Owning a car is outdated ’20th-century thinking’ and we must move to ‘shared mobility’ to cut carbon emissions, transport minister says
By Paul Homewood
Well, I did warn you!
Owning a car could become a fad of the past, a government minister claimed this week.
Junior transport minister Trudy Harrison, 45, told a sustainability conference owning a car was outdated ’20th-century thinking’ and the country should move to ‘shared mobility’ to cut carbon emissions.
Almost 80 per cent of households in the UK own a car according to figures by Statista for 2020.
Ms Harrison, who is also a former parliamentary private secretary to Boris Johnson, said the UK was ‘reaching a tipping point where shared mobility in the form of car clubs, scooters and bike shares will soon be a realistic option for many of us to get around.’
She told a virtual audience at shared transport charity CoMoUK what the country needed was a move away from ’20th-century thinking centred around private vehicle ownership and towards greater flexibility, with personal choice and low carbon shared transport’.
‘Changing the way people consider car ownership and dependency will take time,’ Ms Harrison said.
Socialists have been trying to get rid of our cars since the 1970s, and we are used to these arguments from eco-cranks. But this is the first time I have heard this from a government minister, although the writing has been on the wall for a long time.
It all slots together of course. Make us buy electric cars which we can’t afford, and that are not fit for purpose.Tax us to the hilt with road use charges and congestion charges. Ban cars from cities. Everything is aimed at a single purpose.
This never had anything to do with “climate change”. It is all to do with limiting our personal freedom, to stop us going where we want, when we want and doing what we want.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Like voting Conservative, faddish and stupid!
Or voting at all, waste of time and all we have!
In Australia the political parties get a small payment (from revenue) for each first choice vote, but it adds up to millions.
As voting is compulsory switching your vote doesn’t matter to them, but if a lot switch to a minor party they get quite agitated at the loss of money, and the boost for minor parties. As more and more change their vote they start to worry.
I recommend you vote for a minor party as a protest.
wolves in sheep`s clothing
Says someone who has a taxpayer provided, chauffeur driven car for her exclusive use.
.. representing a relatively rural constituency without any expectation that public transpoprt provision will ever be a practical alternative. My guess is that this is something she’s not been discussing with her constituents.
Who will call this out? The MSM and parties are all loyal disciples, unwitting or otherwise, to the great reset. Authoritarianism is no longer using the back door – it’s crashing through the front.
How many people voted for all this nonsense that we are getting from the latest useless government? I don’t recall any of this green crap being in the manifesto.
How many people would vote to do away with cars?
Roughly all the people who have chosen to do so I’d say! So none. You don’t need to vote on this sort of stuff as we are all free to give up cars, meat, flying, heating and so on. And the numbers remain tiny.
The only thing that Boris and the Tories plugged was Getting Brexit Done with an Oven Ready Deal. The only thing opposition plugged was not getting Brexit done.
As a result all sorts of other nonsense got in under the radar. I blame the media primarily but we, the electors, didn’t read the small print
I didn’t vote for them, I spoiled the ballot. I didn’t even trust them on Brexit, by that time they should have had it sorted already by that time.
That “Transport Minister” needs to be fired. There is zero flexibility without private transport. It is simply not possible that every necessary journey is actually predictable.
What is wrong with European politicians? Why do they hate their own populations? Even more worrying is that this insanity and hatred is homegrown. The UK can no longer blame the EU.
This attack by Boris’s cronies on our motoring is the height of insolence.
Totally bonkers, quite obviously never been out of a city, bonkers. Notice no objections from the opposition! All so Orwellian!
Opposition, what’s that? The only opposition is how fast we should be levelling-down and how far down to go.
I’ve always voted labour, but the Monster Raving Loony Party is looking like the best bet now, if they’re still going that is… or the Conservative Women if they split-away from the madmen.
It’s now called the Official Monster Raving Loony Party…
7 Monster Raving Loony Party policies which are now part of UK law
The Official Monster Raving Loony party have been surprisingly successful
https://www.mirror.co.uk/usvsth3m/7-monster-raving-loony-party-5644717
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Is the car share thing a way to reply to complaints about high EV prices: ‘Well, buy one between 2/3/4 etc. of you’?
Another couple of polling points slip away from the batsh*t crazy so-called but entirely fake ‘Conservatives’.
