This weekend the Greens will debate whether to amend a policy to effectively ban all cars from the roads. The motion, sponsored by Rustam Majainah, Daniel Lee, Emmanuel Blondel, Sam Peters, Ben Samuel and Sam Coates, reads:

Our current transport policy has a line that would ban almost all currently roadworthy cars. As this would probably prove unattractive with the electorate, this motion replaces it with text that is more in line with the intentions of the policy.

The offending clause of the policy book (TR310) reads:

Vehicles would not be permitted for road use that had the ability to travel at greater speeds than the majority of EU national maximum speed levels.

They propose replacing it with the words:

The Green Party would introduce legislation to encourage car manufacturers to introduce speed limiters in vehicles to prevent them travelling faster than the UK national maximum speed limit."

They will also scrap the words:

“to encourage car manufacturers to introduce speed limiters in vehicles to prevent them travelling faster than the UK national maximum speed limit.”

And replace by the following text. “to require manufacturers to install suitable technology in all new motor vehicles such that compliance with speed limits is better achieved. The prescription of the most suitable technology will be based on the best evidence available at the time the legislation is passed and will be reviewed from time to time. The maintenance of such equipment will be covered by the annual vehicle test (MOT).”

And of course none of this will apply to Green MP's, hmmm, gets my vote.

How about this one then OTE?

"We believe that public transport should be run in the interests of passengers, not to make a quick profit for shareholders.

The privatisation of Britain’s transport network has done a huge disservice to to passengers: driving up prices whilst creating a race to the bottom in service provision.

It’s clear that passengers are not getting a fair ride.

We will:

Return the railways to public hands to stop profits being put before passengers.
Introduce an immediate cut in fares of 10% to give passengers a much-needed financial break."

Do they get your vote??

Great, if you live in a city, town or village that's served by a railway. If not you're stuffed.

bunch of loons; their MP once uttered that anyone who dared to question climate change, were as bad as holocaust deniers.
They are making (not) great job of running the City of Brighton.

Sounds a good ideas not to vote for the Greens (if one was ever thinking of voting for them).

Actually, yes - I'd be inclined to seriously consider at least. I must say, I feel that certain clearly monopoly provisions should not be in private hands. However 'nationalisation' or rather central control isn't the only answer; there are other much more accountable and effective models.

I lost faith with the Labour Party when that tribune of the people John Prescott failed to seize the opportunity to take the rail infrastructure back into public ownership for nothing when the private firm who'd made a complete cods went under.

When we talk of money being invested in the railways, we ought to remember the huge sums p1ssed away selling off the assets and properties. It wasn't market forces, more executive greed.

Umm. So says the Daily Mail! I have a few colleagues and friends on the South Coast who are just as cynical as I am. Compared to the governance we have to put up with round here, Brighton (which is rather larger) isn't seen as all bad. At least they do things with the money they get.

Absolutley, but what about those big things with lots of seats in we used to call buses? Oh yeah, don't need them no more because we can all drive can't we?

(Irrelevant PS - I met some silly old bloke I used to work with, lives a few miles from Newbury. Medical issues meant driving licence taken away. Still he gets into hospital for his appointments via the volunteer service.....)

At least the Greens are doing what we've asked time and again and are discussing things. UKIP on the other hand according to its leader doesn't even take notice of its policies, let alone what it's supporters might say at a conference.

A vote for UKIP simply means you get Farage deciding instead of Cameron; big deal!

Yeah, but with local bus services being cut to the bone, and sometimes beyond, you're doubly stuffed. And not every where has a Volunteer service (God blessum).

If you want to go back to the Stone Age vote Green. Hey, New party slogan right there.

Yeah, you are right....but given what's happening you'll be there a lot quicker if you vote for the traditional trio.

My God! Forced to drive within the speed limit? Whatever next!

Still at least we'd still be able to do 70 in town.

Does this apply to bikes then?
I notice they say "car manufacturers"
I wouldn't get my bike out of second gear!!

So jaguar, BMW, Audi, Ferrari et al will still find a UK market will they? Also it's the thin end of the wedge, once you have it installed the GPS will know where you are and when = road pricing. You'll pop out to buy a paper and find it's just cost you an extra fiver. It's all getting a bit too Orwellian.
And as I said, it won't apply to MP's "for security sir". Ooh, I could spit, I really could.

Absolutely, anyone not fitted with stabilizers and travelling more than 20kph will be immediately taken into custody on charges of endangering.smugness and having fun.

Having recently retuned to using the train, I was immediately reminded how miserable using them is compared to my modest car. My car is completely competent to travel on the motorway and I rarely go above 70. Trains, however, OK if you get a seat on a HST, quite pleasant in fact, indeed, it isn't too bad on the old snails, BUT, the service!!!

