Ed West Tries to Tame the Telegraph Blogs Comments (Good Luck!)

Some of the comments on the Torygraph Blogs have to be seen to be believed. The mean mindedness, the stupid conspiracy theories, the dreadful racism, or even just the fact that even the most innocuous of posts seems to end up descending into an argument about holocaust denial. Just the simple lack of humanity of some of them are enough to make you want the end to come that bit quicker. I don't know if it just the luxury of anonymity that produces comments such as those, or we have some pretty fucked up people out there? It is sometimes like peering into some dark dark abyss, when you think to yourself what sort of mindset spews this kind of stuff out.

I also think it must be rather a both embarrassing and unpleasant bit of baggage for the bloggers themselves, and this was sort of confirmed by a blog entry by Ed West today appealing to the people leaving comments to perhaps tone it down a bit. Read what he has to say and not just mouth off all the racist garbage you can think of for once. It seems he has been spooked a bit about a previous post about what he sees as the problem of ghettoism in Muslim communities in Birmingham. The post is a little intellectually lazy, drawing on second hand anecdotes to come to sweeping conclusions, but he is entitled to write about what he likes and community relations are after all an important issue that should be raised. It is the tone of some of the comments that bothers him (and me), they are pretty hard core and some revolve around hints of ethnic war and parts of Britain being ethnically cleansed. Trying to restore some sanity and perspective to the points he was originally making West appeals to the better angels of those leaving the extreme comments:

"People who type “why can’t we discuss this issue?” and then write underneath “WE NEED TO KILL ALL MUSLIMS” don’t seem to understand that they’re the problem, not the solution. The Standpoint story is depressing enough without the comments underneath adding to it. So for God’s sake, try to remember it’s human beings we’re talking about here – don’t kill debate with hatred, and if you have any hatred, save it for me."

I have a feeling that his appeal will largely fall on deaf ears. You will often hear; say a Mail columnist missing the point by claiming that no-one can discuss immigration or race relations without being deemed "racist" by the "liberal elite", that's not really the case. As this appeal unintentionally admits, a lot of it is down to the fact that racist comments have a nasty habit of derailing even the most innocuous of debates on this issue, not always just a fear of some elite howling "racist" at anyone who dares mention the topic. It is little wonder that those on the mainstream tread warily in this area.

Upward Mobility Gets a Bit More Elusive.

I'm glad I am not embarking on a degree course this coming year. The obstacles in just getting through all the rigmarole towards a degree these days just seem so much steeper. Especially if you are a student from a poorer background, or even a conventional middle class background as well. I mean when the tuition fees are hitting nine grand a lot of sixth formers are going to seriously question whether it is all worth it. I'm not even talking about the so-called "soft subjects" whatever they may be. I mean even traditional degrees that were seen as gateways to well paying careers (not that should be the be all and end all of studying) such as medicine or finance; law and IT, and so on. Nine grand is a potential huge risk especially in the more competitive areas where jobs may be scarce to start with and perhaps less well paid at the beginning. Sadly I think there are many who are just going to throw the towel in before they even fill in the UCAS form. I'd like to see some sort of brighter side to all this, but then I read this story about three out of five of the more prestigious graduate recruiters planning to filter out graduates who will not or more importantly [for this post] cannot perform unpaid or very limited paid internships to get a bit of work experience. (and lets face it or the employer a free staff member into the bargain.) On the face of it this seems rather sensible. Firstly there are more graduates for fewer posts, so bump up selection criteria. Secondly it can go some way to solving the studying / experience paradox. That is you can't get experience as you are studying, and you can't do the studying whilst you are doing the experience, so you end up having to study for the job, only to not have the experience for the job because you don't have the experience for the job you have to study to get. Lastly it's good CV fodder. However these placements have the downside of being more difficult to do if you don't have much in the way of cash. If you have your own cash or a well off family that/they can see you through the costs of doing unpaid or poorly paid work (some pay the lavish sum of £2.50 p/hr), all those trains, taxis, fuel and buttys and pop start totting up, not to mention the money lost through a gap in earning. Many of these internships may continue after the degree is over and the student loan is drying up. Lower income people are further disadvantaged by possibly having to supplement their income with a paid part time job. Balance this with study, a reduced amount of time available for out of curriculum internship, the possibility of cutting the hours of paid employment (likely needed for household income) to complete the internship. Then the fact of having reduced mobility as you have no savings for a flat or something near the internship, or running a car, or paying for buses. The problems in having to continue unpaid or below minimum wage internship after qualifying is much more pressing for someone of limited means who really needs to start earning decent money that bit more urgently. It is highly depressing to think that many less well off people are going to see the odds so harshly stacked against them, and it will enter their minds "Is this really all worth it?", and I hate to say a fair few are going to think yes.