Trudy was for nuclear, for Brexit and for some other sensible things. Sadly her Foundation degree in sustainable communities coupled with the clear influence of the Climate Change Committee has led her to this nonsense position. However, given that in the mind of the rest of the sheep in politics, only electric cars are permissible in the near future, it may be right that we will be back to the 1950s wrt car ownership and most of us will be forced back on cheaper and more reliable forms of transport perhaps, for some of us rural folk, including the horse.
Junior is the right description for this idiot
Ms Harrison clearly lives in a different world than rational people. We’ve been driving cars for the past 100 years, and the nations health is better now than it has been since the creation of humanity. She has never considered how modern industry and commerce has been shaped by the car to make life easier for us all over the years with little negative effect,. She has never considered that the restrictions she suggests will take life back to what it was 75 years ago. How on earth do such idiots get elected to junior ministers and be allowed to foist their ridiculous ideas on to the public? Rational thinking seems now to have left many of our elected parliamentarians in favour of sheer madness.
80% of people own a car. That’s because 80% of people value owning a car. My bet would be a lot of the other 20% would like to own a car if they could afford to and most of the rest are too old or too infirm to have one.
Telling 80-90% of the population their choices are wrong is a bizarre way to woo voters.
OK love.
Here’s what we’ll do
I’ll scrap my car & share your ministerial transport.
Deal ?
“This never had anything to do with “climate change”. It is all to do with limiting our personal freedom, to stop us going where we want, when we want and doing what we want.”
I afraid that statement is in the realms of conspiracy nutjob territory. The simple, more prosaic fact is that our leaders are as scared of the” imminent climate catastrophe” as any snowflake and are desperately flailing around for solutions.
The hope is for several more years of unarguably falling temperatures that will lead to a “lights on” moment for them.
David G-J , the conspiracy nutjob territory is that CO2 can have any measureable effect on climate . No one has been able to produce any facts that support that idea .
And the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is 413 parts per million , of which 97% is produced naturally , Of all of the human produced CO2 , 1% comes from the UK , and of that only about 13% comes from traffic / vehicles .
So you finish up with just 0.0000012% , [ or 1 part in 100 million parts , ] comes from vehicles in this country .
So anyone claiming that stopping people here driving will do anything to change the climate , do not know what they are talking about .
Or deliberately lying to take control of the people & their money .
David,
i prefer what you term the conspiracy nutjob theory.
The hugely influencial World Economic Forum and the IMF are pushing global socialist policies and greater contrl of the population, this is done blatantly and unashamedly.
Yes, the government is flailing, it’s what governments tend to do it seems? Their transport soultion is the hugely expensive and impractical, evs and hydrogen for heavier transport, neither option being particularly sensible.
Local councils are going exactly the same way, using money thrust at them by HMG. They don’t have to think for themselves, just spend the £££s. A specific example is my local lot. They’ve been given cash for a “Dutch Roundabout”. They haven’t a clue where to put it (so it must be a desperate need, no?) but are definitely going to find somewhere.
Apparently there is central government funding available to councils explicitly for measures that reduce car use. It’s not well publicised to voters but it is being heavily pushed by the government.
Owning a house will be next on the list.
Or paying to breathe Philip, in but not out.
Out I think, after all it is emissions that they are keen to tax.
Phil UN Agenda 30 for Sustainability proposes that noting will be owned indididually. Our political leaders have all singned us up to it.
“Owning a car is outdated ’20th-century thinking’ and we must move to ‘shared mobility’ to” trash the UK economy.
Perhaps what the dolly isn’t saying is that you won’t need a car as where are you going to go? All attractions will have gone bust and closed. You won’t have a job to go to. No need to go to the shops as you have no money.
The sheer and utter ignorance of someone in government ls shocking. My gast has been flabbered into outer space.
Stupid little girl! Here, go and make a coffee will you?
“Stupid little girl! Here, go and make a coffee will you?” Sorry but you have got totally wrong – it’s tea.
Guaranteed to offend just about everyone (except Yorkshiremen like me!) but also very topical – somehow I can’t imagine the BBC repeating this sort of stuff these days.
This is hardly surprising. Given the very rapid rate of growth of the UK population resulting from our very high rate of immigration, which all govts. love and voters hate, the current model of ‘everyone has a car’ is clearly unsustainable in our cities.
The cutting car use is more politically acceptable in Westminster that cutting immigration, so the proles will have to put up with it. They should know their place and stop whingeing.
When I moved to village I have lived in for 40-odd years it really was a village but now, with all the new development around it it has grown to the size of a small town. It serves as a dormitory location for commuters into the larger conurbations around.
