Curb Car Use, Urges New Report
July 7, 2019
By Paul Homewood
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Left wing academics have been trying for years to take our cars away from us.
According to this latest condescending report (faithfully puffed by the BBC) , they don’t even want us to have electric cars either:
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Car use will still need to be curbed even when all vehicles are powered by clean electricity, a report has said.
It warns that electrifying cars will not address traffic jams, urban sprawl and wasted space for parking.
The Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS) report calls on the government to devise a strategy allowing people to have a good standard of living without needing a car.
The government said it was spending £2bn to promote walking and cycling.
It also says it plans to spend £50bn on improving roads. However, critics accuse the government of not having a serious plan to deal with the social problems associated with mass car ownership.
CREDS is an academic consortium of more than 80 academics across the UK.
“Car use is a massive blind spot on government policy,” Prof Jillian Anable, one of the authors of the report, said.
She added: “For many years ministers have adopted the principle of trying to meet demand by increasing road space.
“They need to reduce demand instead.”
This is a classic example of academics believing that they know best how we ordinary folk should run our lives.
According to them, we are all too fat, so it would do us good to walk miles to work every day. It would also encourage us, they say, to meet the neighbours (translation – get mugged on the way home). It would also free up parking space, which could be used for housing.
This statement shows just how arrogant these people are:
“People are also buying status-symbol SUVs which clog up narrow city streets – the report says banning them from some areas might be a solution.”
“The other great technological change under way on the roads is driverless cars.
The report warns this dream could also turn sour as car owners may choose to live many miles from their workplace, using their car as a mobile office while sitting in traffic jams they have helped to create.”
How dare we drive to work!
The reality is that widespread car ownership has given people the freedom to work where they want, enabling them to develop careers and improve job prospects. It is not long ago that people would leave school and spend all of their working lives at the local factory, a short walk or bus ride away.
The Annables of this world would much rather we all got back in our boxes, stopped being a nuisance, abandoned our suburban utopias, and lived cramped up in city centres so we can walk to work.
Of course, the new rules won’t apply to them.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“Of course, the new rules won’t apply to them” – Exactly!
My SUV isn’t a status symbol, I drive one because it’s really useful and practical. It is also more fuel efficient than much smaller cars that I owned back in the eighties.
Eff you Greta!
“We should all be grateful to be allowed to drive Fiat 500s, it seems.”
Have you seen how much they’ve grown & put on weight since the Fiat 500 Cinquecento was launched 6 decades ago?
https://www.fiat.co.uk/new-fiat-500l-range/new-fiat-500l-cross
Make mine an Abarth version please.
My old, original Fiat 500 Giardiniera of the 1960’s really WAS 500cc. It could hold 60 mph downhill with a following wind, and sounded like a neurotic sewing machine. But – it was cheap, and it could be repaired with a screwdriver and a couple of spanners!
“Have you seen how much they’ve grown & put on weight since the Fiat 500 Cinquecento was launched 6 decades ago?”
Exactly the same thing with the Mini. The BMW derived car sold today is huge compared to the Issigonis designed original. I saw an estate version yesterday which was significantly larger than the Maxi I used to have! Even the original Range Rover is noticeably smaller than almost any modern 4×4, and certainly to its current siblings.
I wonder why new-build houses have garages, because no modern cars will fit in them…
Crumple zones, crash cages, side impact protection, air bags – they have all got to go somewhere. Big problem in multistory car parks – notably built with hard concrete pillars – where the original spaces fitted the layout and vehicles. Now you might get the car in but need to exit via the tailgate or sun roof – convertibles score well here.
The advertising for many cars now (including Fiat 500s) is based on colour and music without telling you about the car and sadly today’s young people seem to lap it up.
At the risk of being accused of sexism, the advertising is aimed unashamedly at young women.
I occasionally cycle across a bridge over the auto via from Valencia to Sagunt and see thousands of folk driving from Sagunt to Valencia and nearly as many driving from Valencia to sagunt – and often wonder why…
I suggest that much of that is down to the industry culture of centralising facilities management. Nearly 30 years ago the national company I used to work for started going down this route (supposedly to save money), and one crazy example of the result was when I reported an outside light on one of our buildings as faulty. Previously the job would have been given to the “In house” electricians, based in the same city. But now it was passed to the new regional contracts dept, some 70 miles away. You only have to look at company logos on the millions of vans travelling our congested roads to see that “local” service is becoming a thing of the past. No doubt most of the company & fleet cars are doing the same thing…
Working for a national maintenance contractor, I once bumped into a fellow subby of a different discipline, whose work entailed traveling between DWP offices in Cumbria, to water the reception area house plants. the mileage was considerable. Make of that what you will
Well call me crazy but could it be because different people want to live in different places? I used to drive out of London to work when others were driving in. I like living in a city, they liked living in the country.