All in all not a great sign for a future spurt of healthy upward mobility.

The Perfect Stick With Which the Mail Can Use to Beat the NHS

Swine flu has had a great deal of coverage this past few weeks, and none more so than in the very tragic case of young Lana Ameen (3 years old) who died of the illness shortly after Christmas. This has led to some people including (understandably) her grief stricken parents to question the wisdom of the governments scientific advisers advice not to vaccinate children under 5 who showed no outwards symptoms of the illness this time around, unlike last years outbreak. (sadly Lana fell under this category.) There have also been reports of a shortage of flu vaccines (not always just the H1N1 strain. The media always fudge these kinds of technicalities) in some areas, either the result of bodged forward planning or people surging to be vaccinated after they have seen the new criteria for those who should be inoculated (i.e carers etc.) and reacting to the narrative string of deaths from flu that have been reported from around Christmas time, or by stories of left over vaccine from last year being handed out. Concerns about the reasons why the advisers changed the criteria have compounded the issue. The perceived "overkill" in response to the last outbreak (though there was nothing trivial about it to the estimated 457 who were believed to have died of swine flu) may have led to a "dropping of guards", or that some kind of herd immunity from last years inoculations should see this year through as well. Or that procuring massive amounts of vaccine for the under 5's was objectively economically unsound after it was estimated that only one in four under 5's had received the previous call to have the jab last time around. We still live in a society that has a fair amount of suspicion towards vaccination, another wonderful legacy of the MMR scare. Though there are reports of worried parents paying over the odds for private inoculations in the aftermath of Lanas tragic death.

It would be an invidious task for anyone to oversee. To decide how vigorously to respond to an outbreak before it has happened, with a finite amount of money to deal with the problem. If we had Star Treks replicators we could perhaps afford to magic medicine up for everyone with no need to bean count. But sadly we don't, and it is devastatingly hard to know where to draw the line. My own hunch is that under 5's should have remained eligible for the vaccine. But I don't have either the full facts about budget restraints or the medical expertise to really expand on this other than perhaps a theory of being over prepared than under. But as I said I don't have the medical knowledge to expand on that. Amanda Platell of the Daily Mail probably has less knowledge about medicine than I do (and that aint a lot), and probably thinks disease is spread by Satan farting in your face like 15th century folk believed. Unlike me she isn't afraid to make sweeping generalisations and give her uninsightful tuppenceworth;

"One can only imagine the courage it must have taken for Zana and Gemma Ameen to release a picture of their three-year-old daughter Lana in the final hours of her pitifully short life.
Lana died from swine flu on Boxing Day, and now Dr Ameen, a hospital registrar, has spoken out to expose the cruelty of a system that refuses vaccinations against this deadly flu to children under five. Had Lana been given the £6 jab, as her parents had requested, her father is convinced she would still be alive.

Not only does this needless tragedy expose the flawed reasoning behind who is entitled to the inoculations, it also highlights the shameful way the £110billion we now spend on the NHS is used. Or rather, wasted.

Where is the morality in a public health system that removes tattoos and performs boob jobs, yet denies children protection from a known killer?

In a week when we’ve learned that some doctors are getting £100,000 overtime pay, on top of their £96,000 salaries, and that nearly a thousand GPs are on salaries of £200,000, how can it possibly be justified?

The UK’s NHS system still allows wide, free access to patients from anywhere in the EU. Other countries, quite rightly, prioritise their own citizens. Why on earth don’t we?

The truth is that all political parties are terrified of admitting the truth — the NHS needs a complete overhaul. There must be priorities and surely a life-saving drug for a child is more important than vanity procedures and gastric bands for those who can’t control their eating?
Dr Ameen is right when he says the decision not to give children the jab is not about saving lives but saving money.

