Leccy cars.

[Apthorpe]

Actually this whole argument is completely missing the point.

Once upon a time not that long ago we got along perfectly well without cars. We lived in small towns and villages. Your local town provided pretty much all you needed. Local butcher and greengrocers would be directly supplied by local farms. The bank branch was in the town and the bank manager knew all his clients by first name, there would be an insurance broker where you got your insurances, the Dr could attend to most of your needs and a local cottage hospital could cope with the vast majority of your treatment.

Much of which is irrelevant because most people didn't have a bank account, their only form of insurance was a type of saving bond to pay for their own funeral, and you wouldn't see the doctor much because over half of you would be dead by 50.

There would lots of employment - the bank had five to ten people, ditto the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. There may well some industry close buy, and of course agriculture employed a lot. But local builders would use local materials, supplied by local people.

And lots of people would get maimed at work, die early of industrial diseases, have no social mobility, no holidays etc etc.

Nowadays in the name of commercialism

It's not in the name of commercialism, it's in the name of welfare, living standards and a better future. It's a fact which this comment omits that modern living standards and health and welfare provision required those changes in productivity and the economy.

Most of us buy our good from supermarkets.

New housing is far away from any shops

Farms are factories working on contract to supermarkets, so farm products are trucked from the farm to a central processing unit at the other end of the country to be turned into convenience foods in vacuum packed portions with lots of branded packaging, that then goes to a central distribution hub, that then gets delivered out to the supermarket, where you drive to buy it, to take it home. And you buy it as you drive home from the big town or city ( which you can’t afford to live in ) where you have spent all day in a large open plan office dealing with mortgage applications or whatever.

Whereas in the past you would taken the lambs from the farm to the local butcher in the back of the van. You would have walked round the corner to deposit the money’s from the lamb in the local and exchanged pleasantries with the back manager looking forward to the shooting season. You would pop into the hardware store and agricultural merchants for bits and pieces.

The following day the store owners and bank manager would pop into the butcher and buy some lamb chops for their tea.

But the large majority of the working class people wouldn't be able to afford them often.

And the walk home popping into The pub that has beer from the brewery which is five miles away.

Most still do similar jobs, but all the jobs have been centralised. So we all commute many hours each day. And our food goes many hundreds of miles in the opposite direction.

It is just utter madness when you think about it.

Is it really? There's something of a shortage of agricultural labour and no rules preventing you doing it. Perhaps there's something more that you've omitted from consideration. If you are now older than your early forties, you could expect to be dead.
Even if we were mad enough to want to, we wouldn't be able to go back to that because of net zero policies. Our carbon emissions are far lower now.

 

[Liveonce]

Actually this whole argument is completely missing the point.

Once upon a time not that long ago we got along perfectly well without cars. We lived in small towns and villages. Your local town provided pretty much all you needed. Local butcher and greengrocers would be directly supplied by local farms. The bank branch was in the town and the bank manager knew all his clients by first name, there would be an insurance broker where you got your insurances, the Dr could attend to most of your needs and a local cottage hospital could cope with the vast majority of your treatment. There would lots of employment - the bank had five to ten people, ditto the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. There may well some industry close buy, and of course agriculture employed a lot. But local builders would use local materials, supplied by local people.

Nowadays in the name of commercialism

Most of us buy our good from supermarkets.

New housing is far away from any shops

Farms are factories working on contract to supermarkets, so farm products are trucked from the farm to a central processing unit at the other end of the country to be turned into convenience foods in vacuum packed portions with lots of branded packaging, that then goes to a central distribution hub, that then gets delivered out to the supermarket, where you drive to buy it, to take it home. And you buy it as you drive home from the big town or city ( which you can’t afford to live in ) where you have spent all day in a large open plan office dealing with mortgage applications or whatever.

Whereas in the past you would have taken the lambs from the farm to the local butcher in the back of the van. You would have walked round the corner to deposit the money’s from the lamb in the local bank and exchanged pleasantries with the back manager looking forward to the shooting season. You would pop into the hardware store and agricultural merchants for bits and pieces. And walk back to the butcher by which time the lambs would have unloaded and on the hook and skinned. One would be in bits in the back of the van for your own consumption, along with a joint of beef (that came in a few days before).

The following day the store owners and bank manager would pop into the butcher and buy some lamb chops for their tea. And then walk home popping into The pub that has beer from the brewery which is five miles away, and beer is brewed from barley supplied from local farms.

