At 16:11 08/02/2007, you wrote:
>There are perfectly easy, cheap(in terms of related government spend)
>and non-intrusive ways of making car driving unattractive
>
>fuel tax hikes, car tax dependent on consumption/exhaust gases and
>congestion charges
>
>There are also great and cheap ways of making cycling and walking
>attractive:
>
>Create cycle paths in all inner cities, make it painful and dear to park
>on them and create + enforce cyclists and pedestrians' preferential
>right of way. At the moment I get run over even by police cars if I as a
>pedestrian make use of my right of way when they want to cross my path.
>
>Finally create adequate P&R facilities and create plenty of adequate and
>securely lockable cycle sheds in inner cities.
>
>I am still amazed that I felt perfectly safe as a student to cross inner
>city Frankfurt/Main in a bicycle during rush hour, but feel afraid today
>even of Glasgow's side streets, let alone any main streets.
>
>Instead of all this the government goes for the one single option which
>will a) create enormous implementation costs without any infrastructure
>gain and b) create a privacy nightmare for all drivers, but have no
>benefit whatsoever for cyclists or pedestrians.
>
>Peter
This is exactly the issue. The issue of environmental protection can
be addressed more appropriately in other ways.
Just as it started with words, moved to Yellow stars and ended in the
concentration camps we are sleep walking towards a 1984 Big Brother
oligarchy with no privacy, and the kind of intrusion on everyone's
lives that no-one would have accepted even in the life and death
struggle of world war 2.
Just as the Nazis made many Germans of conscience either feel totally
powerless, and others feel that they could not oppose what was only
one more small step this is a process of steady erosion.
We already have so many cameras, so many recorders, so many computers
analyzing, so many people watching that privacy, even in respect of
medical records let alone travel is an almost extinct phenomenon.
Julian
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