51 Offences in 45 Minutes

Simon E wrote:

Crashboy wrote:

Schools don't "preach" anything nor what they"should" believe  either religion or politics - trust me, they don't have the time - and even faith schools are supposed to do exactly what you say  (i.e teaching about religionS plural + teaching them what those concepts are rather than forcing a particular point of view down their throats.   OFSTED doesn't  - quite rightly - allow that!)

Using 1970's phrases like "bible bashing" is not very helpful to the debate though...

The term "bible bashing" is used deliberately. Many of us grew up with people telling us what's "right" and "truth" and what's good for us (or more often what's bad and that we'd go to hell etc) and only much later realising it was only an opinion, by which time much damage may have been done. And let's not start on the cover-ups of corruption and paedophilia in such organisations.

Unless you've been involved in administration of many schools then you don't know whether they "preach" about religion or politics. OFSTED inspectors are not there for the majority of the time so how would they know what is being done? And it's not as if they creep into the back of the class in uniform and observe the teaching undetected.

If teachers are so busy teaching why do they have time to step outside of their remit and invent massively stupid rules like enforcing number plates and helmets for kids riding their bikes? (the majority of whom are invariably behaving normally)

Any religious organisation, either by implication or direct reference, can't help but undermine the beliefs of other cultures and belief systems. And why are schools run on a religious basis in the first place? Why should a school be based on one set of ancient myths or another? Why can't it exist simply for educating children?

Made me want to stand up and shout 'Amen!' more than any priest has! 

davel wrote:

What will it take for individual drivers to see: 'YOU ARE THE TRAFFIC' 

And in the case of a 2 1/2 mile commute, entirely unecessary traffic.  You could _walk_ that in half an hour (with the assistance of a sufficiently high-bpm playlist, anyway).  If 'traffic' means it takes 'nearly an hour' why is he still driving it?  People are nuts.

iandusud wrote:

The sad thing is when I have mentioned to cyclists that I would be happy to see fuel tax go up if the money was spent on public transport and cycling infrastructure, they mostly look very unhappy. 

I always get rather worried whenever anyone mentions cycling infrastructure, because so much of it is so bad and makes things worse.

The main constraint on building good quality cycling infrastructure is not cost - it's mostly not that expensive - but space. A proper cycle track, of a decent width and not shared with either pedestrians or motor vehicles, is simply impossible to fit down a lot of roads, and could only be done by reducing space for motor vehicles on others. And while I'd support the latter, I understand why it's a problem politically.

The problem is that, apart from inner London and maybe a few other cities, people plan their lives around the car. They buy houses and get jobs such that a car is the only sensible option. So while changes to the road layout that reduce space for cars will result in worse congestion and lots of complaints, but only a very limited amount of mode shift in the short term.

(Thinking about it, part of the problem is the change in the employment market over the last few decades. If you could reasonably expect to stay at a company for decades, it makes sense to buy a house nearby; now people tend to change employer every few years and they are likely to be in all different places, so why not just buy a house  you like and accept that you'll have to drive to all of them? Again, London is an exception because there are so many jobs there that you can reasonably expect to be able to work in central London all your life if you want to)

Mark B wrote:

iandusud wrote:

The sad thing is when I have mentioned to cyclists that I would be happy to see fuel tax go up if the money was spent on public transport and cycling infrastructure, they mostly look very unhappy. 

I always get rather worried whenever anyone mentions cycling infrastructure, because so much of it is so bad and makes things worse.

The main constraint on building good quality cycling infrastructure is not cost - it's mostly not that expensive - but space. A proper cycle track, of a decent width and not shared with either pedestrians or motor vehicles, is simply impossible to fit down a lot of roads, and could only be done by reducing space for motor vehicles on others. And while I'd support the latter, I understand why it's a problem politically.

The problem is that, apart from inner London and maybe a few other cities, people plan their lives around the car. They buy houses and get jobs such that a car is the only sensible option. So while changes to the road layout that reduce space for cars will result in worse congestion and lots of complaints, but only a very limited amount of mode shift in the short term.

