How can Britain cut emissions when the Tory party fetishises travel?
Andy Beckett
Whether it’s by car or plane, we need to do less. Yet the government thinks of mobility as a freedom for it to champion
It’s us, the folk out here, who like to travel.
We also voted into power a political party that defends what we like to do. That democracy thing?
We also voted into power a political party that defends what we like to do
In this specific case, I’m not sure those facts are necessarily in evidence…
They don’t mention trains, even though I was on trains that were less than 1/6th full yesterday (or about as green as car travel).
As usual, you first, gobshite.
What if we banned sea travel by rigid inflatable boat?
…believed we had…
…can be rather capricious.
Made the mistake of reading the article, what a load of self contradictory cockrot.
As with so many things, freedom to travel is facilitated by having a means to travel. One can set out on foot, sure, but who wants to spend two weeks trudging on pilgramage to Canterbury ? Railways, motor cars, flight all come within the reach of the ordinary person through market forces and relative international peace.
As soon as nations could manage the bureaucracy they introduced border controls, going back to ancient times. It is the prime duty of the State to protect its own borders and the population therein. That is why boatloads of potential Jihadis crossing the channel are frowned upon. As usual with leftist commentators it is only Britain that is guilty of an action that literally every other country in the world enforces.
Yet the government thinks of mobility as a freedom for it to champion
Twat
“who wants to spend two weeks trudging on pilgramage to Canterbury ?”
Actually, I have a mate who does that kind of stuff. Has done a famous one in Spain, but in 3 or 4 separate trips.
Andy Beckett studied journalism in California. Maybe, just to save the planet, of course, he shouldn’t have come back….
Says the newspaper with a travel section?
‘Made the mistake of reading the article, what a load of self contradictory cockrot.’
Yes Otto. Must admit the things he’s bitching about give me a better opinion of the Tories.
What’s the betting Andy works from home, and is wealthy enough to live in a London suburb where you can just wander into the deli and the local Waitrose and a nice coffee shop. And in the evening, a nice little independent cinema and a couple of decent wine bars and pubs.
And what’s the betting that he forgets how all that nice stuff that he consumes gets into that nice London suburb, just like how he forgets his past long-haul flights.
“ we need to do less”
He means, of course, you need to do less.
Decades ago I was in the pub with some mates, and a friend of one of them I hadn’t met before. Anyway, this guy started talking about doing the pilgrimage down through France & Spain to Santiago. With a donkey. IIRC he reckoned it would take about 3 weeks…
Decades later we travelled part of that route in France going on holiday, but much of it on the A10. Where we got off into the villages along that pilgrim route I couldn’t help thinking about that guy on his donkey, but I suspect he never tried it.
Tractor Gent.
Donkeys are hard work. Robert Louis Stephenson’s “Travels With a Donkey in the Cevennes” shows how what could have been an interesting hike turns into a frustrating battle with a wilful and wayward animal. I think he finally gets Modestine to do as she is told by thrashing her into submission.
Pure leftist bullshit and likely smokescreen.
BlueLabour share all the goals of the scummy left for reducing pleb travel to zero. They just try to hide it better with the greenfreak bullshit.
An infallible marker of a commie government: “We’re doing everything right, it’s you, the people, that are doing it wrong.”
@Tractor Gent
A few years back I was on a cross country road takes one from Montauban towards Albi. There was a guy I met, had a traditional wooden caravan pulled by a horse. Couple of weeks later, travelling in the other direction, saw the same bloke. He’d made about 50 km. Maybe your guy’s still en route.
I’ll believe that anyone takes this seriously when they start ordering lots of new sleeper trains, including high-speed ones.
If you run high-speed sleepers from Lille all over Europe and run a morning and evening shuttle service between Lille and London, then you could leave London after work and be in most places in Western Europe by the next morning. I did the maths a few years ago on how fast the lines are and how far you could get by 8:30 am for a 10pm departure from Lille, and the answer is, roughly, Copenhagen, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Venice, Rome, Madrid. You’d reach Barcelona about 5am, so you could get to Madrid or to about Benidorm.
Under current regulations and prices, a cheap single ticket from London to Benidorm would be about £300, which isn’t going to work, but if governments want people to be able to travel without flying, then they could sort out some of the red tape, support building new trains and knock that to about £150 each way before they have to start subsidising – which wouldn’t be implausible (all the airports in Spain are subsidised, which is why flights to them are so cheap).
As it is, they’re going to wag their finger at people taking a cheap flight on holiday and not actually do anything to stop them or provide a useful alternative.
Andy Beckett doubtless believes that serfs should still be tied to the land.
Freedom to travel means freedom to change jobs, freedom to go to school and learn to read and write, freedom to go to a different church in a different village if you don’t like the local vicar, freedom to meet different people …
Freedom to travel is millennia older than the Tory Party
Richard,
The missus and I used to travel to Vienna on a car train/sleeper. We drove in a leisurely manner to Duesseldorf from Calais, stopping off at friends in Holland for tea, train left around 9 or 10pm. It arrived 8am ish after a stopover in Nuremberg where the Italy bound carriages were separated. We really enjoyed it, bit pricey but very civilised, especially as I was usually plastered by the time we reached Frankfurt.
Needless to say they canned the service.
I took the London-Inverness sleeper once. Lovely breakfast while enjoying beautiful views of Speyside. Arrived in good nick for a day’s work.
Why bother with a train when the flight is only a couple of hours. We did KL->Hat Yai Junction->Bangkok by train a few years ago with the kids. A few hours on trains plus a border crossing which only opens for 20 minutes then a slow 1st class sleeper on Thai railways for 12 hours. Not so classy I can tell you. Great experience though. Bangkok->Singapore (home) by plane is about 3 hours if I remember.
Time is money after all.
I should point out that I am not unreservedly pro-train
I travelled across a large chunk of Canada in a train and all I saw was swamp. I also travelled Singapore-KL and the scenery consisted of jungle, bugger all else.
“Says the newspaper with a travel section?”
Guardian readers travel.
Everyone else is a tourist.
They can all fuck off. Travel is our choice not that of political scum. Let any opposed to it be hanged for the agents of tyranny they are. Some like travel–some don’t. Leave it at that and ignore troublemakers. Or if they persist–kill them.