Labour are shooting themselves in the foot. Instead of proposing a tax on the ultra wealthy to try and subsidize buying less polluting cars. They are forcing the poor to buy cars they can’t afford in cities where public transport is both not complete and expensive. They have lost touch with the working class. Alienating them against climate action. And driving them to the arms of the Tories.
Labour could literally anything and the Tories would react in as far the opposite way as possible. That says nothing about Labour, and everything about the Tories entire platform being “The Opposite Of Labour”, despite literally being the party in power of government, able to make whatever decisions they want, but being completely devoid of any useful ideas that aren’t just ‘Tax breaks for rich cunts’.
Brits will do this to themselves and then in 10-20 years complain about how they have no friends or significant other because it’s hard to meet people. All while continuing to vote for people like this.
As someone who drives a car in the UK, I’d like to point out that this is a load of old bollocks designed to drum up votes from Boomers ahead of what’s looking to be an absolute embarrassment of an election for the Tories in the next year or so.
Almost none of these promises have any actual substance to them, and are largely just meaningless slogans designed to rile up the Boomers* who have spent their lives being taught that public transport and bikes are what poor lefties do.
If Labour have been quiet on these issues, it’s because they know that their best election strategy at this point is to just let the Tories flap on, doling out enough rope with which to hang themselves.
*not all Boomers, obviously, but they really are the majority of Tory voters
Well I’m not a UK driver but all of those ideas sound good to me, because cars give people freedom to go wherever they want and help the economy keep going. Tons of people don’t have access to public transit and they do have cars, and they need them to get to work and the rest of the places they go to live their lives.
Sure, build more public transit to help out too, and create incentives for pollution reduction and all that. But if you want the regular people on your side you will have to stop trying to take their freedom to drive away.
I don’t care, I’m just scrolling the Lemmy World feed for entertainment and this one came up. Now you get to hear my “boomer” thoughts on the matter haha.
I mean, all power to you for having your opinions, and what you say about public transport is absolutely correct.
But here’s the thing; no one is taking people’s “freedom to drive” anywhere. At the very, very worst, some councils are making it more expensive to drive within their jurisdiction, because they want to insert a moment of friction to make people wonder whether the car journey they “have” to take could be taken with public transport instead. I drive places (much less than I used to), and I see that as a Good Thing. We had the same grumbles back when Ken Livingston’s council introduced the original scheme 20 years ago, but people very quickly adapted and got over it.
As for the 20mph zones; they just make sense in built up areas. As I said elsewhere in this thread, I live in an area that has 30mph limits in residential areas, but I’ve taken to traveling at 20mph anyway, because there are kids who live near me who have a tendency to run around without paying enough attention. Sure, I’d be legally in the clear if I hit one at 30 and seriously injured them, but that wouldn’t help my conscience one bit.
You’re a very typical US citizen that has bought into the “mah free dumbs” lie. There are 8 billion people on the planet and regulations are about those people (or some subset thereof) having a way to get along without buggering up someone else’s freedom. It’s all very well driving a car, but the asthma you cause in someone else necessitate regulation for many other people’s freedom. USA is one of the very few places on the planet that has Jay walking laws, because most countries recognise people’s freedom to walk in the street, ffs, it’s not rocket science, it’s a very basic freedom.
Nope, I’m far from typical. I’m a well educated successful American with a Zen-like level of contentment. I have the true freedom to do whatever I want in the USA, whether you believe it or not.
Oh dear god, that’s sad. You are the definition of typical. I’ve spent years working and travelling in the US, and you speak exactly like virtually everyone else over there. My dear friend, you don’t have control over anything. You don’t even have control over your own bowels, they will drive you to obey them. Everyone thinks they are free and in control, and you, like everyone else, control virtual nothing in your life. This is not some great conspiracy, its just the law of nature. So enjoy your free dumb, you poor fool, but try very hard not to fuck up someone else’s freedom in the process 😉 or accept that there is no such thing and go with the flow instead. You are soo American, it would be funny it it wasn’t so sad. Sorry.
Well everything you just wrote is absolutely wrong. Why don’t you go ahead and list anything that you think I don’t have the freedom to do? Put some substance into your hyperbole for a change.
I tell you what, I’ll go one better, that I hope illustrates my point. I told this to every American I ever met and, so far, only 1 learnt from it.
It’s OK to be hungry.
You have the “freedom to eat whenever you want, whereveryou want it”, but you can eat so much that you die. You can eat as little as you like, so little that you also die. Your freedom you eat whatever you want, whenever you want is an illusion, driven by outrageous commercialism.
You do not have the freedom to eat whatever you want, whenever you want. You think you do.
Edited for autocorrect, I don’t even have the freedom to type ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Way to dodge the question with a philosophical yarn. You probably just don’t have a real answer.
Everybody knows about the vices of excess consumption. That is not a useful metaphor relevant to individual freedom. Living a free life doing what you want does not require or even imply consuming an excess of anything.
Doesn’t hurt to bring a perspective from outside the bubble, does it? Otherwise communities are a circlejerk at best and consist mainly of “I do not understand why these reasonable goals can’t simply be implemented and accepted by everyone”-posts
Let me tell you how “dumb” I am so you can gloat over it some more, you bright shining ray of sunshine. I’m so dumb that I have 2 college degrees, a great career doing high-tech stuff for lots of money, and I own my own house and land where I have an offgrid solar panel system and a sweet garden.
I’m so dumb that my life is great and you made me so sad about it.
Honestly Labour has been quiet about the Tories panic promises leading up to the election next year. We know they have been swapping approaches and going back on their own manifesto. The Green party has been making decent promises, however, unlike the Labour party.
Labour Vs Green
🔴No wealth tax 🟢£70bn Wealth Tax
🔴Tuition Fees 🟢Free Tuition
🔴Private NHS 🟢Nationalise NHS
🔴£10 p/h+ 🟢£15 p/h+
🔴Pro-Trident v 🟢Anti-Trident
🔴Privatised Energy 🟢Public Energy
🔴No UBI 🟢 Pro UBI
🔴Migrant Crackdown 🟢Refugees welcome
🔴No promise to building council housing 🟢500,000 council homes
I’d probably vote green if they had any chance of winning, but their opposition to HS2 annoys me. They support building a new north south rail link, but not the one we’re already building.
Honestly, since Corbyn isn’t in the Labour party, there is no redeeming quality of them deserving a vote. They just became red Tories with a few members being socialist or reformist. I have critical support for the Green party, not only because of their policy promises but because they seem to lean towards socialism far more than Labour is. I still advocate for my own party that we have up here in Scotland but we need to gain major traction still, although a full on revolution of the proles would be ideal at this point like 1919 Battle of George Square but successful.
Sadly though, at the moment it’s very unlikely any other opposition could beat the Tories. Tory supporters are often stubborn so are unlikely to sway. So the best chance is anti tories have is to go for the lesser of the two evils this time around and vote labour just to get them the fuck out. Then we can hope for bigger change afterwards.
To be honest, I could get behind fines for overrunning street works. Hell, go further: fines for any overrunning, underdelivering or overbudget public contracts. That would quickly resolve the mess that the torys have made giving out dodgy contracts to their mates.
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