Yesterday, as Mr Blair prepared to publish his email, Downing Street said the Prime Minister would not “capitulate” to demands for the scheme to be scrapped, despite the huge numbers of signatures on the petition.
Blair rebuffs 1.8m who signed road petition | Uk News | News | Telegraph.
Ah, yes, the “fuck you, I’m right and you’re wrong” approach so typical of this corrupt, venal Prime Minister and his cohorts of jackanapes. If nearly two million voters point out that they are not happy with a policy, responding with “fuck you” is the wrong answer. I know that there are those who think the PM’s plans are wonderful, but as I have mentioned before, there are a suite of alternative options to consider that do not involve tracking us all. And, as I have said before, road pricing providing that it is equitable and market driven is perfectly reasonable.
The patronising and arrogant attitude that it is we, not he, who must change our minds is just so bloody typical of this conceited narcissistic man. The assumption that he has all the answers and we – all 1.8 million of us are wrong typifies what I have come to despise about him and his intellectually lazy government.
Just as an aside, the argument that we should (as Neil Harding points out in his comments):
drive at off peak or use public transport.
would amuse me if the subject were not so serious. For this to happen and be effective in reducing congestion, something else needs to change.
I’ve said it before, but I will say it again as the point clearly needs to be made. All those people struggling to get into the office for 09:00 are not doing this through some perverse masochistic choice; they do it because their employers require them to be there at that time. So, while I find it mildly amusing to see Neil arguing for supply and demand – and I don’t disagree – until our culture shifts significantly and employers start to trust employees to work effectively from home, then the daily grind to work will continue. It will be more expensive and we will complain about it, but it will continue.
As for public transport; I am in favour of any form of public transport that takes vehicles off the roads. Therefore, I am opposed to simply getting on the bus. It is expensive and slow. To get into the city centre and back I have to cough up over a fiver – that equates to the best part of thirty quid a week. It does not cost me that to run a motorcycle – even a BMW R1150RT – and I get the flexibility of direct routes, better time keeping and the freedom to travel where and when it suits me. And during the rush hour I am trickling past the queues of clogged up buses, so the bike wins hands down every time and you will have to prize the keys from my cold dead hands before I give it up.
A light rail system running alongside protected cycleways, providing it was inexpensive to use would appeal to me though and I would consider using it. That or working from home, of course.
Oh, and Neil, cars are not dangerous, people are; but that’s a whole different discussion.
Reading Blair’s response, I don’t see where he has said ‘fuck you’. He has pointed out that no decision has been made and that it would be 10-12 years off anyway – there are at least 2 elections before then. How that is ‘fuck you’ I don’t know.
Even if he had responded and said ‘ok I give in, no road pricing’. Then people would have said ‘what a weak knee-ed prat and how dare he even think about it in the first place’. So he obviously couldn’t win.
The majority of people in London (whipped up by the Tory press hysteria and scare stories) fought (and are still fighting) tooth and nail to oppose Ken’s congestion charge, now most think it has been a success and prefer the lower traffic levels in central London and have elected Ken again on a platform to increase the zone which he has now done. Sometimes the government have to lead public opinion.
You may be quite happy in covering the country in yet more roads and carparks and for everybody to drive around (breaking speed limits) in a dangerous tonne plus metal box clogging our city centres to death, polluting our kids and killing us all, I prefer to have a quality of life. Issue all these fat drivers with a cycle – without cars clogging the roads, cycling (and being a pedestrian would be a pleasure and not some death defying obstacle course and it might reduce the NHS bill for obesity at the same time.
Some people have to use public transport – the elderly, disabled, a lot of the poor. Their lives are being made hell, breathing in fumes, risking life and limb trying to cross car clogged roads, trying to get to places that have been built for the car with no consideration to public transport. Where public transport is slow or infrequent, it is largely because planners built for the car or because people are making journeys in cars clogging the roads when they should be making these journeys by public transport.
I think we all know by now that any consultation with the electorate is nothing more than a show because he will have already decided what to do. This is an example as was Iraq, oh and the fucking ID Cards thing. The man is a piece of ratshit, a war criminal and a scumbag of the highest order.
Neil, I’d have thought it pretty obvious that my comment was rhetorical rather than literal. The email in my inbox contains the usual Blair platitudes; contemptuous and contemptible; basically saying that he doesn’t give a shit what we think, he is going to do what he planned to do all along. That’s a pretty big “fuck you” to me. But, then, I expect nothing less form this nasty little egomaniac.