(Thinking about it, part of the problem is the change in the employment market over the last few decades. If you could reasonably expect to stay at a company for decades, it makes sense to buy a house nearby; now people tend to change employer every few years and they are likely to be in all different places, so why not just buy a house  you like and accept that you'll have to drive to all of them? Again, London is an exception because there are so many jobs there that you can reasonably expect to be able to work in central London all your life if you want to)

 

One name: Ernest Marples.

Oversaw road proliferation, while having a stake in the companies profiteering from it. When that was called out for not being quite cricket, he transferred the stakes to his wife. Then entrenched the car slavery by bringing in Beeching to chop 1/3 of the rail network and 1/2 the train stations.

That corrupt maniac's legacy has proved pretty irreversible.

davel wrote:

One name: Ernest Marples.

Oversaw road proliferation, while having a stake in the companies profiteering from it. When that was called out for not being quite cricket, he transferred the stakes to his wife. Then entrenched the car slavery by bringing in Beeching to chop 1/3 of the rail network and 1/2 the train stations.

That corrupt maniac's legacy has proved pretty irreversible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Marples 

'In later life, Marples was elevated to the peerage before fleeing to Monaco at very short notice to avoid prosecution for tax fraud.'

Probably tells us everything we need ot know about his moral compass through life.

Mark B wrote:

iandusud wrote:

The sad thing is when I have mentioned to cyclists that I would be happy to see fuel tax go up if the money was spent on public transport and cycling infrastructure, they mostly look very unhappy. 

I always get rather worried whenever anyone mentions cycling infrastructure, because so much of it is so bad and makes things worse.

The main constraint on building good quality cycling infrastructure is not cost - it's mostly not that expensive - but space. A proper cycle track, of a decent width and not shared with either pedestrians or motor vehicles, is simply impossible to fit down a lot of roads, and could only be done by reducing space for motor vehicles on others. And while I'd support the latter, I understand why it's a problem politically.

The problem is that, apart from inner London and maybe a few other cities, people plan their lives around the car. They buy houses and get jobs such that a car is the only sensible option. So while changes to the road layout that reduce space for cars will result in worse congestion and lots of complaints, but only a very limited amount of mode shift in the short term.

(Thinking about it, part of the problem is the change in the employment market over the last few decades. If you could reasonably expect to stay at a company for decades, it makes sense to buy a house nearby; now people tend to change employer every few years and they are likely to be in all different places, so why not just buy a house  you like and accept that you'll have to drive to all of them? Again, London is an exception because there are so many jobs there that you can reasonably expect to be able to work in central London all your life if you want to)

 

And further to this point, the 'school run' is something that is now seen as the norm - whereas when I was a school aged nipper (back in the depths of the last millenium!), we went to the nearest school. None of this 'choice' nonsense - you live in the catchment area, you go to this/that school. Now kids routinely go to schools that require long journeys, often passing by schools much closer to home. "Ooh, we're over the moon, we managed to get our Tarquill into St Beckhams Academy - it's a two hour drive, but the Ofsted was outstanding"

KendalRed wrote:

Now kids routinely go to schools that require long journeys, often passing by schools much closer to home. "Ooh, we're over the moon, we managed to get our Tarquill into St Beckhams Academy - it's a two hour drive, but the Ofsted was outstanding"

Don't be too harsh on parents - in some areas, schools are so oversubscribed that "choice" simply doesn't exist - you go where you get sent, even if it's an hour's bus ride away.  We're planning to move out of London when ours hit school age, for this very reason.

srchar wrote:

KendalRed wrote:

Now kids routinely go to schools that require long journeys, often passing by schools much closer to home. "Ooh, we're over the moon, we managed to get our Tarquill into St Beckhams Academy - it's a two hour drive, but the Ofsted was outstanding"

Don't be too harsh on parents - in some areas, schools are so oversubscribed that "choice" simply doesn't exist - you go where you get sent, even if it's an hour's bus ride away.  We're planning to move out of London when ours hit school age, for this very reason.