I've already said I hate Reading station and I still do. I made the mistake of assuming a late train, so I fire my app up and guess what, last train was the Plymouth 2102!!! So I go into mild panic, phone a friend, then I discover by accident by another passenger that there is a replacement bus service. OK, at least I can get home without calling on a friend's charity, albeit 20 minutes later than I would otherwise had. So when I get to Reading, yep, Bus it says on the board, but ferk all about where you actually catch the bloomin' thing!!! So I queue at the excess fair kiosk, wait patiently for the foreigner in front of me to finish spinning a **** and bull story about why he hasn't the wherewithal for what ever they were trying to sort out, then get told it is all the way over the other side of the station.

I must remember to service my car this weekend. By car to work ~1hr door to door, by train (and bus when I get there)? No faster than ~2hrs; 2.5 hours if I have to walk to the station. Cost in fair? ~£28; cost in petrol (I know not a completely fair comparison, but I still need a car anyway), ~£12.

This is because NR are working on the line for electrification.
Always best to check before you travel especially at weekends.

Cars never get held up eh?
Not making excuses. Bad service is bad service, but I am surprised there was no-one at Reading apart from the excess fares to help you.
Were the gatelines not manned?

Can't say that I care but I doubt that every purchaser of a Jag, BMW or Audi is only buying them for their ability to speed.


The Greens propose speed limiters to the EU maximum speed limit - which would actually be about 85mph. Not a GPS linked system.

I wonder why there is an EU ban on more powerful vacuum cleaners but these types of car are still available?
Double standards?

Actually it's 130kph in the dry but 110 kph in the rain, in Britain it always rains, so roughly 65mph it is then. Oh, and do you honestly, in your wildest dreams not think that the UK Government won't say "It has to begps linked, that way we can ensure every speed limit is adhered to. Oh and we can remove thespeed cameras and cut down on the police. A double saving and we pass all costs on to the motorists".

Sir, are you honestly equating the pur have of a £150 cleaner with the possible pur have of a £40 - £100000 vehicle? Would you want to buy a thoroughbred racehorse with only two legs?

I rather like the idea of more technology to help me keep to the speed limit. Cruise control is great but if it could read the limit from transponders in the road surface that woyld be really helpful. I have a clunky smart phone app that does more or less that, and the sat nav in my car appears to know the current speed limit but I don't actually have cruise control and I don't know if the two communicate in models that do. Technology that moderated the cruise control according to the speed of the vehicle in front would also be great and would make driving a whole bunch less threatening and dangerous.

As for fining motorists who choose to break the speed limit, then sure, why not, I don't accept that's a choice anyone should be free to make.

On the other hand I want from Euston to Manchester in just over two hours the other day. Had a nice comfy seat, ate some lunch and watched a film on my laptop which was plugged into the power socket on the train.

Much better than being stuck on the M42 round Birmingham.

Adaptive cruise control. I set it to the speed I wish to travel and it does the rest, if the car ahead slows, so do I. When it speeds up, so do I. If it stops, well, you get the picture I'm sure.

Whereas I went to London two weeks ago, took 1 1/2 hrs, no seat, ended up sitting on briefcase next to the toilet.

Was the service operated by the same company as the one that AC used?

Probably.

Your example is not like for like. I went from Newbury to Reading in ~25 minutes and Reading to Slough in ~20 minutes. Standing or sat, I'm happy about that.

The problem is the door to door experience: its an half hour walk to the station, get a lift or use my friends parking space; then there's getting there with time to get organised (I do like their pints of cappuccino though); sweating over the train getting to the station to make the connection, with its customary apparent random slowing down, otherwise having to hang about on Reading Station for a while; then there's the constant 'fear' that you are actually on the right train when it is sat there (please, please, please, turn the freaking information board on while the train is sat waiting so that one can be sure!). Then when you get to the destination town, there's the local bus service which is even and much worse than the train service.

I am not anti-train, I actually like travelling on trains, they are just a cause of stress when travelling when you have deadlines. Also, until the cost of travel equates to the cost of fuel in a car journey, I will always regard them as too expensive.

Makes no difference who runs it.
Virgin West Coast have nice new electric trains, FGW have much older diesel ones with less capacity.
The money was spent a while ago on West Coast but is only just being spent on Western.

The reason given by the EU for reducing the permitted wattage of vacuum cleaners was to save the environment and yet you can still by huge gas guzzling cars!
What's the point??

Er... scale? Most people in the EU have a 'thirsty' vacuum cleaner, only a handful of people have gas guzzlers. Having said that, powerful diesels are now getting good fuel returns equal to an economic petrol car of 10 or 15 years ago.

But how many actually NEED one?
Status, power?
If we all need to reduce our consumption of energy to save the environment then how many need a vehicle of say more than 1600cc?

In my view, no-one, but, using the same argument, who needs a bike greater than 600cc, in fact, lets say 350cc.