‘Everyone — from her health team to the Government, to me, her Daddy who loved her more than anything in the world — let her down,’ he wrote in this paper yesterday.
And until we stop treating the NHS like some sacred cow, and face up to its failings, children like Lana will continue to be its innocent victims."

This article is revealing in many ways. Firstly it shows that Platell knows nothing about what she is spouting off about. You can't really make direct comparisons between such differing health care procedures such as how far a blanket vaccination program should go and providing gastric bands for a start. The second is that this article is not just an attack on the vaccination program, but a launchpad for a broader attack on the NHS itself, hence all the stuff about treating our own etc... This is perfect material to attack the NHS regardless of what it does. Attack them for being under prepared as this article does, or attack them for wasting money if they over prepare as Lidljohn did in this article . It is win-win for armchair pundits who can safely attack from the office, without ever having to face the responsibility of allocating funding for potential pandemics which no one can ever wholly predict. With this kind of story the NHS can be painted as a bloated incompetent socialist bureaucracy which either wastes taxpayers money, or lets kids die by penny pinching. This is the real point of these polemics, not any sort of insightful critique of the way our health care is funded. So forgive me if I won't be lectured by someone like Platell about facing up to the "failings of the NHS"

Who on Earth is Writing Sarah Palin's Speeches?

The exact nature of the content and theme of Barack Obama's official speech about the aftermath of the shootings in Tucson has been the subject of extreme speculation in the days running up to it. Would he use it to directly attack the Tea Party and Sarah Palin? No. Would he call for unity in the wake of the shootings? Yes. Would he attempt to capitalise politically on it by smearing the more vocal of his opponents and claim they were actually responsible for it and not just some lone nutter? No. The speech I think went down pretty well. He obviously highlighted on calling for national unity and an opportunity to restore debate to bringing people closer together not further and violently apart. Of course his speech focused heavily on the victims of the attack. Such as news that Gabrielle Giffords had actually opened her eyes for the first time since the attack, and then onto the less fortunate victims especially Christina Green who was born when 9/11 occurred and was sadly killed in the shooting. Now it is fairly obvious that Obama is a cool and analytically minded man with a process based legal mindset. Not counting that due to the violent nature of the crime that led to the speech would be difficult for anyone to find the right words to say - this was from a speech perspective not Obamas strongest area (and in a nation that requires a lot of emoting from a leader this has worked against him), however he pulled it off pretty well. The speech was moving and a celebration of the victims lives and the spirit of the nation, not an angry opportunity for a polemic to name names and point fingers. It never seemed either overly sentimental or forced, which is a difficult act to pull off for someone who is not a naturally emotive person. It was as fitting a tribute to the victims and to the country as could have been expected by the head of state. The same can't be said for another speech given by Sarah Palin.

Palins speech; the first one she has made on the shootings since the attack happened wasn't before a live audience but pre-recorded on her website. This makes the biggest gaffe in it totally unfathomable. But let's look at the speech itself. In contrast to Obamas, there was a much greater sense that she used her words to help her own ends into the bargain. A bit of back peddling on her behalf to distance herself from the affair. (Note she wasn't directly responsible for what happened btw) One particular example that stuck out for me was when she quoted something Ronald Reagan had said about rejecting the notion that when a law is broken, society is not at all assumed to be to blame, but the lawbreaker is, and that lawbreaking begins and ends with the lawbreaker. Whether you believe this or not, it is awfully handy to use to distance oneself from the accusations that incendiary rhetoric is fanning the flames in the minds of gunmen with an axe to grind. The speech had a much more self indulgent theme than Obamas did, his was largely an appeal to unity and a memorial to the victims. Palins seemed primarily some kind of damage limitation exercise on her behalf. But the biggest gaffe of all had to be the use of the term "blood libel" to describe the liberal medias attempts to link herself and the Tea Party (I presume that is who she meant) to the shootings. Now let us leave aside that this was supposed to have been a speech lamenting the deaths, and; oh - not about lamenting the bad PR you have been getting from it, I mean who the hell thought using the term "blood libel", a biblical phrase first used to describe the collective guilt the Jews would have to carry the can for for killing Jesus, and was then used to justify the pogroms the Jews faced at the hands of vengeful Christians, was a good idea? Did Palin (or whoever wrote the speech for her) really think that the flack she got was on a par with the victims of these purges? That the fact that Gabrielle Giffords is Jewish should have perhaps raised questions about the suitability of the analogy? That it displayed a staggeringly crass lack of perspective? You really have to ask who put this into the script, a pre recorded one at that; so it can't be dismissed as a slip of the tongue either (admittedly it would have been a very strange one as well). We really have to ask is this women actually more ignorant and gormless than we already suspected. And is it time someone so monumentally unfit for high office should perhaps shuffle off back to her day job sometime soon?