Schools being secular would help, too. We could practically throw our kids into a decent school from our garden... Problem is, they'd get a daily bible bashing, so we go past that to the nearest non-sky fairy one a mile away.

davel wrote:

srchar wrote:

KendalRed wrote:

Now kids routinely go to schools that require long journeys, often passing by schools much closer to home. "Ooh, we're over the moon, we managed to get our Tarquill into St Beckhams Academy - it's a two hour drive, but the Ofsted was outstanding"

Don't be too harsh on parents - in some areas, schools are so oversubscribed that "choice" simply doesn't exist - you go where you get sent, even if it's an hour's bus ride away.  We're planning to move out of London when ours hit school age, for this very reason.

Schools being secular would help, too. We could practically throw our kids into a decent school from our garden... Problem is, they'd get a daily bible bashing, so we go past that to the nearest non-sky fairy one a mile away.

You could send them to the church school and just opt them out of collective worship, but I guess you wouldn’t be able to get on your high horse about it then. 

vonhelmet wrote:

davel wrote:

srchar wrote:

KendalRed wrote:

Now kids routinely go to schools that require long journeys, often passing by schools much closer to home. "Ooh, we're over the moon, we managed to get our Tarquill into St Beckhams Academy - it's a two hour drive, but the Ofsted was outstanding"

Don't be too harsh on parents - in some areas, schools are so oversubscribed that "choice" simply doesn't exist - you go where you get sent, even if it's an hour's bus ride away.  We're planning to move out of London when ours hit school age, for this very reason.

Schools being secular would help, too. We could practically throw our kids into a decent school from our garden... Problem is, they'd get a daily bible bashing, so we go past that to the nearest non-sky fairy one a mile away.

You could send them to the church school and just opt them out of collective worship, but I guess you wouldn’t be able to get on your high horse about it then. 

Don't religious schools get to discriminate in favour of pupils of the right religious background, though? (And with teaching staff as well, come to that).

If you want to opt out of worship on the grounds of not having that religion, they could choose to put you to the back of the queue for admission.

Seems fair to complain about that.  It seems blatantly wrong, to me.

Nicked from a NSS website:

We are non religious parents of a 3 year old child that will be attending primary school from September 2010. There are only four schools in the immediate catchment area and of these, three are faith schools who take pupils based on their religious beliefs or church membership. As this is our first child, we were unaware that we would be excluded from certain schools based on religion but feel strongly that religion should be kept separate from education.
All three of the faith schools have 'outstanding' Ofsted reports and because of this are always oversubscribed whilst the non-faith school offers a lower standard of education. We are only 100m from the nearest school, which happens to be a faith school, and as such we assumed that we would have a good chance of our daughter attending. However, this seems unlikely purely
because of our religious beliefs

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

vonhelmet wrote:

davel wrote:

srchar wrote:

KendalRed wrote:

Now kids routinely go to schools that require long journeys, often passing by schools much closer to home. "Ooh, we're over the moon, we managed to get our Tarquill into St Beckhams Academy - it's a two hour drive, but the Ofsted was outstanding"

Don't be too harsh on parents - in some areas, schools are so oversubscribed that "choice" simply doesn't exist - you go where you get sent, even if it's an hour's bus ride away.  We're planning to move out of London when ours hit school age, for this very reason.

Schools being secular would help, too. We could practically throw our kids into a decent school from our garden... Problem is, they'd get a daily bible bashing, so we go past that to the nearest non-sky fairy one a mile away.

You could send them to the church school and just opt them out of collective worship, but I guess you wouldn’t be able to get on your high horse about it then. 

 

Don't religious schools get to discriminate in favour of pupils of the right religious background, though? (And with teaching staff as well, come to that).

If you want to opt out of worship on the grounds of not having that religion, they could choose to put you to the back of the queue for admission.

Seems fair to complain about that.  It seems blatantly wrong, to me.

