The Thunderer discusses the nasty burghers of Richmond today – the car hating councillors who have taken it upon themselves to modify their constituents’ behaviour through increased taxation. I’ve discussed this one before, but let’s pinch our noses for a brief revisit and see just what type of people engage in such activities:
The Liberal Democrat-controlled council in the leafy borough has positioned itself at the vanguard of the new green movement by leading the nation in a drive to tax the drivers of bigger cars off the streets with hefty parking charges, replacing some parking bays with double yellow lines and scrubbing parking spaces and garages from the designs of new apartment and office complexes.
The Liberal Democrat council leaders see themselves as environmental visionaries, although many of their constituents don’t share their vision.
Hardly surprising, really. The constituents need to get about for their daily business and for most, the private motor car is the most practicable way of doing it. Who is going to buy or rent a property without parking facilities if they have a car? This behaviour is not “green” it is pure unadulterated spite. Even the Green party doesn’t see it as reasonable:
Even the local Green party, which first proposed a parking discount for energy-efficient cars, believes the resultant scheme now unfairly penalises poorer residents with midrange cars and no offstreet parking.
Of course it does. Socialism; for that is what this is; the Lib Dems are more extreme than even the Labour party on this one; always penalises those it pretends to protect and help.
But let’s get close to the architect of this vile bullying, the truly repugnant Serge Lourie. Karen Boother who sought to challenge the massive parking price hikes comments on this excuse for a human being:
She points out that this is a council whose leader, Serge Lourie — the Liberal Democrat architect of the anti-carbon policies — emitted more carbon dioxide than a fleet of extravagant gas guzzlers when he flew to the borough’s American sister-city, Richmond, Virginia, for its 400th birthday party.
Oh, really? And what about all that kerosene burned up to leave CO2 floating about in the atmosphere? Never mind, our Serge has thought of that one:
Lourie, 61, is first to admit the trip was an “absolutely fantastic jolly”. Joined by his wife, the mayor and two council officials on the transatlantic junket, he used some tree-planting credits that his daughter had given him for Christmas to “offset” the carbon emissions his trip had generated.
Oh, well, that’s all okay, then, he planted a tree. Of course, if he really believed the bollocks he talks, he would have politely declined and maintained his principles, wouldn’t he? But, then, like many such petty bullies, Serge doesn’t have any of those. When asked about the trip:
Was this campaigner against big cars, who encouraged the council to trade in the mayoral 4 litre Daimler for a battery-powered Prius hybrid, just a tad embarrassed at being chauffeured about Virginia in a black 4×4 with a bonnet that came up to his chest? No, he says. He does not even admit to a slight smile at the irony.
The Thunderer is too kind. This is not irony; it is a stinking Richmond-sized turd of hypocrisy. Call him what he is; a hypocrite.
“We’re not trying to ban flying. We’re not trying to ban cars,” says Lourie. “But to live in the centre of Kew with a 4×4 or a really big car seems unnecessary.”
That, Serge, is not for you to decide. It is for the people who elected you and ultimately pay for the free ride you get as leader of the council to decide. Hopefully, they will come to their senses come election time and kick you out of office.
He believes that his campaign to persuade residents to give up their big cars will also make the roads safer for children and combat the obesity epidemic by getting people walking and cycling. His administration will be remembered as groundbreaking, he hopes, a pioneer in the fight to save our planet.
This is not persuasion. Persuasion is a process of convincing people through argument, discussion, example and reason. This is bullying through penalising behaviour that the council considers unacceptable – driving motor cars; in particular, motor cars that Serge doesn’t like.
A third of London councils, as well as Cambridge council and others around the country, are looking on with interest to see how far Richmond can squeeze its residents into new modes of behaviour.
If Richmond succeeds, its policies will have implications far beyond its suburban borders. It will mean that councils throughout the land will feel emboldened to use tax policies to regulate their constituents’ behaviour in a way they have never done before.
It is now up to the residents of Richmond to do everyone in the country a favour and send a very clear message to these people that “behaviour modification” is not the job of the local council. Other councils need to see Serge and his Mafia ignominiously removed from office in order to deter them from following suit. Frankly, losing an election is far too lenient. My favoured option would involve a gibbet.
So much for all this sympathy for drivers, it makes me sick! When is someone going to concern themselves with the curtailed freedoms of pedestrians and cyclists? (33% of households have no access to cars and these are overwhelmingly poorer households). Car drivers who feel the need to spend most of their lives stuck in a tinbox in somewhere like Richmond which has excellent public transport, are not only spoiling the quality of life of most of the residents, they are destroying the environment and probably making their children fat. If we really are concerned about improving people’s freedoms and quality of life we would think of the children and elderly who have no access to cars but have to breathe in its pollution daily, get deafened by the noise, have nowhere to play safely near their houses and find themselves caged in by concrete as they risk their lives trying to negotiate flyovers and dual carriageways to get anywhere. When have ‘libertarians’ ever defended the rights of those who cannot afford a car? Never is the answer, because their concern is not about freedom at all, it is just about their right to be anti-social and not get taxed for it.
