Chorley is dry

Yep! There's plenty of places where use is worthy of criticism, and people (government) really need to wake up to this. However, to simply say take a bus/cycle/walk etc.... is short sighted. Not all jobs are a case of turning up at a destination with a few bits of paper and such, then staying there 9-5.

 

Technobear, thats awfully noble of you to say. However being a somerset man I have no doubt you can see miles of wonderful landscape as I can here in Hampshire.

There will never be an infrastructure to allow public transport to all of the places, its never going to happen. The best we can hope for is a lightning up on the strangulation of alternative cars.

I think you have to be a bit soft in the head if you think Utopia is coming from this. Cars are a problem you are correct, however I am I would imagine a majoirty of people outside of major cities, A. need to live and B. have to drive to get work, I have always had to travel some distance, and there has never been transport to get me there.

As a case in point when living in Watford, I had work 20 miles up the road in Luton, there was no direct train, that would involve going into london and out again, and thats not even talking about cost. Being in catering hours varied from 6 am too 11 am to get to work, what transport system would support that in a rural location?

My current job is 16 miles away of hilly counrtyside, I manage a team of people and sometimes get called when off etc, what do I do then?

Its a bloody difficult situation and people need to wake up to the fact that getting rid of cars is not going to create a better world for most people.

 

is there a fuel shortage then? not heard any news for a few days,been too busy doing my bit towards global warming with 150+ kw of lighting :JPS:

 

It's quite astonishing that you can talk about "the ultimate poison of socialism" when discussing Sweden and Norway, which are two of the most successful societies in existence by pretty much any yardstick. They consistenly top quality of life surveys and are consistenly ranked among the best places to live in the world. They have low levels of inequality and some of the highest levels of happiness and satisfaction of any population in the world.

"The Scandinavian Model", as it's often referred to is one that many countries look up to and try (usually unsucessfully) to emulate.

I believe it's Denmark (which you could also include in the list of model societies) which has a very high suicide rate. I woudln't be surprised if Sweden and Norway are far behind. However this probably has everything to do with long periods of winter darkness and very little to do with the way their society is run. It's well known that extended periods without sun can cause depression, which is the leading cause of suicide.

Indeed, a decent climate is about the only thing the scandinavian countries don't have going for them.

Just to clear up any confusion, the kind of social democracy that exists in scandinavia is a million miles from what any of the UK political parties represents, especially New Labour and the Tories.

Back to the fuel "crisis" - what crisis? There is no shortage...or at least there wasn't until a bunch of tabloid reading sheep drained the pumps dry by buying a weeks worth of fuel in a day .

Michael.

 

igary, I laugh because car drivers are stupid enough to cue up at petrol stations just because someone said "fuel shortage" I mean, can't people "think" for themselves, hey its just clicked, we should take Mr Devil's approach to this, like on beer being £5 a pint, maybe Petrol should be too.

 

This is true MO, but there is also the unnecessary school runs, trip to the shops to buy the pint of milk, the managment in their 5ltr executive cars, oh but there is more, something else we've not touched on, what about aircraft and ships, they burn fuel like its going out of fashion, but I guess they don't have to worry about filling up at the petrol station a?

 

Oh god, so now we know why "Rudolph Hucker" fled to Sweden....he really is a "rude ol' f**ker", innee? Or should that be "racist ol' f"....?? Oops, did I really type that? Oh well England's gain is Sweden's loss I s'pose - hee hee :JOEL:

Garyi, I think the reason for the ridicule is that panicking motorists are perpetuating exactly the kind of fuel shortage they are er..panicking about!

That was a remarkably articulate post from you by the way, about everything coming from oil and all that. I was half expecting you to say nothing more than..

"You're ****ed, buy a Ka"

Cheers,

JR

PS: I filled up on Sunday, only because the filling station (in gary's old stamping ground of good ol' Watford) was cheaper than most others around here!

 

I see Michael is back on his utopian 'socialist' path... I thought this was interesting.

Paul

 

So there isn't a fuel crisis because the same media that said there was a fuel crisis now says there isn't..

The gov are saying 'dont panic', I would suggest, since we have low stocks of refined products because the EU [well the IEA actually] has given/sold/loaned refined reserves to the US, OR the US have bought our refined products to keep their supply up -whichever way you choose to look at it. Then the US will be buying all the methane come winter, and the heating oil, and refilling its crude strategic reserve that it is tapping now, while we need to replenish ours in Europe, while the Chinese have started filling [buying] their reserve since August..

I don't see how the Swedes driving on Ethanol or veg oil helps. They are simply cheap commodities because of farming subsidies - not because they are environmentally good. Good for Monsanto corp to sell a billion tonnes of fertiliser and weedkiller made from petroleum, but not for the rest of us. As Garyi said, the effect of oil is everywhere.

cheers

 

no it's 33%tax and no ni contributions so i think it's the same as england you'll find.

and yes we have constant darkness from november to feburary thats why there is a high suicide rate. but no darkness in the summer, which is strange.
and using ethanol and veg oil is a step in the right dirrection i think you'll find, at lesast we are planning ahead a little bit. and yes i would say here is one of the best places you could live bar none

 

Actually, Bioethanol and biodiesel does hold some promise of an alternative energy source that is environmentally reasonably benign. There are several companies looking into it. Sure, you may need the odd kg of pesticide per hectare to inprove yields, but that is a lot more efficient use of resources than using crude oil to make fuel for your car. And why shouldn't companies make some money back from products they have spent tens of millions of pounds developing?

The problem is going to be finding enough land to grow the crops on a big enough scale. Obviously you dont want to go short of food because you are growing millions of hectares of biofuel crops.