 

Nicked from a NSS website:

 

We are non religious parents of a 3 year old child that will be attending primary school from September 2010. There are only four schools in the immediate catchment area and of these, three are faith schools who take pupils based on their religious beliefs or church membership. As this is our first child, we were unaware that we would be excluded from certain schools based on religion but feel strongly that religion should be kept separate from education.
All three of the faith schools have 'outstanding' Ofsted reports and because of this are always oversubscribed whilst the non-faith school offers a lower standard of education. We are only 100m from the nearest school, which happens to be a faith school, and as such we assumed that we would have a good chance of our daughter attending. However, this seems unlikely purely
because of our religious beliefs

That doesn't sound particularly fair, but personally I don't see it as too much of an issue and I'm a confirmed atheist.

For the sake of your kids' education, you could just lie about being a lapsed member of the relevant faith (assuming they don't require genital mutilation to be a member of that faith) and simply educate your kids about the nature of faith. The kids could then decide for themselves if they want to sit through the religious stuff or to make a stand against it.

hawkinspeter wrote:

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

vonhelmet wrote:

davel wrote:

srchar wrote:

KendalRed wrote:

Now kids routinely go to schools that require long journeys, often passing by schools much closer to home. "Ooh, we're over the moon, we managed to get our Tarquill into St Beckhams Academy - it's a two hour drive, but the Ofsted was outstanding"

Don't be too harsh on parents - in some areas, schools are so oversubscribed that "choice" simply doesn't exist - you go where you get sent, even if it's an hour's bus ride away.  We're planning to move out of London when ours hit school age, for this very reason.

Schools being secular would help, too. We could practically throw our kids into a decent school from our garden... Problem is, they'd get a daily bible bashing, so we go past that to the nearest non-sky fairy one a mile away.

You could send them to the church school and just opt them out of collective worship, but I guess you wouldn’t be able to get on your high horse about it then. 

 

Don't religious schools get to discriminate in favour of pupils of the right religious background, though? (And with teaching staff as well, come to that).

If you want to opt out of worship on the grounds of not having that religion, they could choose to put you to the back of the queue for admission.

Seems fair to complain about that.  It seems blatantly wrong, to me.

 

Nicked from a NSS website:

 

We are non religious parents of a 3 year old child that will be attending primary school from September 2010. There are only four schools in the immediate catchment area and of these, three are faith schools who take pupils based on their religious beliefs or church membership. As this is our first child, we were unaware that we would be excluded from certain schools based on religion but feel strongly that religion should be kept separate from education.
All three of the faith schools have 'outstanding' Ofsted reports and because of this are always oversubscribed whilst the non-faith school offers a lower standard of education. We are only 100m from the nearest school, which happens to be a faith school, and as such we assumed that we would have a good chance of our daughter attending. However, this seems unlikely purely
because of our religious beliefs

That doesn't sound particularly fair, but personally I don't see it as too much of an issue and I'm a confirmed atheist.

For the sake of your kids' education, you could just lie about being a lapsed member of the relevant faith (assuming they don't require genital mutilation to be a member of that faith) and simply educate your kids about the nature of faith. The kids could then decide for themselves if they want to sit through the religious stuff or to make a stand against it.

Having been through the Catholic school system, it just doesn't work like that (at least not in my experience) It was actually a lot closer to compulsory Religious Education, with other religions only held up as 'context' to show how wrong they are. We had two (others had more) Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child videos sprung on us - just horrible anti-abortion propaganda. And then there're all the clubs set up around confirmation time to shepherd you into The Club. I count in the Pope's gang, even though I knew it was shit by the time I was 14.

If an organisation has your kids' ears for longer than you do, and wants to drip feed a message that you fundamentally don't agree with, do you really want to spend the energy balancing it out and possibly creating conflict in your kids, as opposed to just send them to a school that doesn't peddle that bullshit? I've actually no problem with my kids signing up to a religion, to a point, but I doubt they're going to get a balanced view of any of them via a school of any religious flavour. 

davel wrote:

Having been through the Catholic school system, it just doesn't work like that (at least not in my experience) It was actually a lot closer to compulsory Religious Education, with other religions only held up as 'context' to show how wrong they are. We had two (others had more) Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child videos sprung on us - just horrible anti-abortion propaganda. And then there're all the clubs set up around confirmation time to shepherd you into The Club. I count in the Pope's gang, even though I knew it was shit by the time I was 14.