The thing is, when I first moved here there were histories of some of the very old from those days who could tell me that their parents had hardly moved within ten miles of the village in there day. Their highlights were the chance of a coach or train trip to the seaside once or twice a year. Otherwise, Shank’s pony was the only real means of transport – or an old and expensive bicycle. Perhaps that what the big reset has in store for my grandson. I can believe that he will need a ‘pass’ to travel at all – along with suitable health docs.
History repeats itself – the first as tragedy, the second as farce. I sometimes wonder if those two ideas are the wrong way round.
arrgh….in THEIR day…
Here in North Wales, Llanbedr was finally thinking they were getting a 1 mile bypass to alleviate the village bottleneck, oh no its been shelved, the reason ……..climate change concerns! ‘A panel of ‘experts’ who were looking at the amount of CO2 the new road might generate’.
No explanation of who these ‘experts’ are!
Sheer uneducated nonsense, welcome to the new Stone age!
Back in the summer in a period when it was actually permitted to drive in Wales, I took a scenic trip through mid Wales. Arriving at Newtown, I was struck by the lavish EU funded bypass, which carried very little traffic. It reminded me of the section of M2/M5 out of Belfast which was the UK’s widest motorway, with 5 lanes plus hard shoulder each way – again EU funded.
The Newtown bypass does not normally carry very little traffic, and as the road system around Newtown is on the main route between North and South Wales the bypass was sorely needed. It used to generally take an hour to get through Newtown, unless you were lucky. Newtown offers the only roads through a 50 mile wide section of Wales, one truck making a delivery in Newtown and communications between N & S Wales were broken. The bypass is hardly lavish, it’s two lanes with a third lane in the uphill direction. That’s closer to ‘minimal’ than ‘lavish’.
You cannot draw conclusions about traffic flows from holiday visits.
Thank the Valleys for their kindness in giving us Dozy Dripford who knows what’s best for us all. Not that he does it himself of course, being Welsh Labour and very very important, and of course a total hypocrite as is standard in Welsh Labour.
You may have missed the fact that Dripford handed down a dictat just after he won the Senedd election – “There shall be no road building”, so your panel of experts comes down to one person. He stopped the M4 relief road, and tried to stop the A465 dualing sections 5&6, but couldn’t because contracts had been signed.
I’ll make changes to my lifestyle ONLY AFTER the elites, plutocrats and greenies have got rid of all their wealth and are actually living the sort of lifestyle they want me to live.
When Boris, Gates, Bezos and Schwab, are living in old sea containers and commuting by bike, then I might consider doing likewise.
That will work well. Here in darkest kent there is ZERO public transport so a five mile walk to the shops for me then
I am also in rural Kent just 7 miles from Canterbury. Although I am close to an infrequent bus route the cheapest return fare is to get the “Rover” all day ticket at £7.20. Almost £15 for two of us to go 7 miles into town! They can forget it I shall drive.
Ok – bring it on. I’ll hitch a lift with Prince Jug Ears (and his two sons) in their private jets. Where shall we go? Skiiing with chums in Aspen? Elton John’s villa in the South of France? Hanging out with some Middle East plutocratically rich family? Or a Chinese businessman, diplomat, NGO head or six? Do they take us for fools?
Yes.
This isn’t about cars.
“Owning property could become a fad of the past.” Fixed it.
“Trudy Harrison told a sustainability conference owning a car was outdated ’20th-century thinking’ and the country should move to ‘shared mobility’ to cut carbon emissions.”
Shared housing. Shared everything. You will own nothing, and you will be happy.
“Climate Change” is the Universal Cause to get you to accept it.
Yep, Taxpayers Alliance weekly update mentions some bunch of commies wanting to hit homeowners with a wealth tax because of rising house prices. What these dickheads fail to understand is that while my house may be worth more, I have no control over that other than maybe knocking half of it down, and I have received no extra money to pay a wealth tax.
And to liquidate the asset, you have to find somewhere else to live, and EVERYTHING ELSE is inflated, too.
The problem isn’t the house being worth “more,” it’s that the currency is worth less.
I’d love to know how this fully-life-experienced Minister thinks a car-sharing scheme would work. Will is be a glorified taxi service? Or, will it be one person in a street owning a car and then allowing others to use it at will? I’m sure the insurance companies would have something to say on that. Then, of course, there will be those who hog the shared vehicle so that others can’t get to use it. Etc, etc, etc. This is the sort of problem-solving (when there is no problem – except for that created by government) that third-year school children get to discuss – and come up with juvenile answers, as indeed has this Minister.
