What's wrong with Car Free Day?

[andygates]

From our intranet:

[Car Free Day aims] to encourage us all to leave our cars at home and explore other options for getting to work. Organisations across Devon have previously participated in the day, with staff using tandems, space-hoppers, wheel-barrows, rowing boats, skateboards and piggy-backs to get to work, as well as more ‘normal’ sustainable travel options. This is a fun day with a serious underlying message as transport is one of the biggest contributors to our carbon footprint.

Space hoppers.  That's what's wrong with car bloody free day.  It's a one-off, a silly smug novelty that does nothing to apply pressure where pressure needs applying.  You want to cut driving to work?  Cut parking spaces.  The Unions will whine that it unfairly hits the lower-paid staff, well, tough: driving to work is a luxury.  If you can't afford to drive forty miles to work on your modest salary, move closer or get a bus or change your damn job.

You want to boost cycling?  Covered bike racks where staff can see them.  A memo to managers not to be shirty to people who turn up in weatherproofs.  Our bike racks fill in a delicious parody of predict-and-provide.

You want to boost bus travel?  Tickets at a reasonable price from where people live to where they work.  It's not hard (it just may not be as profitable but hey, you did sell the bus companies).  Call 'em sub-prime or social routes and insist that the companies serve them or take away their licences.

You do not have a right to drive cheaply to work.  You have a responsibility to get to work on time and a responsibility to not squander your wages on tat when you've mouths to feed.

Entitlement culture, it's the thing that will kill the west (if hurricanes and bird flu don't get to it first).

Comments

Curious.

[n-decisive.livejournal.com]

So, what would you do to fix the entitlement culture? Perhaps it'd be best for the hurricanes and bird flu to do them all in, but that'd take a lot of decent sorts away, too...

[jonnycowbells.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about this the other day but in relation to holidays. I can't get over people taking their kids out of school because it's so expensive to go on holiday while school's out. There's a cunning solution to this problem - take less expensive holidays. If you think it's too expensive to go to that 4 star resort in Portugal in August, this is not because the ministry for education and the holiday companies are ganging up on you, it's because you're poor and the world doesn't owe you a living. Suck it up. Go camping. Or don't buy that flat screen TV - keep the 5 year old CRT that works perfectly well ("It's only 28 inches" does not qualify as "not working") and spend the extra grand on the holiday if you like. Or on healthy, organic food for your fat kids.

It drives me up the wall, it really does. I say let's go for zero tolerance. Let's talk in very loud voices about how it pisses us right off when people want something for nothing. I pay my taxes and social security contributions and you don't hear me complaining about it, but I do it so the state can give these people a baseline of respectable living and they can bloody well appreciate it. I don't do it so they can whinge when they don't get more than the one UK-based holiday a year that my parents got. Where are ration cards and conscription when you need them, eh?

Ahem.