If an organisation has your kids' ears for longer than you do, and wants to drip feed a message that you fundamentally don't agree with, do you really want to spend the energy balancing it out and possibly creating conflict in your kids, as opposed to just send them to a school that doesn't peddle that bullshit? I've actually no problem with my kids signing up to a religion, to a point, but I doubt they're going to get a balanced view of any of them via a school of any religious flavour. 

Yeah, it could be a difficult choice depending on just how much better the education is versus the amount of indoctrination.

I'd prefer schools to be focussed on the education aspect and not have any religious involvement (except for teaching about religions in religious studies etc), but history has left us with a bunch of good schools that happen to have been funded and run by different religions. I'd expect there to be a big variation in just how religion focussed they are but I expect it also depends on which religion they follow.

hawkinspeter wrote:

 

For the sake of your kids' education, you could just lie about being a lapsed member of the relevant faith (assuming they don't require genital mutilation to be a member of that faith) and simply educate your kids about the nature of faith. The kids could then decide for themselves if they want to sit through the religious stuff or to make a stand against it.

Hmmm.  Teaching your sprog early on about the importance of cycnicism and lies to getting on in life?

Plus, make sure they cycle there so as to learn how power is always abused, and they'll have a firm grounding in how the world works.

vonhelmet wrote:

davel wrote:

Schools being secular would help, too. We could practically throw our kids into a decent school from our garden... Problem is, they'd get a daily bible bashing, so we go past that to the nearest non-sky fairy one a mile away.

You could send them to the church school and just opt them out of collective worship, but I guess you wouldn’t be able to get on your high horse about it then. 

Is it really a 'high horse' to have such a view? Can you not see why they may want to avoid a school that teaches/preaches stuff they fundamentally disagree with? Like asking a vegan that he/she has to work at a meat processing plant and say "It's fine, you won't touch the dead animals, just be dealing with paperwork, accounts, shift patterns and so on" but facilitating the thing they disagree with.

There are lots of CofE primary schools in Shrewsbury, ours attended the one in our estate. Religion wasn't at all heavy, the head cares far more  about the SATS scores than bible-bashing in the school, to the extent that I consider it to be detrimental to the pupils' development. 10 year olds don't need hothousing and cramming. SATS are a distraction and not indicative of the quality or value of a child's education.

I was brought up absolutely saturated in Christianity but I think schools should be agnostic and discuss religion as part of general Philosophy. Teach them to understand what religion, politics etc are, not what they should believe; but a lot of people don't want them to think for themselves.

Simon E wrote:

vonhelmet wrote:

davel wrote:

Schools being secular would help, too. We could practically throw our kids into a decent school from our garden... Problem is, they'd get a daily bible bashing, so we go past that to the nearest non-sky fairy one a mile away.

You could send them to the church school and just opt them out of collective worship, but I guess you wouldn’t be able to get on your high horse about it then. 

Is it really a 'high horse' to have such a view? Can you not see why they may want to avoid a school that teaches/preaches stuff they fundamentally disagree with? Like asking a vegan that he/she has to work at a meat processing plant and say "It's fine, you won't touch the dead animals, just be dealing with paperwork, accounts, shift patterns and so on" but facilitating the thing they disagree with.

There are lots of CofE primary schools in Shrewsbury, ours attended the one in our estate. Religion wasn't at all heavy, the head cares far more  about the SATS scores than bible-bashing in the school, to the extent that I consider it to be detrimental to the pupils' development. 10 year olds don't need hothousing and cramming. SATS are a distraction and not indicative of the quality or value of a child's education.

I was brought up absolutely saturated in Christianity but I think schools should be agnostic and discuss religion as part of general Philosophy. Teach them to understand what religion, politics etc are, not what they should believe; but a lot of people don't want them to think for themselves.

