iamcal.com Since May 2000

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discuss:

Yup. Fuckers.

I don't drive. Does this make me as bad as the anti-smoking Nazis?

worse than satan, AP, although I must be too, if there's one thing guaranteed to make me shout at the telly it's an AA spokesman whining about taxes, speed cameras, the price of petrol, congestion charges, bla bla bla.
I only have a bicycle which I'm normally too scared to use, because car drivers seem to think that anyone (pedestrian, motorbike, cyclist) on the road who is not cased in metal shouldn't really be there and is fair game!

I don't like this fact it ruins the atmosphere and it makes lazy slobs out of us. I try and avoid taking the car places as much as possible, it is also an expensive way to get around, but there are places that you need to take the car and there are no other ways round it, not in this day and age anyway

# I decided loooong aaagoooo
Never to walk in aaaanyyyyone's shaaaadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I will live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can't take away my digniteeeeeeeeeeeee.....#

I use public transport whenever possible and always walk if it's practical (i.e within a couple of miles). I need the car for work though and , as I've pointed out before, seen as that work is generally directly helping the environment I think it more than cancels out the miles i drive to get there.

Yip, i also use publis transport..basically so i can read my book.

I use public transport because you can be sick on it without having to clear it up yourself and without paying a £50 soiling charge. :)

You can't letch at a carriage of good looking women in a car when you're supposed to be driving. You also don't have a little guy/girl bringing round a trolley of booze and snacks. Sweet. That said, I would really like a bmw z4, hmmm so many conflicts.

I wouldn't give a hard time to specifically car drivers though. The "Whiney Twat" factor seems rife in society at the moment, it seems like very little can happen nowadays without some aggrieved "Whiny Twat" contingent springing up.

I use public transport because I can't drive yet (I'm learning at the moment) and frankly I'm sick of it. I've got to catch two buses to get to a job interview tomorrow, which I'd rather not do, but I have no choice. I wish I'd learnt to drive sooner now.

As soon as I pass my test I'm getting a car - fuck the environment. :P

What pisses me off more than people who use their cars for every little journey is folk who think they are being great and recycling just cause they dump stuff into a bottle bank. They are the real reason that nothing gets done. If even 10% of people actually bothered to find out what happens after the paper, glass and plastic is 'recycled' then maybe the whole affair would be more above board. Currently, and this depends upon where you live and what companies operate, about 60%+ of the materials recycled in car park recycling bins goes directly to landfill sites and is dumped. This is, they argue, technically re-cycling as the waste produces methane.

It's just another case of making yourself feel good by doing the absolute minimum amount required. Regretably finding out which companies do genuine re-cycling and which don'tis quite tough so it's worth still doing but just don't look down on those who do not cause chances are its all going to exactly the same place.

Its alright saying this, but prices are really too high for cars in this country, but trains and buses are usually more expensive then to run a car, and the government want you to take more public transport, but what is the point if its cheaper to take a car.

I just loved it when I saw this lady drive down the road, which would have been a five min walk to drop a letter in a post box, then drive back again, just cos there was a hill there. This disgusted me

I agree BG. It's going to cost me £4 to get to my job interview and back tomorrow! :/

Compeltely agree, best example is international flights. Why does getting from where I live to Stanstead (2.5 hour train journey) cost me up to tripple the amount of my flight to an international destination. Actually while i'm whining (I'd like to point out i'm aware of the irony of being a 'car-less, whining twat') why do i I have to pay £2 to get from one side of the thames to the other via the underground on Sunday, and i know its a laboured old irritating point but regardless of the economical justification by rail operators, a single should be half the cost of a return.

The whining about speed cameras and parking tickets are a particularly irritating ones - 'they're just trying to catch me out and make some money, rark rark rark'
How can they possibly complain about this? if you don't want to pay fines, don't break the law, duh!

and prices aren't too high, otherwise there wouldn't be a need for congestion charging to discourage drivers would there?

I don't follow how a congestion charge implies the prices are ok?

