Our friends at the BBC (you know, the ones who we pay for out of money extracted by force from our pockets and purses) do love to travel in style at our expense but they are not so keen on we ordinary mortals doing the same, especially by road.
Hence the doom laden announcement on the BBC website about the opening of the M74 extension in Glasgow.
True there were positive quotes from the Scottish Infrastructure Secretary Alex Neil and Glasgow City Council leader, Councillor Gordon Matheson but you can always tell where the BBC love really resides when you see the quotes signing off at the end of any website article.
“A fraction of this vast sum (£692m) could have delivered major public transport improvements, and to make the city easier to cycle and walk around.”
That from Glasgow Green MSP Patrick Harvie plus an equally funereal warble from Stan Blackley described as chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland (yes, you’ve got it, FoE, the organisation that’s generously funded by EU taxpayers)
So, Stan, you won’t be driving your VW Campervan along the M74 any time yet?
As someone who regularly drives westward I have often reflected that, if we were in France, there would be a dual carriageway A303 all the way to Exeter and an M30 threading through Devon and Cornwall (one of the poorest counties in England)…..but, being a realist, I just know that the Stan Blackleys of the world would have a hotline to the BBC and, within seconds, there would be the second coming of Swampy ordering us all to get on yer bike..
It would probably make Glasgow easier to walk and cycle around, and certainly safer, if a large number of Glaswegians were removed.
Especially those wearing green & white striped or blue tops.
Glad this one popped up and sorry if OT but it really gets my goat when the BBC starts to dictate transport issues when all it’s got is top gear !!!
http://www.motorcyclenews.com/MCN/News/newsresults/General-news/2011/May/may0611-bbc-labels-biking-more-dangerous-than-hang-gliding/
Hear hear. As a biker such articles make my blood boil.Bikes are the only way to get past convoys on Norfolk roads so that 450 bhp Tesco lorries can hog the road at 38mph to save tyres and maintenance to increase Tesco bottom line.This has annoyed me on so many journeys that I no longer will buy any Tesco wares.If only I could similarly legally withhold my custom from Правда
BBC = LPM the luddite propaganda ministry
Because of this road people will get to work faster, goods will travel more efficiently,people will be home quicker to spend time with loved ones,business will improve and yet the hippies and luddites see this as a bad day.
(I wish call me Dave had the guts of Comrade Al and built a few new roads in England)
If vascular surgeons invented a way of improving blood flow this would be a breakthrough which would help the well being of many yet when construction engineers improve the ‘blood flow” of society the hand wringers unite in condemnation.
If they had their way , aunties activists and their NGO chums would clog up the system and force us back to the stone age.
Motorways carry many factors more goods nd people than rail and if the beeb are living in some London fantasy that we can all travel by tube or rail then they need shot.
I can fart in my car
I can pick my nose
I can listen to whatever I want on my radio.
I can stop and take a walk whenever I choose.
My car delivers me from my driveway to the car park at my company , it delivers me straight home and I don’t have to change into 2 different cars to make a tailor made journey.
My car is still relatively cheap convenient and when compared to a train which is less than 80% full my car is more fuel / carbon efficient than a train.
When trains solve these problems then call me, in the meantime get out of the way of business and progress and allow the wealth creators in society to get about their business so we can afford questionable luxuries like hippies and the BBC
They’re not Luddites. They are the nomenklatura who know their comfortable lives will be protected while the rest of us are forced back into a quasi-pre-industrial subsitence living.
If the Khmer Vert get their way, you won’t be allowed to fart ANYWHERE, let alone in your car. There will be fart-gas monitoring equipment in every vehicle, along with all the other big-brother spying paraphernalia…
The “Khmer Vert”. I like it: the political apparatus of the Watermelons, and probably an apt analogy for what they’d do if they got into power.
Agreed and I am a lifelong railway enthusiast. Don’t forget the Beeboids get to travel 1st class -a different world to standard class.
There is possibly no more uncomfortable or regressive coach built this last 100 years than the average standard class multiple unit cattle truck
No steam age engineer would have dared to put such a useless design before the public and charge for travel at the rate we have to pay.
Now travel on the Continent is something quite different.
*cherry vulture swoops in* Erm, no we don’t. First class rail travel on the BBC is banned.
How about the BBC having a proper look at the ridiculous farce that is the Edinburgh Tramm – mass public transport from the Airport to Newhaven. Orignial cost estimated at about £230m, restated at £545m now estimated to cost £770m and will stop at Haymarket station – not even as far as Waverley Station. The plan was only ever going to replace one bus route (the 35)
Trams are lovely soviet status symbols and completely im practical and uttery useless. Edinburgh has been dug up for five years and the incompetend council wants to spend 3/4 of a billion pounds to build 5 miles of tramway to a subsidiary station. THAT is a public transport scandal.
Trams are not useless, those in Prague,Amsterdam and many parts of Switzerland are great. The problem as I see it is the apparent inability of British planning system and public service to manage such projects on time and budget
What, like the report we ran on all our main network news bulletins this week?
I like the “Soviet status symbols”
The left love trams. look where they build them. Sheffield, Nottingham, Manchester.
Trolleybuses would do the job at a fraction of the cost. That is why most sensible towns in Britain replaced the trams in the first place.
I believe the Democrats in the US also love trams. It figures
Is there any way of expanding the comments box when entering a submission? This has been bugging me for ages – the text is tiny and my typing is terrible so I am posting stuff full of errors. Sorry for my ghastly typos but I guess you get the message!
I find the comments box to be fine, and the text size perhaps only one size smaller than the standard size used on here for blog posts. Could be a problem your end? Have you tried a simple ctrl+ ?
I find odd annoying problems with it, too. Like the text often jumps around, a bit and won’t settle where you want it to, should you need to amend it – especially if you fill the available box.
Also, the text often gets “squashed” vertically, and you can’t read it.
Whilst I’m having a whinge, it would be really useful to be able to edit one’s own comments, should one wish to correct glaring spelling errors. The only way I can do this, is by deleting my comment and starting again.
One other thing I’ve noticed, should you “like” someone’s comment(s), then make a comment of your own, all your “likes” vanish. It seems you have to do your “likes”, refresh, THEN add your own comment.
Whinge over. Thank you.
If this is the gripes section, I find that if I try to paste something into the comments box, all my existing text suddenly becomes highlighted and risks being overwritten. Or is it just my computer?
Similar comments come up here now and again. I don’t know why but , overall, this is the worst blog system I have ever come across on the internet. Can anyone point me to a worse one ?