oh dear ...

Eric Pickles - an inspiration to us all?

What the fuck are the tories playing at? Less than two years in government and they are already falling apart, pulling in opposite directions to each other and, more importantly, going in a totally different direction to the rest of us!

Eric Pickles, some sort of Trotskyite Humpty Dumpty trapped forever in a fifties black and white Britain, has SERIOUSLY suggested that money is available to help councils introduce a weekly refuse collection!! Yes, you read that right. Whilst the rest of the world is cutting back on landfill and doing everything it can to reduce waste, this left wing moron wants to do the opposite because that is what the retards at the Daily Mail want!! For fuck's sake!! What we need to do is REDUCE waste collection to once monthly. Even then many bins will be half empty. I know ours will. Because nearly everything these days is either recyclable or compostable.

And then, just to add another twist of madness, the same party decides that this is the perfect time to suggest RAISING motorway speed limits!! In reality motorway speed limits should be drastically reduced, perhaps in 5mph installments, over the next four years, giving us a maximum speed of 50mph. This is plenty fast enough in the permanent energy crisis, if you need to get anywhere faster use the trains.

The idea behind this is to increase the tax take from cars (which is of course falling as people abandon their cars - even in this age of incredibly cheap fuel) - because driving faster uses MORE oil, therefore brings in more income from duty. If nothing else it proves that this government will constantly hammer motorists through creative means, and perhaps burning through precious oil more quickly and hammering the dinosaurs through tax shows that there are some serious eco-activists operating inside the old folks' party!

social history

Digital photography should mean that these early years of the 21st century should be incredibly well recorded. 20 or 30 years ago I used to take photos whenever I could but it wasn't cheap and nowhere near as easy as today. It did have the plus side that I've got hard copy (including negatives) of everything and, because of the cost, most photos were worth having!

But look at the average photo today. Kids tend to fill the screen when they take a shot, usually posing. There's none or very little background. All this info will be lost. Most of the images will not survive. Many that do will have no interest to anybody.

I always used to try to set my family shots into a social history background. Even record shots were of the everyday, rather than the unusual. I also tried to catch atmosphere whenever I could.

At the time I had no idea what I'd do with these shots. But already they are historic. They trigger loads of memories on various Facebook groups and on Panoramio. I'm really glad I took them! And I've got a huge resource for blog posts!

getting it wrong

So 'Lord' Mandelson is planning a 2 billion quid plus bail out of the 'British' car industry is he?

What a joke!

The government should NEVER interfere in the market. These companies should have built up reserves to get them through harder times - if they haven't then they deserve to go to the wall.

Car companies are dying ayway - they have about as much future as airlines. The car (as well as bus and lorry and tractor) is an anachronism, created when oil was plentiful and cheap. It will not outlive the end of cheap oil, which is now upon us. The much touted alternatives are NOT alternatives, they are still cars, they still need huge amounts of energy and raw materials to build. The cost of electricity will rise in tandem with the cost of oil and gas. Roads themselves will begin to break up as maintenance schedules are loosened up - in the UK this already seems to be happening.

If a car company deserves to survive it will do it WITHOUT government help. It will start to retool and retrain, to allow it to exploit the explosive growth in rail travel that is coming. They will build carriages and locomotives, freight vehicles and trams.

The car is already a historic artefact. Some will survive a few more years until oil reaches stratospheric prices, $500, $1000 a barrel. But really the car today is an example of dead man walking, if that's not too confusing a metaphor!

Onwards - to infinity and beyond!

throwing money away

What on earth is wrong with the US and UK? Both countries are planning to throw state (our) money at ailing car companies.

THIS IS NOT CAPITALISM.

This is 70s style socialism (remember British Leyland?)

Sometimes you need to remind Bush and Brown how capitalism works. Companies that start to fail - no matter for what reason - should be allowed to do just that. Tinkering with the market to avoid closure does no good at all, in fact it does harm. The most essential part of successful capitalism is creative destruction - as a crap company fails good ones step in to take their place. Otherwise we get frozen into a moment of time where nothing changes or develops.

Let GM go to the wall. Let them all go to the wall.

Nobody will be buying cars - or certainly not the lumbering fuel-inefficient monsters Detroit seems to favour - in 20 years time. We expect our car to last us at least another 10 to 15 years (if diesel's still available of course), hopefully after that we'll be sussed enough to no longer need one. Kids today will never drive, they'll walk, cycle and use public transport - and be happier and healthier for it.

Why on earth waste a single moment on bailing out companies that will no longer have any role in a modern world? What are the socialists Bush and Brown thinking of?

spineless tossers

Oh dear, our 'prime minister' Gordon Brown has just quivered yet again and decided that the miserable 2p fuel surcharge will not now be imposed in the autumn. How many times has this Scottish tory tart done this now? Every time the hippy lorry drivers whinge he backs down. So where is the revenue going to come from??

As drivers we can choose to drive less and, in the longer term, change our lifestyles so we no longer depend on dinosaur cars. But now we'll all have to pay so the socialist toffs can continue to drive for a few more weeks. It's pathetic.

even these buggers are worried ...

This year's Geneva Motor Show is finally responding - ten years after the rest of us - to the threat of Climate Change. All the talk is of hybrids and future technology, low emissions etc. Jeremy Clarkson must be turning in his grave.

It'll probably be another ten years before the reality of Peak Oil sinks in and the car manufacturers, and particularly the venture capitalists, realise that they're in a dying industry with no future.

Everybody is now aware of Climate Change but the average person in the street is still ignorant of Peak Oil, which suits the governments fine. Peak Oil is a far more dangerous threat than climate change because we'll have to TOTALLY change our lifestyles to cope with it. Climate Change will be inconvenient, and deadly to some, but Peak Oil will change everybody in the developed worlds lives, and shatter the petrolhead illusory ambitions of billions in the Third World too.

The people to watch and listen to are not the politicians but the businesspeople who will have to make decisions now. Some of the biggest publicists for Climate Change have been businesspeople (NOT Branson!!), at the moment Peak Oil is discussed mainly amongst economists, but the businesspeople are beginning to listen. Even the investment community is beginning to incorporate Peak Oil futures into its decision making.

Investment in the future will involve buying lots of gold, silver and forests, and defendable houses on high ground and as close to the poles as possible.