I think what people generally whine about is that the costs are so much higher in this country compared with other countries. I don't agree however, and think that the price of petrol should go up to discourage un-required car journeys.

Yes complaining about things being their own fault is stupid, I agree with that Kitten

But I do beleive we are the most expensive country to own a car in the world. and it shouldn't be and congestion charges seem to be useless being so small, due to it still being cheaper and more conveient then the train, the thing that makes people take the train to London is the fact that its so busy and difficult to drive into london everyday

congestion charging is required because the amount of cars on the road is rising unsustainably, this suggests to me that they're not too expensive to buy and run.

Ok that one is definitely irritating. you get some moronic midlife crisis guy in his hairdresser sports car (no offence to any hairdressers) saying that its unbelievable the government is putting speed cameras where people are speeding, that they're not interested in safety just in pseudo-taxing the public. Right, yup, thats it, man, you're such a victim Mr Toyota driver.

Do I care if because I drive a car with a big engine, my great-grandchildren will have trouble breathing?

No, I do not.

Performance Unleaded = more pollution, but also = more engine power, so people use it.

that's a REALLY crap idea. it's a tax on people who HAVE to use cars because they don't have any kind of public transport. like me. really dumb idea. our petrol is already taxed to fuck. 90% of the cost is tax. that's just plain wrong.


i have a good idea to reduce traffic pollution - get rid of police cars, ambulances and fir engines. ther's loads of them! why don't the emergency services use public transport!!!!!

(obviously, this is a fucking stupid idea too)

well live closer to where you work then

tee hee!

yeah, great idea. everyone should live in towns :/

eh..no thanks. Glasgow is busy enough without the country bumpkins coming to stay with their wax jackets and their wellies and fuckin land-rovers.

To be honest if the government stopped paying itself so much, we stopped paying the royal family so much, the government didn't pay for pointless things like the dome, they also don't fight pointless wars that they don't need to. The jobless looked for jobs in places like supermarkets, instead of going on the doll straight away, we would possibly pay less taxes or at least the money would go towards more substatial purposes.

I wanted to go on the doll but I couldn't find the puncture repair kit...

Do we pay for the royal family now?? Don't remember that.

Tony Blair earns less per annum than Roy Keane in a week - FACT.

(that's a year, btw)

Cherie earns a fuckload more than him - FAKATAKAMUNDO!

Tax in this country has always paid for the royal family, unless they stopped at some point and the royal family got jobs. You only pay for rot keane if you watch a man U match which I always try and avoid

They do have jobs/side projects from which money is earned. Edward's production company, for example. I'm no royalist but the whole "we pay for their bog roll" argument isn't strictly true now, is it?

I know we don't pay for Roy Keane, but my point was that you can't use the "government pay themselves too much" argument here, because quite frankly, they don't earn *that* much considering the "importance" of their jobs.

I know a job which is more important then the government job and they get payed squat, hmmm I have not seen that word in a while. Anyway, the dustbin men do a much more important job then any government official, if we did not have them then we would all die in all our own filth.

And yes some of the royal family do have jobs/own companies, but we still pay for the majority of it, althought I have no proof and you could probably proove me wrong again, cos I am a fool

The queen gets a lot of revenue from the tenants of the land she owns (this could be interpreted another way, I've just realised). She's the second biggest landowner in the world behind the McDonald's corporation, IIRC.

Tax in Scotland is not for the royals..its for museums, water, refuge etc etc

do you not get water bill foggy, or are you meaning other reasons for water?

no, we dont get water bills. All paid for through our council tax

bastard, I bet your council tax bill is less then mine aswell, mine was £800 odd

a year?

yes a year, which I had to pay In one fell swoop and go into debt for because my g/f forgot to pay it :S

# Because the greaaaaa-test love of all
Is happening to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
I found the greeeeeeeeatest love of all
Inside of meeeeee
The greatest loooooooooooove of aalllllllllllllllll
Is easy to achieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of allllllllllllllllll #

God bless Whitney and her songs which subtley describe the act of "burping the worm"

Polluting Whitney Twats????


Damn that Bobby Brown. I really couldn't give a fuck what his prerogative is either.

