blonde elephant

I don't get Boris Johnson. I get the buffoon bit, and the amiable upper class dodderer, that's easy.

But why on earth is he trying to push this new London airport lunacy?? Why isn't he spending his time

promoting a city wide tram system for London? New bike routes? New railways?

What is it with toffs and nostalgia?

The reality of air travel is that it has, at most, two decades left. There are no alternatives to kerosene produced from oil to fuel the things. Oh, they might make a few prototype solar or electric gimmicky machines, that will end up in museums and are totally unscaleable, but the days when you and I can just jump on a plane and travel just about anywhere for next to nothing are soon coming to an end.

The conclusion? We need to start planning the scaling down of air travel and the associated infrastructure. We need to be thinking about how airports will be used in twenty or thirty years' time when the planes have stopped running. The idea of a new airport is absolutely hilarious. It will never be needed. It's such a waste of time and money to even think about such things.

So let's get real and start putting in real infrastructure that is sustainable and useful, in other words railways and tramways. Forget the rest, that's the past.

california regrets ...

A ten mile stretch of an ironically named 'freeway' is to close - sadly not permanently - this weekend in Los Angeles. So? Why don't all those sad car drivers simply switch to the magnificent, world-leading, state of the art modern transport system that is the Pacific Electric Railway? With its fast big cars linking LA with its suburbs and other towns in southern California we should all be jealous of far thinking LA's preparation for the future ...

We wish - this magnificent system CLOSED by the 1960s, DELIBERATLY purchased and run down by a dinosaur combination of car and oil companies.

It's payback time commies! Okay, LA is gradually, slowly, reintroducing trams, but the current system is a tiny shadow of what it was and will be again.

So why is this 'freeway' being closed? So they can make 1 billion dollars worth of 'improvements' including widening a bridge. Why?? Who's going to be using it in ten or twenty years time? California surely should be investing for the FUTURE, not the past? They are even planning $4 helicopter trips to avoid the mess, though there are FREE journeys on mass transit. California is the crazy state that still thinks it's the 1960s, that there's still oil in USA oil wells and that the world's their oyster.

Not so long ago California planned to convert its entire road system and accompanying infrastructure to take hydrogen fuelled cars - no doubt until some bright spark explained to them that hydrogen wasn't a fuel but just an energy carrier, and one that required MORE energy than existing internal combustion engines. This is of course the state that has suffered from energy blackouts due to lack of generating capacity - how exactly were they going to generate even MORE electricity to fuel their hydrogen cars?

California really needs to start taking the future SERIOUSLY!

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!

the future of food retail

This is Brockley Farm Shop in Somerset. It's everything a real food shop should be with locally grown produce, shop produced cakes and pies etc and a smattering of more exotic stuff, some English, some foreign.

And it is even right next to a bus stop!

This is the sort of shop that should survive and flourish after Peak Oil, although it will eventually need a railway/tramway to pass it to keep deliveries and trade up of course! Or possibly even manage with horse and cart deliveries.

Buy rail and tram stocks ...

the death of banking

We have a retarded government. They don't have a clue.

The economy has changed forever. Yet still, like the nostalgists they are, they are looking backwards for answers. We got in this situation because people had become hooked on credit and had lost touch with their roots. If you earned £100 you spent £120, and your foolproof investment, your home, would always make up the shortfall, because everybody knows that house prices only ever go up.

Oh dear. This was never going to work was it?

So what are our dear 'leaders' doing now? Are they going back on the gold standard, encouraging us to grow our own food, pumping billions into developing and expanding our rail and tram networks, looking for energy indepdence, increasing interest rates to encourage savings and encourage banks to lend? Are they reducing the money supply to restrict unsecured credit? Are they fuck! They are doing the exact opposite.

I'm more convinced each day that this is the crisis preceding Peak Oil and that the economy can't be mended because the fundamentals have shifted. I might be wrong, but everything this 'government' does seems to make it more certain.

let's kickstart the cull

A not often alluded to problem of our socialist government's attempts to make us all drivers is the fact that around 80% of people are NOT natural drivers. In fact they don't have a fucking clue.