As for the rest of your anti-car rant, it is a strawman. Perhaps you would be kind enough to point out where, precisely, I proffered more roads as a solution to congestion? Or that speeding is acceptable behaviour? Or, for that matter evidence that as a driver (and rider) I am fat? Road deaths are, indeed bad, but “killing us all” is stretching the point beyond breakage.
Frankly, had you done me the courtesy of reading my post properly before you decided to shoot from the hip with some fairly predictable rhetoric, you would realise that I am broadly in favour of road pricing; it is the surveillance aspect that I oppose and will do so to the point of civil disobedience.
Of course, Blair denies that surveillance will impinge on our privacy. I don’t believe him. I don’t believe anything he says. That is because this is a man who has not only lied to parliament and the country but has been seen to do so and remains unapologetic about it. I do not indulge liars with my belief. He had his chance a long time ago.
You will also note that like many opponents of the Blair regime, I have pragmatic and sensible solutions to offer the debate; but, then, as far as Blair is concerned, anyone who disagrees with him is wrong.
So, yes, “fuck you!” is exactly what he is saying here.
I don’t see how road pricing could work without surveillance – surely we need to know when and where people are driving to charge them appropriately. We can’t put toll barriers on roads – they are too narrow. The easiest solution is satellite tracking.
I know we have been here before with the ID debate but I really think you are paranoid about the government knowing stuff. I really don’t get it. Maybe you would be happier if Tesco run the scheme, about 15m people happily give them personal info every day, or the big banks – virtually everyone gives them personal info or the millions of NHS and council staff that have access to the most personal info. What about the 7m oyster card users? Mobile phones? Internet? Google even knows when most people are having a wank. How long have we now had CCTV? Most people recognise the benefits far outweigh any negatives on all these things. When you think about the problems caused by inequality, this is a non-issue.
Where I work, I get to see the most personal medical and social data on people every day – it couldn’t be more personal. There is safety in numbers – people really don’t give a shit about all that – they just get on with the job and people’s personal data just washes over you after you have seen more than a few hundred cases yet alone thousands. You need to realise you really are not that important – nobody in government is interested in your particular personal data. Your personal data is only relevant in that it is needed to make a system as efficient as possible.
As for Blair – Britain is a better place than 1997 because of him, that is the bottom line for me. You may disagree with his decisions – but Iraq aside he has got most things right. I remember how difficult it was under the Tories, the number of people out of work, how the Tories poked into every aspect of our lives and tried to control it- even our sex lives. Lifestyle choices that harmed no-one and was no business of the government whatsoever. Then there were crumbling hospitals and schools with leaking roofs, winter crises every year. I could go on. Look at the attitude of the police in the 1980s and 1990s. Longrider, I can tell you are a decent guy but you need to see further than your nose on these issues.
PS when I said fat drivers I meant just that – drivers who are fat. Even those drivers who keep fit probably drive to the gym to use cycling machines, oh the irony!!
Oystercard is putting me under surveillance? Aaagh, they never told me that when I bought it. How do I make them stop?
Incorrect. There is a perfectly simple solution currently in use that makes no use whatsoever of satellite tracking and could be adapted to use prepay accounts allowing for anonymous travel should people wish. It uses a transponder that registers the vehicle’s passage past a toll point. But, of course if Blair says different, well, then Blair, being right about everything, means that the French just don’t know what they have been doing all these years.
You see? I can see beyond my nose after all – all the way across the channel, in fact.
[Comment ID #1861 Will Be Quoted Here]
You can’t. That a database capable of interrogating your journeys is entirely unnecessary is just another manifestation of the interfering nature of politicians – in this case the deeply obnoxious Ken Livingstone.
“You need to realise you really are not that important – nobody in government is interested in your particular personal data. Your personal data is only relevant in that it is needed to make a system as efficient as possible.”
Yes, and that’s the problem. Mere data reduces people to a numbered nonentity. The sensitive personal information that may ‘wash over’ you could in fact be the traumatic detail of someone else’s misery and struggle. Where’s the humanity, the dignity and – dare I say it – respect in that?
It is thinking such as that that made the Gestapo’s job so easy. Efficiency, how many have died in the name of efficiency?
Good lord, when do we have to do to get people to acknowledge the truth of this matter?
As Booker quite correctly pointed out, we will have road pricing because the EU says we should.
When we get road pricing, tracked by the Galileo satellite system, that system will be run by the EU, since it must be compliant with Directive EC directive 2004/52.
And that data in that system will be shared with our EU partners, because that is why tolls must be “interoperable”. OK?
If you don’t want road pricing, don’t back a pro-EU party. In this country, presently, that means if you don’t want road-pricing, well, that’s just tough shit.
DK
There being a glimmer of light after all.
Don’t forget that Galileo is part-owned and backed by China.
DK