Damn him to hell.

stop spamming you spammer :)

Its the way that he wants to live.

"that's a REALLY crap idea. it's a tax on people who HAVE to use cars because they don't have any kind of public transport. like me. really dumb idea. our petrol is already taxed to fuck. 90% of the cost is tax. that's just plain wrong. "

Well I'm sure it would be easy to work something out for people who need to use their car for work and it cannot be avoided. The fuckers that should pay more for fuel are those who take their 4.5 litre from St Johns Wood to The City for a days trading. Tossers.

Anyway bad idea or not fuel is just going to get exponentially more expensive through our lifetime. As soon as they think they've pushed the price as far as is acceptable then I'm sure they will perfect fuel cells pretty soon afterwards.

I bet you claim your fuel back from clients anyway ;)

"bastard, I bet your council tax bill is less then mine aswell, mine was £800 odd"

Mine was £1600

oh ok then, thats high

That's another thing (from way up there) - the way our tax money goes into supporting things like museums and theatres.

If these things are so bloody important, then they would have the funds to look after themselves.

Knock them all down and build night-clubs instead.

controversial!

But fair.
More people visit night clubs than theatres, so they must be more popular, so I cannot see how it isn't in the public interest to do so.

You don't have to knock them all down, obviously - the ones that can support themselves can stay.

Goodness me, we want a pleasent life but we don't want to pay tax. Oh, the ghost of Thatcher haunts this website. If only she was dead. But it's worse, she's alive in yr hearts. Of course petrol is 90% tax! Same reason tobacco and booze are heavily taxed. Because on a whole, they're useless. At least smoking and drinking make you feel nice. 90% of the cars on the roads are redundant. "Oh, but we need to get to work". Duh! Well pay some bloody tax then and stop moaning!

ilbm: why not ban cars in zones 1 and 2 completely. would that help?

Only if there was free (good) public transport and it was free to park in zone 4 (or whatever).

Actually, that's not a bad idea.

Have a further tuppence, my original point in writing this was that people are happy to moan at me and tell me I'm destroying their health when I have a fag, but the fact is smokers get moaned at so often, although they're normally very careful about where and when they smoke if non-smokers are around, they rarely moan (much less get the smokers association spokesperson on the 9 o clock news) about tax hikes because we know the damage we're doing to ourselves has to be paid for. The prices will just keep rising, I don't like it but I know that's how it should be.
Drivers are causing considerably more damage and the number of cars on the road is rising - the amount of toxins put out by a car is something like 40,000 times as much as by me having a cigarette and has considerably more impact on the environment, people's health (shock, including children!), car drivers happily pollute any air they like without considering who is breathing it / eating in the vicinity, noise levels, town planning revolves around car drivers, I know lots of drivers who have an appaling attitude to cyclists and pedestrians, speeding, rark rark rark. Wanting to drive is seen as different to smoking because you 'have no choice'. I think in many cases that's crap. I've managed 25 years without ever feeling the need to learn to drive, my other half is 30, and he's the same. When I've considered a move or a change of job in the past it's just something that has to be taken in the account (much as I would imagine people who drive would have to consider what sort of parking came with a house) - I can't live in some places because I couldn't get to work, unless I get a job more locally, I can't work in some places because it's too far / too much hassle to get to, it doesn't bother me.

Now I sound all anti-car but I'm not, I'm insanely ranting, and all I really want is to be able to smoke in peace.
Obviously I'd much rather settle this by having a fight, but that's not really possible over the interweb :)

Spot on, Mrs. Whole Baby Cat.

you might not win in a fight tbh :)

ssssh

I'm sure I've mentioned something about my involvment with Green Piece protesters before...

green piece?
you should probably see a gynaecologist about that.

You'll understand the Green Piece reference in a sec.

Here's the thread: www.iamcal.com/topic.php?id=1372#post117...

I haven't changed much in a year, have I?

=]

no you haven't :)
I'll not moan about your driving if you don't moan about me smoking, deal?

As long as you don't smoke near my grilfriend, because it makes her ill.

