article on telly with a reporter standing outside a salt depot, and salt depots are boring. I hate snow because snow is ice, and lots of ice is an iceberg, and an iceberg sank the Titanic, so snow is actually evil. I hate snow because it can be turned into snowballs, and snowballs lead to snowball fights and those rock hard compressed snowballs that feel like a small moon has smashed into your face when it makes contact with your reddened ice parched bonce on the school grounds of yesteryear.

So there you go. Jack Frost fuck you, screw you you climate altering made up brother of David Frost.

A Double Headed Assault

The Daily Expresses Christmases have all come at once with this story about the Romanian president, Traian Basescu's comments on how 2 million Romanians (100,000 in UK) are working overseas, because the natives of western Europe. (The Express headline implies he means the U.K. But further reading between the lines reveals that he actually was commenting on Italy, Spain, Germany and France. We don't get a look in!) are too accustomed to living off the cushy bosom of state welfare, to do the jobs the Romanians are filling. And indeed it is good for Romania, as they have a deficit of unemployed, and minimal welfare benefits themselves. It is really a double whammy for the Express, as they can (and do) claim that it will encourage more Romanians to come here, (pure speculation.) and allows them to have a pop at the feckless working classes, who live on our cushy (I've currently been put out of work, and waiting for all this money I'm apparently supposed to hosed down with! I most certainly AM NOT better off!) welfare system. At one point the.. You've guessed it - Taxpayers fucking Alliance give us this soundbite.

“President Basescu has held a mirror up to our welfare culture and identified the lack of incentives to work that mean so many UK nationals pick welfare over work, and so many migrants flock here to cash in.”

He said that the native born, OF A LIST OF NATIONS THAT DIDN'T INCLUDE BRITAIN were disenfranchised to work because of the "generous benefits", and that his countrymen had to fill those roles. Not that they were coming for benefits themselves.

Nigel Farage sticks his oar in with this statement.

“We cannot blame the Romanians for taking what they can get but we can blame our own Government for allowing British workers’ wages to be forced down and jobs to be handed over to those prepared to work for less.”

It's ambiguous whether his "what they can get" refers to benefits, but don't Farage and the "Tax Payers Alliance" always nail their libertarian, uber free market colours to the mast? Aren't these migrant workers embodying the spirit of free enterprise? Isn't wage deflation, and cost undercutting to those who are willing to work harder for less, the true spirit of the free market? Character building or some bollocks? Is Farage endorsing that the state should regulate the wages of low paid indigenous workers?

Now I must emphatically state that I don't support the raw free market philosophy of these people quoted. I know many who would suffer under a system, due to bad luck, the wrong place at the wrong time, not having an entrepreneurial nature. The totally self made society is often more myth than reality. I know a few "self maders" who had a bit of a leg up on the way. Nor is it right to ignore that certain working class groups do fare badly with such a mobile; globalised labour market. See the Lindsey oil depot trouble last year. (perhaps tax incentives for companies to invest in local workforces in deprived areas is an idea. I'm not averse to this sort of protectionism.) But migrant workers can create jobs too. I worked in a distribution warehouse a few years ago, for a Christmas job. It is safe to say, that the place was kept running by the Eastern European staff (my god these guys could work.). It would have been hard (IMHO) to staff it with just local workers, and gave me a perspective on this issue. But that is another story, and I may tell it one day. But it gets on my wick when these so - called champions of laissez faire, ostensibly try a bit of worker solidarity this way. A sad hypocritical joke.

Busses Are Evil Communists (....Christ!)

As my last post was about speed cameras, and how I've always had that gnawing sensation that some of the arguments against them have more to do with the fact that they stop people driving as fast as they like, and less to do with questions about their effectiveness or money making abilities. As it sort of relates to the topic, I have decided to reprint in full, a bizarre blog entry by Peter Roberts, the founder of the preposterous right wing think tank, the TaxPayers Alliance. The TPA combines hard line free market economics, with semi-Burkean conservatism - which can often be contradictory in terms. This means they are perfect to get a suitably outraged soundbite in all the right wing press, when PC "goes mad", or when some innocuous tax raise is mentioned. There has been speculations to how much this surprisingly internally secretive think tank influences the Tories, but they are usually pretty coy on that topic. No, this post on how much Roberts hates buses, lays bare how obsessed some of these ultra laisses faire libertarians can be. I believe there are some people who are so inclined to this sort of philosophy, that they see all manifestations of statism, as universally bad, in all circumstances and contexts. This almost pathological belief permeates the entire article. So here it is in full.

"I hate buses

I hate buses, I really do hate them.

I hate them because they are so uncomfortable, I hate them because they rattle, stink and are sweat dripping hot torture chambers in the hot weather. I hate them because the driver cannot turn the heating off even when the outside temperature is 28deg and inside is 38deg plus. I hate them because they are so slow and trundle all over the place before letting you off. I really hate them because they are loved by the environmental zealots who think it is OK to cook passengers in tin with the heating on in the middle of summer and I hate them because they are an environmental catastrophe.

Buses are the biggest gas guzzlers on the roads. They burn diesel at the rate of a gallon every 3 to 4 miles and chuck out 1.8kg of C02 for every km travelled. A decent family car emits about 155g which is more than 10 times less.

Oh, but the public transport advocates will tell you a bus carries more passengers so they are good for both you and the environment, but the average number of people on a bus is just 9 and the car carries an average of 1.6. This means a bus passenger emits 200g of CO2 per km whilst a car occupant 97g.

I hate buses because the industry behind them is spinning the argument in favour of public transport over the car and using lies, damn lies and statistics to stake their claims. I hate public transport because the companies fund anti-car pressure groups to try and make cars the environmental pariah whilst claiming the bus/train is the solution to all our problems. I hate the bus because their backers conspire to remove parking spaces, increase parking charges, introduce speed cameras and reduce speed limits.

I hate buses because they hold up lines of traffic whilst stopping every few hundred yards at a stop and I hate them because I have to suffer their stink when behind them or when they pass by.

And finally I hate buses because they are the symbol of a socialist society where people rely on

the state to provide transport.

I believe we should encourage aspiration and ambition and to make our own way in life. Owning a car offers freedoms and opportunities bus passengers can only dream of and the car is the most efficient form of transport there is."

Strong stuff indeed.

This kind of bizarre right wing libertarian, conspiracy talk isn't even all that unique on the more "vocal" end of the pro motoring lobby. I once remember; on a pro roads talk board - a poster (his signature was "Speed Limits Limit Life.") who claimed that 20mph limits would be bad for suburban streets as the car would take longer to pass peoples houses! I'm not making that up. There seems a large stream of self centered libertarian sentiment focused around the car, as exemplified by Roberts closing words. I wonder if those who are tasked with road safety realise what kind of mindset they can be up against?

The car is indeed a liberating tool, but are there those who think that this liberation should not be measured against the risk of injury to others, and in this case; providing alternatives to a car orientated transport network? There seems to be quite a bit of smokescreening of opinions going on with this sort of thing.