Most still do similar jobs, but all the jobs have been centralised. So we all commute many hours each day. And our food goes many hundreds of miles in the opposite direction. And we drink in pubs owned by multinationals with bland beer brewed with barley from all over the world.

It is just utter madness when you think about it.

You forgot about all the food that is imported regardless of how produced and seasons no longer have a meaning

Houses had decent size gardens to grow food or grandad had an allotment.

 

[willie_gunn]

Actually this whole argument is completely missing the point.

Once upon a time not that long ago we got along perfectly well without cars. We lived in small towns and villages. Your local town provided pretty much all you needed. Local butcher and greengrocers would be directly supplied by local farms. The bank branch was in the town and the bank manager knew all his clients by first name, there would be an insurance broker where you got your insurances, the Dr could attend to most of your needs and a local cottage hospital could cope with the vast majority of your treatment. There would lots of employment - the bank had five to ten people, ditto the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. There may well some industry close buy, and of course agriculture employed a lot. But local builders would use local materials, supplied by local people.

Nowadays in the name of commercialism

Most of us buy our good from supermarkets.

New housing is far away from any shops

Farms are factories working on contract to supermarkets, so farm products are trucked from the farm to a central processing unit at the other end of the country to be turned into convenience foods in vacuum packed portions with lots of branded packaging, that then goes to a central distribution hub, that then gets delivered out to the supermarket, where you drive to buy it, to take it home. And you buy it as you drive home from the big town or city ( which you can’t afford to live in ) where you have spent all day in a large open plan office dealing with mortgage applications or whatever.

Whereas in the past you would have taken the lambs from the farm to the local butcher in the back of the van. You would have walked round the corner to deposit the money’s from the lamb in the local bank and exchanged pleasantries with the back manager looking forward to the shooting season. You would pop into the hardware store and agricultural merchants for bits and pieces. And walk back to the butcher by which time the lambs would have unloaded and on the hook and skinned. One would be in bits in the back of the van for your own consumption, along with a joint of beef (that came in a few days before).

The following day the store owners and bank manager would pop into the butcher and buy some lamb chops for their tea. And then walk home popping into The pub that has beer from the brewery which is five miles away, and beer is brewed from barley supplied from local farms.

Most still do similar jobs, but all the jobs have been centralised. So we all commute many hours each day. And our food goes many hundreds of miles in the opposite direction. And we drink in pubs owned by multinationals with bland beer brewed with barley from all over the world.

It is just utter madness when you think about it.

It's a lovely thought, but I am afraid that the horse has not just bolted, but it has also cleared the fence and galloped off into the far distance!

To return to the type of idyll you describe would require fundamental societal change - change that I fear not just the politicians but the public themselves would be unwilling to make.

• Who is going to tell the public that they can no longer buy what they want, when they want it?
• Who is going to tell them they are going to pay higher prices and have less choice?
• Who is going to tell them that their incomes will be reduced?
• Who is going to tell them that their convenience is no longer important, and that they should suffer for the "greater good"?

Good luck to whoever decides to pick up that poisoned chalice!

 

[Rasputin]

Whenever there’s a thread about EVs I just imagine the SD masses gathering with their pitch forks from their mud huts ready to burn this witch craft and some of us who are slightly more progressive at the stake.

Is an EV the answer to everything absolutely not, would it be folly to just rely on an EV yes it would but as another mode of transportation they are pretty blooming good.

Pros:
cheaper to run than ice it’s cutting literally 1/3 the price of what we used to spend on diesel every month which will save us about £4K a year
They are bloody rapid
They are quiet inside and out perfect

Cons
Range isn’t great but I have circa 250 miles in ours on a full charge so can get just about anywhere but it’s a moot point because if I needed to go somewhere long distance I’d take the truck anyway.
Expensive to buy unless you get it through a scheme

That’s it really and when the electric trucks come out il get one of those and when hydrogen comes out will move to one of them.

 

[Apthorpe]

Whenever there’s a thread about EVs I just imagine the SD masses gathering with their pitch forks from their mud huts ready to burn this witch craft and some of us who are slightly more progressive at the stake.

Nobody wants to burn the new-fangled witchcraft. What people resent is the policy of being compelled to adopt it.

Is an EV the answer to everything absolutely not, would it be folly to just rely on an EV yes it would but as another mode of transportation they are pretty blooming good.