Hence I don't smoke any more =[

It makes her ill? Is she pregers?

Nah, she's made out of petrol.

;)

don't drive past my house then ;)

Fog: She's got Cystic Fybrosis =[

:(

Shit, sorry to hear that mate.

Is it an illness that causes disability? (forgive my ignorance on the subject)

I think it does. yes.

or perhaps no..does it not have something to do with affecting the lungs?

AP: (Deep breath) Cystic Fybrosis is a genetic diesese that stops the bodies natural ability to remove fluid from it's lungs. CF sufferers cough a lot and rarely live to be older than 16. They take various drugs in various different ways (such as inhilation) and have no external differences to anyone else (except they wear hats because the antibiotics they take make them burn in the sun easily).

Also, one of them especially is very, very cute =]

You were probably thinking of Multiple Scirosis, AP (which affects the spine).

Actually, it's respiratory, isn't it? Hence the aversion to smoke.


*crawls back into box*

Note to self: the F5 key is your friend.....

Yeah, I asked because my last girlfriend had a rare condition which confined her to a wheelchair.

Some people don't have any choice about using cars. I need one for my job and couldn't work without one. And if I didn't do my job then the damage to the environment would be massively greater than if I stopped driving. It's a good arguement Kitten but only a fool would agree that smoking is as much a required part of life as driving. Also the chemicals in a cigarette are, i'm afraid to tell you, considerably more toxic and damaging than those in fuels. With petrol you get unburnt hydrocarbons, a few aromatics, oxides and some benzene (not great). In a ciggy you have complex cyclo-hydrocarbons, arsenics, other metal compounds and micro particles. There is no contest health wise. Despite this I am a believer that ciggies get more grief than they should for cancers, don't get me wrong if you smoke you will likely die from it, but if you go for a run in central London the damage is arguably as bad due to increased volume.

The only problem I have with ciggies is people forcing me to breath them in an enclosed environment. That is moronic. If you want to avoid car pollution wear a mask like couriers, thats a bit hard to do in a restaurant.

"ilbm: why not ban cars in zones 1 and 2 completely. would that help?"

Of course but it's not practical. People need private transport to move large objects around and so on. The public transport would have to be excellent and wont't getthat way until people use it which won't happen until it's excellent. Catch 22.

You been thinking about this all afternoon?

Um, if you smoked a cigarette that gave you the same fumes as a family car, you'd drop dead at the end of it, surely?

but you don't sit at the exhaust breathing it in - it's bad concentrated (monoxides) but not as bad when in low concentratins (the kind you get my breathing in near heavy traffic)

exactly.

"You been thinking about this all afternoon?"
:D no was out all afternoon.

Doh, I wish I'd never started this, I really don't want to argue about this anymore....

There's a lot more exhaust fumes being pumped into the environment than cigarette smoke, and I know they cause more than health problems (which I think you have underestimated). And what about all the other gripes I have with car use? (Noise, town-planning, accidents, environmental damage, disregard for other road users and so on)
I know about the health risks associated with smoking to myself, and I think that's my choice. As for the health risks to others, I'm also very aware and concerned about them, I don't light up in other people's houses, cars etc etc. However if you go to the pub, whilst I'm not going to smoke if someone's eating near me or blow it in anyones face, I hardly think it's a health spa - you go there to drink and smoke! If you're that concerned sit in the non-smoking section or the garden with an orange juice!
I can see that there are some situations in which it is essential to use a car, as you say, moving heavy things, disabled people and so on, but I wonder what percentage of traffic this accounts for?
Anyway, I don't want to take your car away from you, I just want to be able to smoke in peace. If you wish to be a sanctimonious non-smoker, then I shall reserve my right to be a sanctimonious non-driver ;)

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2557617.stm

As with most car drivers, I'm of the opinion that I should be able to drive my car as much as, and wherever I want, and no one else should be aloud on the road (especially other drivers) at those times.

If you say so, Steve.

Having no other car drivers would be dull - who would you overtake?

I can't drive, and my friends and I carpool whenever we can...