Schools don't "preach" anything nor what they"should" believe  either religion or politics - trust me, they don't have the time - and even faith schools are supposed to do exactly what you say  (i.e teaching about religionS plural + teaching them what those concepts are rather than forcing a particular point of view down their throats.   OFSTED doesn't  - quite rightly - allow that!)

Using 1970's phrases like "bible bashing" is not very helpful to the debate though...

Crashboy wrote:

Simon E wrote:

vonhelmet wrote:

davel wrote:

Schools being secular would help, too. We could practically throw our kids into a decent school from our garden... Problem is, they'd get a daily bible bashing, so we go past that to the nearest non-sky fairy one a mile away.

You could send them to the church school and just opt them out of collective worship, but I guess you wouldn’t be able to get on your high horse about it then. 

Is it really a 'high horse' to have such a view? Can you not see why they may want to avoid a school that teaches/preaches stuff they fundamentally disagree with? Like asking a vegan that he/she has to work at a meat processing plant and say "It's fine, you won't touch the dead animals, just be dealing with paperwork, accounts, shift patterns and so on" but facilitating the thing they disagree with.

There are lots of CofE primary schools in Shrewsbury, ours attended the one in our estate. Religion wasn't at all heavy, the head cares far more  about the SATS scores than bible-bashing in the school, to the extent that I consider it to be detrimental to the pupils' development. 10 year olds don't need hothousing and cramming. SATS are a distraction and not indicative of the quality or value of a child's education.

I was brought up absolutely saturated in Christianity but I think schools should be agnostic and discuss religion as part of general Philosophy. Teach them to understand what religion, politics etc are, not what they should believe; but a lot of people don't want them to think for themselves.

 

Schools don't "preach" anything nor what they"should" believe  either religion or politics - trust me, they don't have the time - and even faith schools are supposed to do exactly what you say  (i.e teaching about religionS plural + teaching them what those concepts are rather than forcing a particular point of view down their throats.   OFSTED doesn't  - quite rightly - allow that!)

Using 1970's phrases like "bible bashing" is not very helpful to the debate though...

There shouldn't even be a debate. Schools should not be established around, or selecting via, religion. 

vonhelmet wrote:

davel wrote:

srchar wrote:

KendalRed wrote:

Now kids routinely go to schools that require long journeys, often passing by schools much closer to home. "Ooh, we're over the moon, we managed to get our Tarquill into St Beckhams Academy - it's a two hour drive, but the Ofsted was outstanding"

Don't be too harsh on parents - in some areas, schools are so oversubscribed that "choice" simply doesn't exist - you go where you get sent, even if it's an hour's bus ride away.  We're planning to move out of London when ours hit school age, for this very reason.

Schools being secular would help, too. We could practically throw our kids into a decent school from our garden... Problem is, they'd get a daily bible bashing, so we go past that to the nearest non-sky fairy one a mile away.

You could send them to the church school and just opt them out of collective worship, but I guess you wouldn’t be able to get on your high horse about it then. 

Yeah, kids love being thrown into groups then immediately set apart as 'different'. Do you have kids? Were you a kid? Are you an offended sky fairyist?

And you should remember - I'm no fan of horses. 

srchar wrote:

The fixed costs of driving need to be lowered and the variable costs increased.  Currently, it costs rather a lot of money to get a car sitting outside your house; the cost of the car itself, insurance, VED, annual maintenance, parking permit etc.  To use the car, the only costs are fuel and mileage-related depreciation (and hardly anyone considers the latter).  Fixed costs need to be made variable, e.g. by mandating pay-per-mile (or per-day) insurance, higher fuel duty or - whisper it - demand-based road pricing.  The technology exists to do it, but the political will is weak.

I decided to give up driving last Oct, still unsure whether I will carry on without as it's been bloody difficult at times, especially socially and with friends living across country just a bit too far away to cycle (and the roads are horrible in places anyway) and then do another ride the following morning as I'd stay over.