Who Was to Blame for the Massacre in Tucson?

A few of the Telegraph bloggers are suddenly very keen to point out that "the left / liberals" are a bit too eager to pin the blame on the Tea Party and people like Glenn Beck, for encouraging the terrible shootings that have led to six deaths and thirteen injured when lone gunman Jared Loughner opened fire at a meeting where the right wing Democrat congress woman Gabrielle Giffords was holding a meeting, an apparent assassination attempt which has led to Mrs Giffords needing life saving treatment for a bullet to the head, and has caused the deaths of a 9 year old girl; Christina Green*, and several elderly people dead as well. The Torygraph bloggers who have been pretty supportive of the Tea Party are keen to highlight that the left are trying to politicise the massacre for their own ends, and to discredit the Tea Party itself for their own ends.

Obviously the blame ultimately lies with the Loughner himself. He fired those shots, he decided to murder people for whatever twisted "reasons" he may have had. But the controversy around Palin and Becks antics on the part of "the left" and others in relation to the shooting is not a politicising act as such, but (IMHO) serious questions about the nature 0f the kind of rhetoric emanating in some right wing; anti government; libertarian circles. Now there is no evidence that Lolughner was a Tea partier, and if you can stomach reading the self pitying incoherent drivel he has posted in the past, he comes across as an unbalanced anti-government paranoid conspiracy theorist who is attracted to both hard left and hard right sentiment, a classic self pitying fanatic with an axe to grind who thinks the system is spying on him and is to blame for his own failings as a person, and that all us schmucks are too thick to see what he can.

Now back to the criticisms of Beck and Palin. Obviously they aren't responsible for the massacre, and should not take direct blame for it. However, and this is where I'm sorry to say - mud sticks. The level of some of the sentiment from their supporters has been geared towards implied violence. Some of the more fringe extremes have been echoing sentiments in the mould of the placard above. There has been rather a lot of use of metaphors relating to aggression and violence and an inability to even entertain the notion of listening to the opposing side. Not even taking into account the innocuous "Mama Grizzly" thing. Stuff like the rattlesnake poster saying "don't step on me!" or Palin using the "gunsight map" to make a stand against the 20 reps who voted for the healthcare reforms (including Gabrielle Giffords herself). Palin has been keen to remove it from her website since the attack occurred. Now let me emphasise again, Sarah Palin did not guide the hand that fired the bullets, the killer is to blame for what happened. But that does not excuse the harsh incendiary rhetoric that has been doing the rounds. To quote the republican David Frum (so it isn't just leftys who have condemned the militant language):

"Conservatives have been quick to repudiate – to brand as offensive and disgusting – any suggestion that the Tucson shooting was somehow inspired by the extreme anti-Obama political rhetoric of the past 2 years.

In this, conservatives have the facts on their side. By all reports, the Tucson shooter was a very mentally disturbed person. Even if Jared Lee Loughner was aware that Sarah Palin’s PAC had posted a gun sight next to Congresswoman Gifford’s name, that awareness cannot be translated into a motivation. It makes no sense to talk of the “motive” of someone who is fundamentally irrational.

That point should be acknowledged, accepted, and internalized. Yet as we acknowledge that extremist rhetoric did not incite this crime, it should also be acknowledged that the rhetoric has been extreme, and potentially dangerously so. I wrote in April 2009:

A man bearing a sidearm appears outside President Obama’s Aug. 11 town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., under a sign proclaiming, “It is time to water the tree of liberty.”
That phrase of course references a famous statement of Thomas Jefferson’s, from a 1787 letter: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants.”

Earlier that same day, another man is arrested inside the school building in which the president will speak. Police found a loaded handgun in his parked car.

At an event held by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona last week, police were called after one attendee dropped a gun.