Your original observation was quite right and very interesting. Yes, double standards at best. The responses demonstrate exactly how most males in this generation view cars; which in reality means any green proposal has absolutley no chance of success. Cars are extension to shall we say male ego! Be careful lads, apparently it's not how big it is, more what you do with it....

For the sake of clarity, will (or can) someone please define 'gas guzzler?)

Absolutely.
But why pick on vacuum cleaners?
Can't see the argument from the "green agenda" which is why I asked the question seeing as we are on a "green" thread.

No definition, it's just a term as you well know. But everyone except you, it appears, knows the general meaning.
Bit like the term "bedroom tax". It doesn't exist, but everyone seems to know what it means.

Oh, hang on, good old Wiki! (Well the US definition anyway.)

It's todays commercialised politics in action and why I've become totally cynical. The real reason is probably two fold. First, one vacuum manufacturer has found a way to stuff the opposition, so they've lobbied the MEPs in the member state in which they operates. All very clever, get the change under the guise of a good green initiative. Then, as the rule becomes active, a retailer spots an opportunity to significantly increase the sale of vacuum cleaners for a few months, and the Daily Mail do the promotion for nix......trebles all round!
Why not do it for ALL motorised apparatus, aaah that would mean we'd have to have values.

US gas guzzlers-

http://www.autoblog.com/2014/07/24/cars-av...zler-tax-list/:

Not really good enough, what qualifies a car as a gas guzzler? Mpg? If so where's the cut off point? Size of car? Or is this yet another term that people like to use without even knowing what they mean?

140kph in Poland the highest in the EU (wet. dry, whatever), so that would seem to be speed limit the Green's propose


Sounds like a good idea to me - saves motorists all those fines, points and irritating speed awareness courses. And how much would it cost - a couple of hundred quid on the price of a new car?

But it isn't what the Greens seem to be proposing. And it's patently obvious that UK or any other government is running scared of introducing any sort of speed limiter on private cars. They did it with lorries, but all parties see an extension of this to private vehicles it as a massive vote loser - except the Greens who probably assume they've lost all those votes long ago.

To be honest I really don't care that much, the Greens are unlikely to gain power during my lifetime and this policy has probably alienated 80% of the male vote. But at least we had a discussion that didn't involve the council, parking or allotments. A breath of fresh air.

Well you learn something everyday!
I knew what LGBT meant but until now I was unaware of the I&Q in LGBTIQ!!
(Although I think I remember SK mentioning something similar some time ago.)

Just booked a seat in the ROFL copter. If the Greens didn't exist, I swear you'd have to make them up.

A bit like UKIP then! Interesting really, because we all know how effective and true manifestos are. Like 'we are going to abolish tuition fees'

IIRR I referred to "non-male" in recognition of the fact that gender identity is not always a binary alternatives, and that "not male" !== "female".

Beyond that the, 'NHS is safe with us', or 'no top down reorg of the NHS', or 'we have legislated against tuition fees', 'we have no plans to change VAT rates', 'the big society', the list goes on... why does any one think that UKIP will be any different. It's all very well talking a good game, but without the burden of responsibility, you can never be sure exactly of all the issues you are faced with when you try to implement policy. Put simply: some times you have to face-up to the fact the policy is wrong, or ill-conceived, and if you do, the next best think to do is put in pace a progressive alternative.

In practical terms that's right BUT in commerce, this is sort of thing is regarded as misspelling. On the demand of the very people who say these things, companies have been fined huge sums - arguably for saying rather less!

A classic example of this populist double talk comes from the Oarliamentary select committees. Where Starbucks, Vodafone and the like we're evicerated for simply using the very tax rules the accusers had themselves made.

Sorry, I've never believed that 'complexity' should be a remedy against honesty, but it's certainly down to us not to support people who have demonstrably traded their values for our votes.

Real leadership means telling the truth.

That depends on what truth you want. Plenty of companies trade on vapourware. None of this excuses it, but in the political arena where you have extreme opposites it is ill conduced that you can liken it to running a company.

All the main parties had a financial black hole that none were prepared to admit to. But like I said, no party won an outright victory, although the Tories did win. You then have to ask did the Lib Dems abandon their principles with what they replaced their pledge?

I don't think they did, but they have paid the price for it.

It's the use of sales and marketing tactics that is causing the harm. That our politics has degenerated into a simple market place where the participants simply trade 'solutions' dressed as policies simply to 'buy' votes.

There were many ways to conduct a coalition and still hold on to basic values. Regrettably, just for the sake of power, the LibDems chose the option that took them as close to a merge as they could.

Yes, they've deservedly paid the price, but then again, it was actually the LibDems who started the commoditisation / marketing if UK politics in the first place, with the likes of Des Wilson and mi Lord Rennard. Act like spivvy salesmen, get treated like spivvy salesmen - simple as that.