Pros:
cheaper to run than ice it’s cutting literally 1/3 the price of what we used to spend on diesel every month which will save us about £4K a year
They are bloody rapid
They are quiet inside and out perfect

Cons
Range isn’t great but I have circa 250 miles in ours on a full charge so can get just about anywhere but it’s a moot point because if I needed to go somewhere long distance I’d take the truck anyway.
Expensive to buy unless you get it through a scheme

That’s it really and when the electric trucks come out il get one of those and when hydrogen comes out will move to one of them.

 

[JockStalk]

It's a lovely thought, but I am afraid that the horse has not just bolted, but it has also cleared the fence and galloped off into the far distance!

To return to the type of idyll you describe would require fundamental societal change - change that I fear not just the politicians but the public themselves would be unwilling to make.

• Who is going to tell the public that they can no longer buy what they want, when they want it?
• Who is going to tell them they are going to pay higher prices and have less choice?
• Who is going to tell them that their incomes will be reduced?
• Who is going to tell them that their convenience is no longer important, and that they should suffer for the "greater good"?

Good luck to whoever decides to pick up that poisoned chalice!

That would be him…..

 

[willie_gunn]

That would be him…..
View attachment 346791

I was thinking it should be her:

 

[VSS]

Much of which is irrelevant because most people didn't have a bank account, their only form of insurance was a type of saving bond to pay for their own funeral, and you wouldn't see the doctor much because over half of you would be dead by 50.

And lots of people would get maimed at work, die early of industrial diseases, have no social mobility, no holidays etc etc.

It's not in the name of commercialism, it's in the name of welfare, living standards and a better future. It's a fact which this comment omits that modern living standards and health and welfare provision required those changes in productivity and the economy.

But the large majority of the working class people wouldn't be able to afford them often.

Is it really? There's something of a shortage of agricultural labour and no rules preventing you doing it. Perhaps there's something more that you've omitted from consideration. If you are now older than your early forties, you could expect to be dead.
Even if we were mad enough to want to, we wouldn't be able to go back to that because of net zero policies. Our carbon emissions are far lower now.

And yet, almost to a man, the members of this site want to go back to a time when you could get a shotgun license at the Post Office, cycle through the village with a gun tied to the crossbar of your bike and no-one bat an eyelid, shoot for free on canal towpaths and other such places, etc etc.
Funny old world!

 

[Rasputin]

Nobody wants to burn the new-fangled witchcraft. What people resent is the policy of being compelled to adopt it.

Yes I hate being compelled to adopt it by saving on my tax and fuel spend .

 

[Apthorpe]

And yet, almost to a man, the members of this site want to go back to a time when you could get a shotgun license at the Post Office, cycle through the village with a gun tied to the crossbar of your bike and no-one bat an eyelid, shoot for free on canal towpaths and other such places, etc etc.
Funny old world!

There's a whopping difference. There is no connection whatsoever between restrictions on guns and shooting and the development of the modern world, whereas affordable car ownership and the internal combustion engine were absolutely critical and fundamental to it. It would make absolutely no difference to anything if we got shotgun licences in the post office, and there's still nothing wrong with carrying a gun by bike. In London it's more a case of sometimes seeing them carried by motorbike. You may dislike my analogies, but that was a crazy comment.

 

[VSS]

There's a whopping difference. There is no connection whatsoever between restrictions on guns and shooting and the development of the modern world, whereas affordable car ownership and the internal combustion engine were absolutely critical and fundamental to it. It would make absolutely no difference to anything if we got shotgun licences in the post office, and there's still nothing wrong with carrying a gun by bike. In London it's more a case of sometimes seeing them carried by motorbike. You may dislike my analogies, but that was a crazy comment.

You missed the point, but never mind.

 

[greylag]

It's a lovely thought, but I am afraid that the horse has not just bolted, but it has also cleared the fence and galloped off into the far distance!

To return to the type of idyll you describe would require fundamental societal change - change that I fear not just the politicians but the public themselves would be unwilling to make.

• Who is going to tell the public that they can no longer buy what they want, when they want it?
• Who is going to tell them they are going to pay higher prices and have less choice?
• Who is going to tell them that their incomes will be reduced?
• Who is going to tell them that their convenience is no longer important, and that they should suffer for the "greater good"?

Good luck to whoever decides to pick up that poisoned chalice!

