h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

well the goverment will never sort it out nor will they ban smoking. they get too much money from it.

"its always opeople who are going past me."

People are still allowed to smoke on the streets. You do know that right?

As for the car vs smoking thing, shouldn't the government be putting pressure on car manufacturers to make low emission cars anyway? What with the oncoming Global Warming apocalypse?

yer but do you have to be so sarcastic.

leave my sister alone.

i mean it.
she's young. leave her.

What? This seems to be degenerating into silliness.

anyways.
the goverment probably dont care about it. like my sister said, they get too much money from it. it is all about the money with the goverment. they want money and they get it easily. from smoking and cars. by cars i mean the people who go and buy petrol for their cars. some people have taken it upon themselves to be energy efficent and are using electric or hybrid cars.

>>
As for the car vs smoking thing, shouldn't the government be putting pressure on car manufacturers to make low emission cars anyway? What with the oncoming Global Warming apocalypse?
<<

What makes you think they aren't?

AFAIK, car manufacturers are making lower emission cars than they used to. It takes time for the bulk of older cars to be taken off the road though.

In NZ, we are about to have much tighter emission laws, that will force older cars off the road. The problem with this in terms of climate change is that manufacturing new cars produces greenhouse gases (and other pollutants). The sollution would actually be to drive alot less. Imagine the outrage if the govt tried to legislate that effectively?

Is congestion charging a govt thing or a council thing?

yes. thats what i mean. the goverment are putting on some pressure but not enough. they dont put on enough pressure because of the MONEY. thats what they get from petrol. as long as they are making money from it, they wont get rid of it.

I'm fairly sure it's a Council thing. Not being a driver or from London, I'm not entirely sure.

As for what makes me think they aren't, well that'd be the total lack of press coverage or car manufacturers being up in arms.

Yes, I agree. Although at some point the health costs outweigh the profit, as is the case with smoking. I don't mean that literally, but more that for a centre left govt they also have to weigh up profit with social issues.

Psy, I'd be very surprised if there aren't any govt regulations on this. Have you looked it up?

I'm in the process of looking it up. Not spotted much so far to be honest. Not even sure if Catalyst Converters (or whatever they're called) are compulsory.

Ooh, tha'd have been a nice bit of alliteration if it wasn't for the brackets...

gods, don't get use started on alliterations


I tried googling the UK govt info the other day but didn't have much luck either.

Congesstion charging is a local deciscion but they ahave to apply to central government for permission.

Historically Thatcher put the skids under congestion management by deregulating conrrol of public transport putting paid to most of the influence local councils had over intergrated schmemes to cut car useage.




People seem to just be very nhappy that they can no longer do as they please. In much the same way the white slave owners might have pointed out that "disease kills more slaves the we do" and "if we could do it then why must we stop now"?

There are two types of laws some laws emerge with the situation eg licenses for aeroplanes whereas some laws are brought in regarding things that have always happened eg beating children. The second type of law always runs into pposition from people who assume that everything they do is just and reasonable simply based on the fact that they do it. Many people are unwilling to accept that anything they do could be bad and that they might need to or benefit from changing their behaviour.

From what I can gather, and this is a very tenuous source, there are some tax breaks involved on low-emission cars, and money from the congestion charge is being ploughed back into public transport.
They need to get a grip on that straight off. It costs me £2 more to do a journey of 2 miles in Manchester than it does 40 miles away in Sheffield! That's diabolical!

Topic seems to have drifted somewhat...

And yet transport is USEFUL and PRACTICAL. Smoking is selfish... As I've said before, I smoke sometimes, but I dont inflict it on people who choose not to unless I'm in my own home, even then, I'll tend not to smoke if my non-smoking friends are around...

"transport is USEFUL and PRACTICAL"

http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/autoblog/hirezpics/hummer_de06.jpg ?

There's only so many ways to say "I want to smoke anywhere, bugger everyone else" and "addict, go outside"


blicky, we've just had legislation passed here that repealed the defense in law for beating a child. The amount of public opposition to this was really depressing. It ranges from the fundy christians who genuinely believe that hitting children is a healthy childrearing technique, to those who simply can't tolerate the state telling them what to do with their kids.

Smoking might be selfish, but so is driving a 3 litre engined range rover, and with those you kill the planet and other people.