Now that's what I call freedom
Thursday, February 7, 2008 Talking of The Free Society (below), I have just received an email bemoaning the fact that the site has a section on motoring. According to our correspondent, "Motorists are the most pampered and cosseted group in the country. Compare their moaning about petrol prices while the rest of us have no choice but to fork out more and more for public transport. Pity they've inviegled themselves into what would otherwise be an organisation well worth supporting."
I must hold my hand up. I have a particular fixation with motoring, especially fuel tax, speed cameras and speed bumps. The car gave millions of people a freedom they could only dream about 100 (or even 50) years ago. There's a downside (as anyone who lives and owns a car in London will know), but it remains a hugely important symbol of individual freedom.
Nothing, to my mind, can compare with the joy of driving a car in the Highlands and islands of Scotland - enjoying the scenery yet insulated from the cold, wet and wind while listening to the radio or your personal choice of music. You're in control. With few restrictions, you can go where you want, when you want. Now that what's I call freedom.
Like smokers, motorists are an easy target for politicians and campaigners. I can understand why, if you don't drive (or can't afford to), you don't much care about motorists. But you HAVE to care, just as non-smokers should care about what is happening to smokers. One day the government will target something that you DO care about. And when that day comes, you will want and need our support - and we will gladly give it.
Genuine liberals must stick together and support one another, regardless of our personal preferences. That is the whole point of The Free Society - a loose coalition of libertarians who want a fairer, less regulated approach to issues such as smoking, eating, drinking and, yes, motoring.
Reader Comments (5)
I do not drive either and often rely on public transport (my wife drives). Regardless, the issue is the same because both drivers and users of public transport are easy targets. Motorists have to pay £30 each per year to cover uninsured drivers while the police spend their time with speed cameras and parking tickets. Commuters on trains have to pay more for less room and a more inefficient system while the government bails out the creditors of Metronet to the tune of £2 billion. This money comes straight from the transport budget meaning more cuts in services and more increases in fares and petrol duty.
No one is accountable but as usual we all pay for the mess.
The cost and quality of public transport where I live gives you no choice but to use a car. We do not even have a bus service to the Doctors in the next village 2 miles away. Every rise in the cost of running a car has to be accepted because there is no choice and the Government must know this-we are sitting ducks for any rise they want to throw at us.
A friend's coming down from Leeds to see me tonight. Just phoned to check on her progress, as she's late. Apparently, the M1 south of Leeds now has Average Speed cameras, allied to flexible speed-limits. The current limit in force is 50MPH. What fun. No sign of any roadworks, nor of any significant congestion. Leeds-Nottingham at forty-nine em-pee-aych. Told her just to imagine Ruth Kelly's wagging finger on each dot-matrix she passes.
Another nu-labor stupidity on the roads, less publicised than congestion-charging, speed-bumps, chicanes et al, is the 40MPH single-carriageway speed-limit for HGVs. I'd love to know how many accidents this causes, both through the bunching of following-traffic and the inevitable increase in unwise overtaking-attempts. Also, what about all the wasted fuel? Factor in all the stupid nu-labor roundabouts, the speed-cameras positioned so as to stop lorries taking a run at the hill and thereby standing a sporting-chance of cresting the grade in anything higher than crawler-gear and the A-Road reality is that an average speed of about 35MPH can be expected; constant gear-changing, accelerating and decelerating, vehicles are not running efficiently.
And then of course, the frustration. The degradation of the driving-experience as we are chaperoned on our way, kept in check, watched, monitored, kept in line by an obsessive nannying authoritarian reich of a government. The most ignorant and despotic set of lawmakers in my living memory. Everything they touch, they ruin. Everything.
Oh, and btw... nu-labor. Yes. Not only do I consider this shower of D-Notices unworthy of capitalisation, I also think "nu-labor" works as a general-purpose adjective to describe ineptitude, stupidity, mendacity, pathological lying, hypocrisy etc., or perhaps just that fleeting moment when one wants nothing better than to slap one's adversary in the chops, i.e. "God, that's such a nu-labor thing to say".
Ex-partners often have something of the nu-labor about them. In my experience.
Congratulations on the new site Forest! :)
I believe motorists should be treated just as fairly as smokers have been. Taxes should be roughly triple the cost of the basic gallon/litre of gas/petrol (trying to speak Yank 'n Brit here...) and hospital campuses of course should be car-free with parking available a minimum of four blocks away to encourage healthy exercise and avoid physical threat to normal visitors and patients.
Children should be taught that if their parents love them they won't insist on driving them around in pollutomobiles, leaving them off at school stinking of petrol fumes and all the lovely chemical outgassings that make up that delightful "new car smell". College scholarships can be offered to those students who remain "car-free" to graduation, and employers can restrict job openings to non-drivers only. Surgeons should of course refuse operations to accident victims who refuse to sign a legal commitment to surrender their drivers' licenses and significant speed bumps should be put at every intersection to discourage automotive commuting.
Movies of course should forbid anything resembling car chases: it's been shown that teens and 20'rs who watch movies with such content tend to have a much stronger belief that fast or reckless driving can be engaged in with little consequence. And car advertisements, enticing many who would normally be quite happy with mass transit and bicycles, should be banned from the airwaves and sports sponsorship. Of course while it makes sense to stop children from advertising eggs every use of children should be made in the campaign to educate the public about the dangers of driving: children choking on roadside fumes, and pictures of dismembered young bodies should be par for the course on billboards and airwaves, and perhaps even be standard (and mandated) decor on car doors to serve as a reminder to those thoughtless enough to remain behind the wheel.
Mercedes Manglers and Rolls Reapers will likely continue to kill and maim the young and innocent for years to come no matter what we do, but a properly designed and managed campaign to make driving less respectable, more difficult, and more expensive will reduce the ghastly toll on our roads and return them at least somewhat to their proper role of pedestrian and bicycle transport.
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Before I became a smokers' rights activist I spent a good number of years as a bicycle activist. I still do not drive, and still have some fond feelings for the propaganda I've just written above. The difference is that nowadays I realize I have no right to play God with other people's lives and choices and I've come to understand that the greater threat to all of us doesn't lie in cars or in cigarettes, but in abused power and social control.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
www.TheTruthIsALie.com