I hate driving but it is something I do well, thanks to years of challenging myself to push the boundaries - alpine crossings, foul weather driving, off roading, lorry driving etc etc.

But take a close look next time you drive at the sheer uselessness of most drivers. If they were dogs they'd be put down.

Today in a space of less than a mile the following three socialist hippy twats presented themselves -

1. A twat driving one of those obsolete 4x4 jokes overtaking (without indicating) on cross hatches and nearly collidng with cars coming the other way.

2. An old git driving so badly that we assumed he was drunk or Alzheimered up to the nines. His road positioning was so bad that we fell back about 50 metres. He then did a right hand turn about 100 metres short of the turning, running along the cross hatches the whole distance.

3. Some kiddie in front of us for an unknown reason turning left with no indication at all.

If it were up to me all the above three drivers would lose their licences for ever. Or better still be executed.

The problem is the socialists and hippies are so stupid they've forced nearly everyone on to the roads. It's pretty obvious that as our rail networks were destroyed by the hippies the bar for passing the driving test was dropped.

What needs to happen now is simple.

a. HUGE investment in trains and trams, as well as a national network of cycleways, footpaths and greenways (country bridleways with space for walkers).

b. Stopping the issuing of new driving licences.

c. Life bans for all road offences, including speeding, using mobile phones or being wankers.

Let's cull the fuckers! Amateur drivers should be forced of the roads ...

socialist hell

(Geneva 5.12.2008)

Poor Manchester. I always thought it was a pretty cool place, providing us with The Smiths, The Passage, Inspiral Carpets, The Stone Roses and, above all others, Joy Division.

Now they've let us all down. The Guardian-denier-hippy-tory-lefty sheep have voted AGAINST (yes, AGAINST!!) the congestion charge!! Why would anyone vote FOR congestion??

So the loser sheep will have a few more years of ridiculous traffic jams until common sense and right wing ideas take root again and the charge is brought in and the profits used to build TRAMWAYS.

I shake my head sometimes. It looks like the whole world's gone red ...

boris loses it

Poor Boris Johnson. The one person further to the left than Ken Livingstone ... and poor London's stuck with him.

What's the duffer gone and done now? Only cancelled nearly 3bn quid's worth of tramway development in London. What is he thinking of? And to replace these superb schemes - more buses (LOL!) and more provision for walking and cycling (cheap).

It's simple. A city isn't a city without trams. It's a joke. The problem was the plans just scrapped by Boris were nowhere near ambitious enough. London doesn't need a few km of tramways here and there, but a huge network reaching every corner of the city, plus extensions into commuterland, to totally replace the road network. Perhaps backwards-looking Boris simply doesn't get it.

London WILL get its trams, or die. It's just going to take a few more years than expected.

Bye bye Boris. You were fun for a week or two ...

Also posted to transition transport UK and future economics

cabot circus settles down

We popped to Cabot Circus yesterday. It has improved enormously from our first visit. The crowds are down and the shops are just about empty. The restaurants are busy still, and that was what we went for. Until Cabot Bristol city centre seemed almost devoid of decent eating places. Now we're spoilt for choice.

These developments are a problem for all forward-thinking people. The leftie scum are anti any sort of consumerism and will condemn absolutely any development. The hippies are so apart from normal people that they can't even grasp the concept of somewhere like Cabot.

The real forward-thinking people, the grounded working class right wing greens, know that places like this are LOVED by 95% of the population. The 'problem' is to make them sustainable and stay relevant to the communities they serve. Providing a cosmopolitan eating experience is one step, getting rid of all those crap shops and replacing them with hardware outlets, sustainable energy shops, seed stores and all the other stuff we'll need in the future is the next step. And for fucks sake GET A BLOODY TRAMWAY RUNNING TO IT AND THROUGH IT!

Also posted to future economics

Palma looks ahead

Route 52 - running along the front.

Typical off-peak bus loadings.

Route 15 in Palma.