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.
I believe the report the BBC are referring to is this one –
https://www.creds.ac.uk/publications/shifting-the-focus-energy-demand-in-a-net-zero-carbon-uk/
This is a very large report (too many words) and in the forward –
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Over the last 15 years, reduction in demand for energy has been an important
contributor to lowering UK carbon emissions. However, in recent years, the downward
trend in demand has begun to falter, largely due to weakening of Government policy.
Our analysis at the Committee on Climate Change is that stronger policy to reduce
demand is urgently needed. And we know that the policies that might influence energy
demand are very different to those for supply – policies that are often made outside of
Westminster, making this a fascinating public policy challenge overall.
/
In many ways its a recognition that the ‘utopian’ dream of a green energy ecomony is frought with difficulty and the only solution is demand side management either by incentive or regulation. eg ‘Smart metering’ with tariff structures to change peoples behaviour is a failing solution, whilst the alternative of increasing government regulation is the nightmare senario.
The BBC have only focused on a tiny part of it, I’l rephrase that, the BBC have put their own spin on it. I doubt that Prof Jillian Anable had much to do with it other than being the (mandatory) female spokesperson
They are running out of high energy use manufacturing to kill off and drive abroad so the rate has slowed. Getting rid of British Steel will help, as will the shrinking of the automotive sector. Sir Jim of Ineos is well aware of the costs of manufacturing here as is investing elsewhere too.
The EU mandated that all passengers in cars are restrained by seatbelts, especially young children, who had to have special seats as well
This meant that even average families had to have up to seven seats. Ergo, SUVs.
Academia runs on two wheels – and they’re not always turning together.
Paul Homewood “How dare we drive to work!
The reality is that widespread car ownership has given people the freedom to work where they want, enabling them to develop careers and improve job prospects. It is not long ago that people would leave school and spend all of their working lives at the local factory, a short walk or bus ride away.”
That is correct. The motorcar was one of the great drivers (no pun intended) of social mobility, not just mobility. It, in turn, created a raft of work across various skills and disciplines from skilled mechanic to highly paid advertising, through taxi driver to town planner and from insurance clerk to the Lloyds broker/underwriter.
Couple the motor car with Grammar, Secondary & Technical School and University education and you have the root causes of the immense social mobility that we lack in the UK today but that was prevalent for the two complete decades – the 1950s and 1960s – after WW2.
I have mostly lived near to work but the bus service to Industrial estate was poor.
At first I bought a moped later upgrading to Honda 70cc motorcycle.
My first cars was a Three wheel Reliant Robin that I could drive on a motorcycle licence.
My Second car was a Lada Riva that I had for 10 years.
I have had a lot cars over the years. My current car a Honda Accord is over 17 years old.
So I guess I am not a car person worrying with keeping up with the neighbours or fashion.
I do not get the trend for bigger cars as families get smaller at least bull bars have gone out of fashion.
The tourist town of Porthcawl in South Wales does not have a train station. The Beeching cuts removed lots of train stations. Train fares have risen 300% since 1990’s, Bus fares have risen 400% in the same time. Many new housing estates are not built with buses in mind. They have narrow windy roads. With not enough car parking so people park on the roads.
If they made trains and busses/Trams free and plentiful they would be used more and cars less.
We have given our lives over to the busybodies who cannot stand people doing things they disapprove of. They hide behind health and Greenery but the reality is these people simply want to tell us what to do and how to do it. Why we listen to them is beyond me.
No mention of the steep rise in the population.
Paul, are the charts and data you made for Paraguay still around?
Looks like some of the links are broken. I know that Giss have changed things around at their end
I’m really interested in the Analysis you’ve done on Adjusted Temp Data in So America. Where would I get Raw Temp Data for Paraguay as an example? Thanks.
I bet they corner the horse market first.