The last 10 years or so I was down to about 3,000 miles annually, some of that for my charity work, some for visiting the folks up North, a few shorter journeys with the young grandkids and the rest for specific journeys like collecting a bike, having a week in France where I'd spider out in different directions each day from a single base. VED for my '01 Passat is now £195, insurance is about £230 and running costs aren't that much, I spent a big amount in late 2016 but generally in the 13 years I've had it it's been great.

My beef is that despite knowing that my emissions are not that far off what a EURO6 diesel is in real world use (there's some very interesting documents regarding how far off EURO6 vehicles are and why the ULZ extension in London is a load of bollocks) I'm not only being punished once for having an 'older' dirty diesel when it's not the case at all but I'm being punished twice because my 3000 miles will produce less emissions than even a modern zero rated diesel doing only about 5000 miles a year IF it is even remotely close to the bullshit manufacturer figures. Let's not even get to the pony about petrol cars and how they are sweetness and light!

Oh and I bought a house with a garage so I wasn't going to be parking it on the road taking up more space. This is one of the biggest problems government ignores, how much land motors on roads/streets they take up squeezing everyone else, making the roads even more hazardous and more pollution too.

Do I keep the passat and put it back on the road or not, I'd rather have an assisted pedal type thing along the lines of what Grant Sinclair designed https://bikerumor.com/2017/02/20/sinclair-iris-goes-e-trike-route-super-... I'd even be happy with licencing for having a bigger motor for say 30-40mph and longer range so I could do much longer journeys, a shame there was no actual product.

A lightweight pedal assist that had a rack of some sort to carry your 'ordinary' would be even better. 

like yourself I do like giving it the beans on occasion but as my old grandpop said to me when I first passed, it's not the outright speed that is the problem, it's any speed in the wrong situation that will get you and others into bother.

BehindTheBikesheds wrote:

Oh and I bought a house with a garage so I wasn't going to be parking it on the road taking up more space. This is one of the biggest problems government ignores, how much land motors on roads/streets they take up squeezing everyone else, making the roads even more hazardous and more pollution too.

This is a huge problem in my neck of the woods; cars litter every available space in streets lined with housing built before it was usual to have a driveway.  And it's making a comeback - it is common on new-build housing estates to sacrifice driveways and front gardens in order to pack more houses onto the same amount of land.  Such housing estates, being plonked down in the middle of nowhere, with no regard for transport infrastructure, pretty much mandate car ownership.

Yorkshire wallet wrote:

So ban driving then? or double or triple fuel tax and see what great things happen. Stuff like RTAs, health problems and policing are not directly noticeable in people's pockets. £20 on petrol this week is £20 not on something else in the retail sector.

So £20 into government coffers, VS

£20 into retail, where we can rely on them paying a fair wage and all due taxes and that £20 making its way round the community and feeding people. Except it doesn't work - trickle down economics has been discredited consistently since it was first termed, and yet people who think they somehow benefit from it insist on believing it, despite the actual existence of Panama Papers and HSBC leaks and offshore trusts and village-size yachts. If you want to inject £20 into the community you're much better off paying £20 more in benefits - that cash DOES stay in the community. 

Or, the short answer - Amazon.

Yorkshire wallet wrote:

So ban driving then? or double or triple fuel tax and see what great things happen. Stuff like RTAs, health problems and policing are not directly noticeable in people's pockets. £20 on petrol this week is £20 not on something else in the retail sector. I'm not looking at long term health and neither are most of the population who may be living week to week, not decades down the line. It's like smoking, people chose to do it regardless of how much you tell them it's bad.

Except it's not just a driver's long term health that's involved.  That's why it's called an externality, and why your argument here is flawed (though not completely wrong in terms of politics as opposed to economics or morality)

Smoking imposes concequences on the smoker, not on everyone else.  And, anyway, they more than pay for their increased health-care costs in tax.

Edit - I mean your analogy with smoking would work better if cars were designed so as to be airtight with all the emissions directed into the interior of the vehicle.