Nobody has been hurt so far. We can all hope that nobody will be. But firearms and politics never mix well. They mix especially badly with a third ingredient: the increasingly angry tone of incitement being heard from right-of-center broadcasters.

The Nazi comparisons from Rush Limbaugh; broadcaster Mark Levin asserting that President Obama is “literally at war with the American people”; former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin claiming that the president was planning “death panels” to extirpate the aged and disabled; the charges that the president is a fascist, a socialist, a Marxist, an illegitimate Kenyan fraud, that he “harbors a deep resentment of America,” that he feels a “deep-seated hatred of white people,” that his government is preparing concentration camps, that it is operating snitch lines, that it is planning to wipe away American liberties”: All this hysterical and provocative talk invites, incites, and prepares a prefabricated justification for violence.

Again: this talk did not cause this crime. But this crime should summon us to some reflection on this talk. Better: This crime should summon us to a quiet collective resolution to cease this kind of talk and to cease to indulge those who engage in it.

Although there is always the risk of a loony with an axe to grind going on a shooting rampage whatever you say, or however eloquently you word your views. The sentiments on Glenn Becks show, and the more militant talk on the murky ends of the tea party are music to the ears of a paranoid misfit with an irrational hatred of big government, or any for of government whatsoever and in any form. When Beck equates firearms control with the rise of National Socialism, or calls Obama a white hater without any evidence to back that up, these kinds of people are going to listen. When suggestive imagery about "gunning" after your opponents may cause someone like Palin to perhaps worry that someone could take her literally, especially when people have been turning up to these meetings brandishing firearms that would not be out of place on a bloody battlefield (why do you need such a large arsenal by the way. How big are the coyotes on your farm?) When right wing news networks totally exaggerate the perceived dangers of social democracy such as health care reform as "some doctors are going to send granny to the gas chambers." or pro abortion as "Stalins USSR". This feeds the paranoia of frightened disturbed individuals who think the establishment is out to get them. Is it not too much to ask that those who may be cynically manipulating this stuff, to see that they may be stirring things up that they may not be able to control. Do they even comprehend where it could lead? The right are often quick to highlight European nations slackness on zealous ultra Islamic preachers using militant rhetoric, and that we shouldn't be surprised if a devotee may take their words to horrific conclusions. The same applies here. For all the talk of liberty, there seems a lot of fascistic violent sentiment doing the rounds. Time for more constructive dialogue with opponents, and less threatening demagogy .

THIS VIDEO IS AN INTERESTING AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE ON THE MILITANT SENTIMENT THAT WAS DOING THE ROUNDS, THOUGH BEFORE THE SHOOTINGS HAPPENED. IT IS EVEN MORE PERTINENT IN LIGHT OF WHAT HAPPENED.

*Christina was born on September 11th 2001. She was at the meeting to highlight the positive things that happened that day. What a tragc irony. Utterly heartbreaking.

Banning the N - Word from Huckleberry Finn Isn't Just PC Gone Mad.

There has been a controversy in the US this past week about a book editor called Alan Gribben who has brought out a version of Mark Twains popular "Huck Finn" with the word "nigger" excised and replaced with the less racially charged "slave." instead. This has led to Gribben being pilloried as some kind of politically correct vandal kowtowing to "hurt feelings" of "minorities", the usual spiel which we see associated with stuff like this. But people who have only heard that bit of the story are missing the point. Mr. Gribben is a well known scholar on these stories, possibly the only man who knew more about them was old Mark Twain himself. The reasoning [on Gribbens part] behind this act was to actually stop schools in the South from banning the book outright for it's perceived racist connotations, that the editorial would explain the change and allow everyone to understand the racial terminology in the correct context. It was not an act of censorship, but an attempt to circumvent it. Alan Gribben should be applauded, but I doubt many see beyond what they want to see in this whole affair.