Its my impression that most of these points are already happening, Im noticing long waiting time for parts and services, which in turn are more expensive, which must lead to income reduction, all of which isn't convenient..Reasons given are, in order brexit, covid, war and world shortages

 

[Apthorpe]

Yes I hate being compelled to adopt it by saving on my tax and fuel spend .

Whenever there’s a thread about EVs I just imagine the SD masses gathering with their pitch forks from their mud huts ready to burn this witch craft and some of us who are slightly more progressive at the stake.

Is an EV the answer to everything absolutely not, would it be folly to just rely on an EV yes it would but as another mode of transportation they are pretty blooming good.

Pros:
cheaper to run than ice it’s cutting literally 1/3 the price of what we used to spend on diesel every month which will save us about £4K a year

This is entirely an artifice of temporary tax policy. They're actually more expensive to run assuming the owner uses grid electricity, which is the norm.

They are bloody rapid

Yet always slow on motorway journeys.

They are quiet inside and out perfect

Cons
Range isn’t great but I have circa 250 miles in ours on a full charge so can get just about anywhere but it’s a moot point because if I needed to go somewhere long distance I’d take the truck anyway.

That sounds green.

ve to buy unless you get it through a scheme

That’s it really and when the electric trucks come out il get one of those and when hydrogen comes out will move to one of them.

 

[Rasputin]

This is entirely an artifice of temporary tax policy. They're actually more expensive to run assuming the owner uses grid electricity, which is the norm.

Yet always slow on motorway journeys.

That sounds green.

Stop spouting bollocks.

 

[Apthorpe]

Stop spouting bollocks.

Unfortunately it was you spouting bollocks, although the fact that I hadn't considered recent reductions in electricity prices had me worried for a while.
Cost of electric car per mile (tesla) using manufacturers claimed figures rather than real life) 6.6p
Cost of ICE car per mile last time I filled up at a not very cheap Skoda superb 2.0L 5.4p on the same basis.
Assuming, spuriously, of course that you never have to use a roadside charger.

 

[Cyres]

Fuel duty raises about £24.3 billion per year. So if the EV plan works where is the Exchequer going to get this money from?

A friend went EV some years ago and he also runs a diesel Volvo. With the increasd cost of non grid charging it costs more to do a long trip in his EV than the Volvo!
D

 

[tarponhead]

And yet, almost to a man, the members of this site want to go back to a time when you could get a shotgun license at the Post Office, cycle through the village with a gun tied to the crossbar of your bike and no-one bat an eyelid, shoot for free on canal towpaths and other such places, etc etc.
Funny old world!

I don’t! Life was not a Hovis advert, it was nastier, not necessarily brutal for all, but definitely shorter and mostly set up to serve a rich elite. I’m trying to work out how far we have actually progressed in the quality of life we lead. Wants have become needs and meanwhile we have been careless with the environment to the extent we have all but broken it. There will be a reset at some stage - not sure it will be one to look forward to., but let’s see. In the meantime, I’ll make the most of what I have and do my best for those around me. Can’t do much more.

 

[kenbro]

I don’t! Life was not a Hovis advert, it was nastier, not necessarily brutal for all, but definitely shorter and mostly set up to serve a rich elite. I’m trying to work out how far we have actually progressed in the quality of life we lead. Wants have become needs and meanwhile we have been careless with the environment to the extent we have all but broken it. There will be a reset at some stage - not sure it will be one to look forward to., but let’s see. In the meantime, I’ll make the most of what I have and do my best for those around me. Can’t do much more.

Born in ‘43 and really enjoyed living in the 1950s and 1960s.
Would swap those times anytime over growing up now.
Ken.

 

[Red Dragon 2]

Trouble is a vast majority do not buy/lease new cars but have to get 2nd, 3rd or 4th hand and run them to death. No way will electric vehicles be able to do that due to the cost of a new battery pack will be unaffordable

 

[Tim.243]

Born in ‘43 and really enjoyed living in the 1950s and 1960s.
Would swap those times anytime over growing up now.
Ken.

Dad often spoke about those times, work was hard but plenty of it. Lots of shooting on the marsh, winters were rough but people got by.
I was born in 61 (can't chose that) but it gave me the days in a rural area of ferreting fishing local ponds helping with harvest feeding cattle/pigs learning to ride ponies. Also what hard work was, but a balance in later life to use what I had been taught and pass some of it on.
I like the kit of today but what I was taught back then (step by step) is not wanted these days as from what I see many just want to by-pass the basis and start at the top...