 

This subject is one of the most circular we can debate. Its all too little too late. A large proportion of the worlds population is still to classed as developing so we've yet to see the worst of this. Us humans are flawed, at the end of the day the vast majority live for today. Theres too many of us and when that happens nature addresses the problem.

There are some dam fine women in Sweden although you do get eaten alive my the mossies in summer (and the women in winter....yeah).

BTW, have you ever seen the earth at night from space? I'll try and find the pic thats on the net, its very interesting.

 

Long lines at stations round here, 2 have run out of fuel already. Most of Bristol is the same.

I think, considering the fuel tax lobby have said that they are not blockading fuel supply depots, it is all rather silly.
Played on by the media aswell.

I have about 3/4 of a tank left, enough to see my OK for 2 weeks

 

'The problem is going to be finding enough land to grow the crops on a big enough scale'

certainly in Sweden!

There is plenty of maths out there already done on 'Energy Return On Investment' comparisons. Compared to digging a hole in the ground and watching barrels of oil appear, all alternative fuels are pretty lousy when scaled up. I would suggest its more the fertiliser, harvest, fermentation and transport rather than just the pesticide energy required. Companies look into it because it is economically viable, not energy efficient.

 

Who left the light on?

 

Heres the link:

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?vev1id=5826

 

This is probably true.

This is not true.

There are other ways. We could have a public transport system which gets us close enough to these places together with our bicycles that we could complete our journey under our own steam. Sadly the railways catered better for bicycles 20 years ago than they do today. As for buses, they are a mindlessly single-purpose form of transport. Is it really beyond us to design a bus that is multipurpose? A bus on which people can sit but we can also take on any goods that we can carry? Including bicycles?

This is what I meant about our infrastructure being wrong. We have remote centralised production and remote centralised places of work, only because it is allowed by use of the car. The car came first. The car is going to disappear. We have to move back to local production, local work (and where possible tele-work). Either the businesses will have to move or the people will have to move. I suspect there will be more of the former than the latter since businesses need customers.

In the future, tradesmen will only work locally. In the early days they will be able to justify the cost of fuel. Eventually they will switch to horse drawn vehicles or carts.

Jobs like 'regional sales representative' will vanish. There won't be regional anything. There won't be global anything. There will only be local.

Why not? Millions are starving unnecessarily in third world countries today because land that could be used to grow food for the population is being used instead to grow cash crops for us.

 

Paul - at the risk of sounding like I'm sticking up for my employer, they produce the most accurate data in the world for our line of work (far superior to the US and Japan for one thing), and a large percentage of our money comes from people such as energy providers (and yes, the oil industry too), supermarket chains, etc. It's not just the military you know

Garyi - yes, I'm laughing at these idiots, because, yes, they ARE self-perpetuating the fuel shortage at the moment. I'm sorry, but people managed to live without cars and planes in the 1860s-1910s perfectly well, even though the manufacturing and distribution industries were well into their maturity towards the end of this period.

Sure, there are a lot of products derived from oil, so we do all use it. However, food is a neccessity; driving a 4litre 4x4 half a mile to return a DVD to CockLustre is not. People can argue til they're blue in the face, but in an average town, when there's commuter gridlock, it's quicker to walk your kids to school or walk to work. I can walk across Reading from Oxford Road to Kings Road in 10 minutes. That's faster than a car in rush hour traffic.

As for alternative fuels for cars - how much of the information is being held back by backhanders from the oil companies? Conspiracy theorist, moi? Definitely.

As Technobear says, even with the horrific whore Thatcher in power, trains had better provision for bikes. If 80% of the population took a bike on the train to get to work, I wander how much cleaner the air in, say, Heavitree, Exeter would be??? At the moment it's like walking in a gas chamber at any time between 7am and 11pm thanks to the stupid metal cans on wheels.

Don't wheel out the old "sour grapes 'cos he's blind" crap either; I've driven a car (legally) a few times, and it's fun. IF I had the eyesight though, I'd only hire a car for long or heavy-luggage journeys. In any city, there's no real need for a car unless you're lazy - you can always alter your lifestyle to exclude needing one.

Of course - if a viable alternative to the internal combustion engine came out - one that doesn't rape the air we breathe, I'd be a bit less anti-car - although that still wouldn't stop the age-old problem (that's getting worse) of there seeming to be a car in the way driving past, whenever I want to cross a road, morning noon and night - he he.

Oh - re Sweden - I think you'll find nuclear power is nothing to write home about. Look at how much longterm damage Chernobyl's done to the Ukraine/Belarus areas - one ickle power station caused all that. Probably far more damage than all the coal-fired ones in the world put together over their operational lifespans...

 

You cant really judge nuclear power safety on Chernobyl.

 

The reason fuel prices have gone up is nowt to do with Gordon Brown and his taxes - they've stayed static for a couple of years at 47p/l.
It's to do with the law of supply and demand - there's plenty demand in the US due to innoperative refineries and Gulf of Mexico platforms. This meant that price per barrel rose on the stockmarket, and hence the price on the forecourts.
As the stockmarket price has dropped again one would expect forecourt prices to drop again very soon, but not before the oil companies have made themselves some lovely Bunce.
That's why the French are considering a windfall tax on the oil companies - that will pay for the compensation they've offered to the farmers and hauliers for their extra expenses..
So there's no shortage at all, just scare stories in the press!

And as for ethanol being a "green" substitute - C2H5OH + 3O2 -> 2CO2 + 3 H2O
Not exactly reducing greenhouse gases!