In an ideal world the book should be printed as Twain wrote it. People should have at least some grasp of artistic and narrative context. Just because someone uses iffy terminology or controversial stuff doesn't mean that they are endorsing or approving it. There are three reasons I see that results in people wanting to ignore the whole thing, all of which are in some way a response to people not taking what I have just said on board. Firstly the racism and slavery that are themes of the book are still very uncomfortable topics in that part of the US. There is shitloads of baggage around the whole thing. Just overlooking the Huck Finn books is one easy way for teaching boards to skirt the issue. Secondly some black commentators and others hear about all this racist talk without actually reading the books and jump to the wrong conclusions, calling for this "racist nonsense" to be barred in the classroom, which gives the boards another reason to do the first thing. And finally because racist boneheads start calling for the books to be taught ostensibly as it is PC Marxism not too, but largely because they get off on books with nigger written in them. These people don't realise that Twain's works actually condemn racism, as subtext and context don't mix well in the literalists mind. It's rather like those BNP people who deliberately buy gollies and black and white minstrel memorabilia. They think they are being rebellious.* Or on the other side, why on later film versions of "Oliver Twist" Fagin's overt Jewishness** had to be toned down as the perceived anti-Semitic nature of the character began to overshadow the "message" of the story. So we have a mixture of - on the firsthand - being well intentioned and buck passing at the same time, others missing the point totally, and for the latter - missing the point and being racist as well. Alan Gribben has discovered (I hope) a method of getting Twains brilliant books back into the classroom avoiding the above in one stroke.

It really is a shame these books are banned. They aren't racist. Mark Twain wrote them precisely to challenge the prejudice of the age. As his readers perhaps would have thought back then, that Huck Finn was right to think that Tom Sawyer was wrong to help some (and someone elses) mere slave boy escape. Huck and the readers learn through getting to know "nigger" Jim and to learn about his plight and see how he is a victim. To see him as a human with feelings and emotions and not just some piece of property. To see that Tom Sawyer was right to challenge the racist "wisdom" of the age, to his conscience. Twain is challenging the reader to see the wrongness of treating human beings as slaves and to appeal to the plight of your fellow man and not to the racist dogma of the age. These are important stories, and no-one is going to come out a raving bigot if they read them properly. So far from being a PC busybody perhaps Alan Gribben will end up doing us all a favour.

* This scientific phenomenon is also known as "looking like a bit of a prat."

** That was the point really. Fagins Jewishness wasn't really all that relevant to the actual story. It is sort of hinted at in dead exposition in the books that he was a Jew who had fled from pogroms in his native land to London. But anti Semites blew it up as his "Jewishness" being responsible for his villainous character. The simple fact is Fagin could have been from Birmingham and it would not have changed the story in any real way. You just need a grotty looking weirdo who's dodgy and gets kids to steal for him. It doesn't matter where he came from.

There is No "War On Motorists" But there Should Be.

Both Eric Pickles and Philip Hammond seem to think that there is something called the "War on motorists", and have vowed to end this so called war. Well let me just explain something.

THERE IS NO WAR ON MOTORISTS TO STOP!

I hear this phrase from Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond, just about every right wing columnist who's ever existed, people who write angry letters to newspapers about being (gasp) fined for parking somewhere they shouldn't. People who moan at speed cameras slowing people down (isn't speeding actually dangerous and all that "hit me at 30 I live, 40 I die! stuff btw??) and so on and so on. So bloody what if you get fined for speeding - tough titty it's illegal you moron. Got booked on double yellows? Schoolkids know you get done for that. Fined for overstaying on a meter zone, buy a watch then!

Why is this such a "pissed off" posting? My particular beef about this kind of thing has come about because A) Eric Pickles, the communities secretary has got rid of the last governments limits on town centre parking and higher fees for parking in town centres, because what we obviously need is more cars clogging up our town centres that can barely cope with what they have now. B) Philip Hammond is Transport Secretary and has said that this is a part of stopping the war on motorists (translates to sucking up to petrolheads) and that:

"cars are a lifeline for many people – and that by supporting the next generation of ultra-low emission vehicles, it can enable sustainable green motoring to be a long-term part of Britain’s future transport planning."

Which loosely translates into "Fuck changing our car dependency, that's way too much bother on our part. What will Jeremy Clarkson say about that? I'll just make up some stuff about future cars that run on antimatter, and pass the buck for some other guy to pick up down the line."