I was talking to someone very recently she having moved to the same small West Country town I live in from Bath. She loves Bath and has spent most of her life there. The thing that finally drove her out was the experimental scooter hire scheme. Apparently you can pick them up from wherever but when you have finished with them you can just drop them off wherever you wish. My new friend tells me they are left anywhere and everywhere and they lie about on the pavements for others with poor sight to trip over. Remember Bath is swollen with students now and they rather dominate the town – another reason for my friend to leave.
Some argue that the older person should not have their say as they are baby boomers and gammons or whatever other term is used to dismiss them and they have had their day.
I looked up the scheme and here are the rules for dropping off scooters:
When renting an e-scooter, users agree to park the vehicles with respect towards pedestrians, property and traffic, and to also ensure the following:
The vehicle is parked on a footway closely alongside a wall or in connection to a bike stand/parking rack
The vehicle is standing up in a steady manner on its kickstand
The vehicle is not blocking entrances, access ramps, traffic, bus stops, crossings, or obstructing pavements.
On the subject of our hopelessly out of touch government, has anyone seen the video of Lord Monckton at COP26? The video is titled, ‘ATTENTION UNITED NATIONS: THERE IS NOT A CLIMATE EMERGENCY’. It’s the best condemnation of the climate scam I’ve seen yet, with personal insults to the usual looney brigade. He shows all the relevent SCIENTIFIC data and actually makes the delegates seem like a load of idiots.
The only thing missing is the reaction of the audience. Perhaps they are speechless for once?
These people are always a ‘Ms’
Take away her official car right away.
Trudy Harrison biography. https://www.gov.uk/government/people/trudy-harrison#biography
She seems to have had a rapid rise to a position of some great responsibility in the Ministry iof Transport
Career outside politics
Trudy worked at Sellafield for 5 years as a technical clerk before setting up and running a childcare business. Following a career break, Trudy was employed by Copeland
Borough Council, first as a Locality Officer and then as Community Regeneration Officer. Trudy left Copeland Borough Council in 2013 to work as a Programme Manager
for “investors specialising in renewable energy” and sustainable community projects. However she has no declared earnings from previous companies she worked for.
https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/mp/trudy-harrison/financial-disclosure
Most comments on her Facebook page regarding her attendance at COP26 are critical of Net Zero and Climate Change plans.
https://www.facebook.com/1163262443793280/posts/4489854791134012. I can’t remember any positive comments about the subject from any member of the Public at all.
I am sure there is a massive untapped silent majority in the UK worried about the whole issue. How do we get them to vocalise en masse….?
Her biggest qualification was to be PPS to BJ. Virtue may be its own reward but brown-nosing (PPS) gives more.
Yes the car is a 20th century device, and an 18th century device and a 19th century device and a 21st century device. How perceptive of her.
Yeah – like going WHERE you want, WHEN you want, is such a terrible idea! The plebs are getting above themselves, and that sort of thing is for US!
Anyway, about 40-odd years ago, when last I lived in the UK, there was a popular book “In place of cars”, about all the marvellous ideas of shared transport and stuff. About the only stuff that survived from all that ‘thinking’ was the “lets make it difficult for drivers” ideas that some municipalities have, You know, like making lots of one way streets and narrowing roads to allow lanes for non-existent cycles.
It seems that the “mobility is not for you plebs” ideas are getting stronger!
Trudy is right in one way. There is not enough lithium,, copper, nickel or cobalt in the world for everyone to have an EV. And there is not enough electricity in the UK for everyone to charges their’s up. But not to worry, there will always be enough of everything for the Ministers of the Crown to have their personal transport.
Don’t be silly – Ministers will still keep their diesels! They’ll be a protected class. 🙂
Steve Jay.
Is there a link to Moncton video.
It think it was Heartland Climate Reality Forum at an outside venue. Several speakers of whom Lord Moncton was one. This is a link:
The whole thing is nearly 4 hours.
Monckton’s pitch is well worth it – even more-so as he had to do it to an empty room as it were.
https://youtu.be/Jtlt0nh78V0 As requested
Thank you. A wonderful presentation that should be listened to by every global warming fanatic, Was reference made to it formally in these columns? if so I missed it. How about if each of us forward this video to ten of our friends for each of them to form their own opinions having heard the opposite side of the argument, perhaps for the first time. I have already sent it to ten of my friends, some at least of which will take its contents on board. Perhaps we don’t make sufficient use of email and its power to distribute our message across a very wide section of the population.