The former station in Palma - everything has now shifted underground.

The authorities on Majorca have realised that the island needs to embrace rail to move forwards. At the moment there is a diesel worked line from Palma to Inca and Manacor. This is (currently) all that remains of a more extensive network - but restoration has already taken place between Inca and Manacor. There is also the (mainly) tourist route from Palma to Soller, and the tramway onwards to Port Soller. These two systems have adjacent terminals in Palma, off the Placa d'Espanya. There is also the newly opened metro line from Palma to the University.

But this is just the start. There are plans to build a route to Alcudia linking to a coastal light railway linking C'an Picafort and Puerto Pollensa. In the south there are proposals for another (more southerly) route linking Palma and Manacor, together with a metro line around the west of Palma.

Most interesting to us, as we've just returned from the area, is the advanced proposal for a tramway linking Placa d'Espanya to the airport and then on to the Playa de Palma and on to Arenal.

We used the buses to get from our hotel to Palma, and they were a nightmare. And this was in the off-peak low season! Many buses simply sailed through the bus stop showing a 'Bus Complet' board, meaning totally full. We waited in Palma for an hour and ten minutes for a bus back to Playa - all were full, and this on a route with a bus every ten minutes! And at three in the afternoon.

This is a sure sign of a route's viability for tram replacement! Trams handle far more passengers than buses ever can. There are plans to start building this line within a year. To me that's still too long!

After Peak Oil Majorca will, if these plans (and more) come to fruition, cope pretty well with the movement of freight and passengers in an energy-poor world. We may no longer be able to fly there, but hopefully in twenty year's time we'll be able to take the ferry from the mainland, pick up a tram at the port and reach every part of the island by sustainable transport.

Also posted to transition transport UK and future economics

majorca (1)

Exit from Palma.


Wooden opulence.


Soller in the rain.


The tram to the port.

A real gem on Majorca is the Palma-Soller railway, which we visited last Thursday.

It's a three foot gauge line that starts from a charming station right in the heart of Palma, then using a little street running and reservation passes through some rather shabby bits of town before heading into the mountains through orange, lemon and olive groves and then reaches the mountain town of Soller. From Soller there is a 4km tramway down to the port, which we didn't have time to visit, but I did get a few shots of the tram running down the narrow streets.

Also posted to somerset and dorset and european byways

reality bites!

It's been fun watching the markets the last few weeks. As an economist this has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, history as it happens. (It helps being debt-free, renting, out of stocks and into gold and silver!)

But what does it all mean? The USA's slide into socialism has been as surprising as it's been amusing, watching the rednecks having to confront the results of their love of debt and ignorance by using the tired old techniques of Lenin and Roosevelt. It's pathetic watching it.

Meltdown will not be averted no matter how much cash is thrown at the system. The old debt-financed globalised consumer 'capitalism' will die. In its place will arise REAL capitalism. Businesses funded by savings, run on a small scale from sustainable premises, sending their goods to market by train, tram and canal, utilising local currencies and hopefully not being taxed to the hilt by unimaginative bureaucratic self-appointed governments. That is what the post-Peak Oil world will look like. Who knows, this may even be the beginning of the end of global warming ...

french lessons

The festival at Lizio. Breton music and other treats - and very chilled out.


Ploermel station. How long before the tracks return?


Josselin - lively as always.


I think this is the old railway (which continues to Ploermel and beyond) but still not sure!

A week in Brittany again. A great time despite raging sinusitis!

It still amazes me how far in advance of us France is. They will cope well with Peak Oil, though not so well with Climate Change. 80% of their power is generated by nuclear, though how long uranium will last is anyone's guess. There were plenty of wind turbines, and the roads were almost empty. Towns and villages still retain local shops, although the supermarkets are useful too! The French have invested heavily in some of their railways, the TGV in particular. Even smaller cities have brand new state of the art tramways. And their closed railways are generally protected as rights of way with reinstatement much easier than in the UK. And in many towns and villages council services have switched from internal combustion to horse and cart. Even the weather's better ...