Let me say off the bat, that I do drive, and there is no doubt the car is on some level a useful tool. In an ideal world we could use them to our hearts content and they would benefit our lives. Say they ran on air, and could turn into a briefcase you could carry around when you didn't need them (a la the Jetsons) so no need for stuff like parking spaces then. Unfortunately they don't work like that, and we don't live in a Hanna Barbera cartoon. Our dependency on the car is a serious problem and it needs tackling. But no one has the balls to do anything about it, and that is a problem when the guy tasked with handling this stuff is bullshitting his way out of facing up to the terrible problems the car addiction is stacking up. I saw this was likely to be the way we were headed (in a traffic jam probably) when the rather clever M4 bus lane was said to be facing the chop, the motorway equivalent of having Scrappy Doo shot dead in an episode of the Scooby Doo cartoon. Then the speed cameras in Oxfordshire are to be deactivated to save cash (thought they were there to fleece motorists?) This has confirmed my worst fears.

Our obsession about private car use is a lot like being addicted to crack. It may make us feel better in the short term, it gives people a buzz and our high with their new machines, and we all go crazy if someone tries to get a grip on our addiction. Like crack these small pleasures are eclipsed by so many pitfalls. Yes, crack may feel nice for a while, but you do realise you have to steal from grannies to get cash: you have pock marked skin and about four teeth left at 25, you stink and look awful and all this is a result of wanting that high. Likewise cars clogg up our streets and town centres, and then the bypasses, then the bypasses of the bypass that had to bypassed. They are smelly and expensive to run. They kill about 71 people per day (UK), and maim many others for life. They poison our air. They require roads and motorways that scar our landscape, and can bisect communities as that snarling bypass acts like an impenetrable tarmac frontier (the Twyford Down cutting on the M3 was nothing short of environmental vandalism. Bloody dreadful). The petrol they run on helps fund vile regimes like Saudi Arabia, and has caused so much shit in the Middle East. They make us miserable and cause seemingly mild mannered people to explode into ranting swearing lunatics for stuff as simple as someone taking a few seconds longer to park up. They disrupt wildlife and cause carnage to wildlife populations and, oh they fuck the climate up too. Truly a record anyone should be proud of. Some say cars are liberating, they seem to just enslave us as much in my opinion. And yet any attempt to try and fix this addiction results in derision and anger, as does anyone who is addicted but won't admit it when confronted. And this rage makes transport secretaries crumble. But the problems excessive car use cause won't go away. Indeed the 6 billion PFI sum (no really) being spent on the M25 widening project* should be a nice little sum our kids will have to pay back over the long haul.

The problem of excessive car usage is compounded by how it drives ugly libertarian impulses in the more vocal petrolheads that can cascade downwards to other motorists. How the freedom to drive at 46 mph on a suburban main road is now somehow seen as some sign of resistance against the "Big brother state" and not just the actions of a selfish prick with a small penis who is going to kill someone if he's not careful. How traffic wardens** are seriously compared to the Gestapo and have to wear those cameras lest they be punched in the face by a driver too stupid to realise that he doesn't have a sovereign right to park his Audi "sportscar" where he likes. To quote that quintessential darling of the right :-) George Monbiot:

"When you drive, society becomes an obstacle. Pedestrians, bicycles, traffic calming, speed limits, the law: all become a nuisance to be wished away. The more you drive, the more bloody-minded and individualistic you become. The car is slowly turning us, like the Americans and the Australians, into a nation which recognises only the freedom to act, and not the freedom from the consequences of other people’s actions. We drive on the left in Britain, but we are being driven to the right."

One of the less remarked comments of Margaret Thatcher that although seemed quite innocuous, turned out to have great consequences was her crass remark about any man over 26 being a failure if he couldn't drive and used public transport. Some of that mud sticked. We need urgent urgent investment of public transport, and more bums on buses and trains. I can't see how the car focused society is ultimately sustainable. It will be bitter medicine to swallow, people won't like it, but I don't see how it is avoidable if we want to avoid serious problems in the future. War on the motorist. If only.

* I'm astounded this doesn't seem to generate a great deal of controversy. The Variable Speed Limit signs they put up seem to arouse more pique. (the Nanny State is slowing us down.) Do these VSL signs (used to regulate a steadier traffic flow discipline) also hint that widening may still not be enough?

** The issues around private clamping, or wardens being paid on commission to book people are separate arguments, and IMHO are both better done by the public sector for the simple purpose of up keeping traffic parking regulations and not to make cash. Cutting the dependency of car use will be a painful process and the public need to be won over (a bit). Stuff like this just antagonises everyone and is dodgy anyway.