Sigh… I wonder why I bother sometimes, I really do. As is usual, you are spouting bollocks. This isn’t about cars per se (as it happens I agree with Serge about the suitability of SUVs in the urban environment), it is about local councillors overstepping their brief. They are not elected to engage in behaviour modification, they are elected to serve the electorate.
As is usual, you do not understand what a libertarian is or what we believe in.
And can you try, just for once to stick to facts rather than wild assertions? A difficult one, I realise, but please do try.
Don’t bother answering the question then. So called libertarians like you seem to not consider pedestrians, non-smokers, cyclists or anybody on the fringes as having any rights. When we build for cars and pollute and kill, why is that not an infringement on people’s rights? Of course it is. It is you that does not understand liberty. Try reading this by a human rights professor who does understand what liberty is really about.
I more than answered your question. It is your lack of intellect that is holding you back. Given that I am a non smoker, a cyclist, a pedestrian and don’t own a car, the utter nonsense of your attack on me becomes clear. Cyclists, non-smokers, and pedestrians are not under attack by a council is overstepping its remit. It is not up to councils to modify peoples’ behaviour because that is not what they are elected to do.
You do not create freedom by creating ever greater restrictions. You have to be terminally stupid to think that is the case. But, then, we’ve been here before and once again, you demonstrate that you are unable to follow the English language, let alone a simple logical argument. Ever the obsessive control freak – ever trying to stop people doing things that you don’t like or disapprove of. Libertarains will defend those of whom they disapprove (smokers for instance, drivers of SUVs for instance) because we can rise above our dislikes and prejudices and defend everyone’s freedom to live their lives as they see fit, not as some bitter, twisted puritanical control freak sees fit.
You say that you oppose the Richmond’s car tax proposals because it oversteps the council’s bounds. “They are not elected to engage in behaviour modification, they are elected to serve the electorate” I know nothing about Richmond’s politics, but if the Lib Dems were to have made this a pre-election commitment then enacting it *would* be serving the electorate.
The absolutist position of libertarians on points such as this always amuses me. Libertarians object to the ‘behaviour modification’ implied by regulations such as these, or the regulation of smoking or even anti-discrimination legislation, but rarely complain about the Theft Act, which seeks to modify the behaviour of those who would take their property, or the rest of civil law which makes their private property idyll a practical possibility. I assume this is because libertarians take it as an article of faith that all rights derive from property rights so that the only laws which should exist are those which allow property owners to protect or assert those rights. Every argument I have had with a libertarian comes down to this quasi-religious belief, which I am unable to share. Not that property rights should not exist, of course they should, but they should be balanced against the wider rights of the community.
Where that balance should be struck is where I have had many arguments with Neil Harding on his blog. He is an enthusiastic statist, I am not. I oppose ID Cards and the extension of the DNA database.
For example: I support the sensible licensing of modern firearms, because of the risks to public safety if any idiot could buy a gun without control. But I support the ownership of antique firearms without a licence, held as a curio or ornament, as there is small risk to public safety. I would also support the restoration of the sport of target pistol shooting under licence for the same reason. I suspect Neil would want every last gun siezed and destryed – except of course those possessed by the state – and I suspect that the libertarian would want completely untrammelled access, on the grounds of ‘propery rights’.
But I have never claimed to be an absolutist. Like most of the libertarians I come across, I support the rule of law. We do not believe that laws should not exist, quite the opposite. Civil law – the law between men – is perfectly in tune with libertarian philosophy in that it places a reasonable responsibility on each of us not to harm our neighbours. The laws prohibiting murder and theft are reasonable and proportionate as they merely take the principle of civil law into statute law. The libertarian position is simply that liberty ends where it damages another. Neil is attempting to take this principle to an absurd extreme. And, as you say, he is a statist.
The desire to micro manage our lives to the point of modifying our purchasing decisions as is happening in Richmond is most certainly not proportionate, nor is it reasonable. I cannot say whether this was in the Lib Dem manifesto, but the backlash from residents suggests one of two things; either it was not or that those residents didn’t check before casting their vote. Either way, this type of micro management is not the role of local government. Their role is to make sure that the bins are emptied and the streets are lit, not to decide which vehicles their electorate should buy.
Reading your comment here and over on Neil’s blog, we are not so very far apart. I would, for example, agree entirely with your proposals regarding firearms.