Anyone?
‘Owning a car is outdated thinking . . . ‘ – as indeed are politicians?!
Thankyou all.
Words fail me, a rope would be of much more use but……
Marxist ideology straight out of Agenda 21.
“Owning a car is outdated ’20th-century thinking’ ” so buses are also outdated as they derive from a form of horse drawn mass-transport service started in 1823 by a French corn-mill owner named Stanislas Baudry in Richebourg, a suburb of Nantes.
Buses very 19th century thinking!
Trains? No they are 20th century thinking!
Planes? No, no, very 20th century thinking!
How about our other modern belongings …
Phones, PCs, modern plastics, semiconductors, LCD screens, electric washing machines, electric stoves, microwaves, microwave meals, all man-made fibres used in clothing, synthetic rubbers, cavity wall insulation, modern adhesives and glues, just-in-time ordering systems, etc., etc.
All very 20th century thinking.
Electric toasters, Alan MacMasters in 1893 invented the first electric toaster in Scotland. Of course that would have to be connected to an electric power supply …
First practical try at a power grid system wasn’t till 1881 when two electricians in England pioneered one of the earliest power systems on the planet. (See _https://peaksubstation.com/a-brief-history-of-the-power-grid/ )
So by junior transport minister Trudy Harrison and her bureaucratic morons’ logic we should abandon these devices and products as they are old fashioned thinking?
Paul,
Comment straight to the sin-bin again?
Politicians with integrity are so “twentieth century” too it would seem. I wonder how Trudy gets around her Copeland constituency? One coastal single track railway (plus “Lal Ratty” of course) and sparse bus services, not a lot of which get far from the coast either. E-bike maybe?
This isn’t the first time government Ministers have tried to get rid of our cars.
John Prescott announced this Planning strategy in the 1990’s but then he became known as 2 Jags for his liking for chauffeured limousines.
Planning policy still dictates inadequate car parking on residential and office development, but retail and hospitality sectors can build car parks as big as you like. Schools depend on car transport and cause massive congestion and car parking is being built in the Education sector at a fast pace.
Yet no-one has yet mentioned that the die to net zero is now long cast. For motorists, there will be no other option other than conform once petroleum products disappear from the road networks. The major suppliers of such have already made their mark, publicly at least, by declaration of moving their enterprises to renewables, in conformity to Johnson’s declaration. Filling stations will close, as contracts for petroleum fuel wither. Jo Public will have no influence in this process unless through Parliament the whole legal basis for this poverty-creation is erased and reversed. My MP is incapable of positioning himself on this in my correspondence with him on this whole damnable business.
I cannot believe that they actually allowed this ” minister” to spew out this utter nonsense. Although I expect it was exactly what the green zealots she was speaking to on zoom wanted to hear. I despair!!!
I went shopping in a supermarket. I noticed the number of private vehicles parked outside . Inside I noted that people were shopping in quantities which implied they were going to take the goods home in a vehicle. Many goods on the shelves were large packets and could not be carried home by shopping bag on public transport with ease. Therefore it occurred to me that the whole supermarket , shipping container method of marketing goods would need to be rethought if personal motor vehicles were restricted. The whole trade strategy of the merchants who use shipping, harbours docks , rail and road transport to bring their goods to a place where the customer can access them will need to be rethought. Maybe this aspect of clearing the roads has not been considered. Think of it . Shipping, docks, railway yards , are all set up for large containers of goods. Road transport of the containers of packaged goods to centres of distribution are affected if the purchasers of those goods cannot take them home in a shopping bag on a local bus or train. It will take millions to rethink container ships and ports for instance. and what about the packaging centres where small packets will be the norm.
Has HM Government in the U K that much money to throw away? What will the major shopping centre supermarket chains have to say ?. They have spent millions centralising distribution.
Once self-drive car sharing is as easy, flexible and reliable as ordering a deliveroo then it will be a huge advance. Paying tens of thousands to have a depreciating hulk of metal parked for 95% of the time cannot be the best transport solution we can come up with. Let the engineers and entrepreneur disrupters innovate and it will happen naturally, without any need for hair shirt taxation.
Sharing is not flexible enough for most journeys. It only works for those that are actually predictable. And of course the total dependency on someone else.
“happen naturally” is the key, but politicians don’t care about supply and demand or what people actually need.