I would like to think that the motorists who stayed away realized that wasting precious fuel in this way is a crime.

I would have more respect for their petition if they had used public transport to get to Downing Street. The ones who went obviously have petrol to burn and couldn't care less about the environment.

Everyone needs to think of ways to cut their petrol consumption.

A go slow protest down the M40 is such a waste of petrol!

There are other ways to get the message across, and I'm sure Gordon Brown couldn't give two hoots about a go slow protest!

The high prices, although annoying, are at least having a positive impact in that they make people THINK before using their car.

It is a shame that the ECO Army failed to appear; but the Green Godess comment above, makes very sensible and salient points!

There are many other ways of protesting without using a very non environmental friendly approach.

The price of oil is reducing slowly. Perhaps the price will improve; but, the Government Tax levy makes this a point to be fought at every corner.

Good luck to the protesters!

Green Goddess wrote:
I would like to think that the motorists who stayed away realized that wasting precious fuel in this way is a crime. I would have more respect for their petition if they had used public transport to get to Downing Street. The ones who went obviously have petrol to burn and couldn't care less about the environment. Everyone needs to think of ways to cut their petrol consumption.

I'm ashamed to admit that Oxford is full of idiots. Have you seen the price of public trnasport fares?? Even if you drove in the most un-economical way at 100 MPH you'd still save money driving to London. On the protest my car was doing 56.9 MPG which I believe is better than a toyota prius, this is supposed to be the most evironmentally friendly car there is but it turns out that to make this car it's actually the most utterly environmentally friendly thing you can do. You see, I agree with your argument, as such, but why would anyone in this economic climate want to waste money on public transport when it's cheaper, safer and genrally more pleasent to drive your own car.

Another thing that people are still not getting the message about is that fuel cost dictates the cost of everything else. I'd personally preffer to pay lees for my food bills and clothes as well as have cheaper fuel. But as pointed out in the artical, We must all be on super high wages to be able to just put up with it.

I’m sure there was a go slow on this morning in the City. Every fool boot to bonnet crawling through the city, blocking the streets for everyone wanting to take the bus, walk, or cycle in.

I think the pedestrians have got your point by now. You've pumped enough carbon monoxide into their lungs already!

I was talking about not having a car at all. Using public transport is much cheaper than maintaining a car, especially if you use season tickets, Oyster cards, etc. Because I cycle rather than use the bus, I guess I spend a maximum of £200 a year on road/rail transport. What do you pay for your car + petrol?

Some people need cars for their jobs; but those who don't could consider a much cheaper alternative which would benefit everyone.

And I resent it when people say older people need cars, because most of the ones I know don't in fact have one.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the high cost of fuel, protesting about it by driving slowly and disrupting other motorists is such a stupid
idea. Its makes about as much sense as protesting about inflation by burning £20 notes.

Dave wrote:
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the high cost of fuel, protesting about it by driving slowly and disrupting other motorists is such a stupid idea. Its makes about as much sense as protesting about inflation by burning £20 notes.

Agreed, It's like managers at work complaining about the staff having excessive toilet breaks, by organising for themselves a giant long 6-hour poo break to make some kind of protest.

Green Goddess-

you are very lucky being able to only spend £200 a year on your transport costs.

I work in Oxford, but can only afford to live in Banbury. My train fare is £9.10 per day, or £6.90 if i take the train after 9.30.

Taking holidays into account, this equates to about £2,000 per year. JUST FOR WORK!

To visit family and friends etc, I would estimate I spend at least another £1,000 per year. All in all, my travel expenses on public transport are equivalent to my take home pay for almost 3 months.


2 weeks ago, i was given a reasonable small car with a years tax and MOT. The insurance for the year is £245. It is cheaper for me to drive to work every day, and much much more convenient. I have calculated that I will save about £800 a year by running a car.

wheres the incentive for me to use public transport?

wheres the incentive for me to use public transport?

That's a dangerous question, at least when this Government's involved!

Their idea of an incentive is to raise the cost of motoring to excessive levels thus forcing you out of your car...or at least that's their 'green' line, I'm pretty sure that increased tax revenue is their real agenda.

Here's a radical (not!) suggestion, - if the Government are serious about getting people to use Public Transport then why not LOWER the cost of it and improve the options available? (not the trickiest piece of lateral thinking is it?!)

If you make Public Transport cheap and convenient then choosing to use it will be a no-brainer!

Don't try to force everyone out of their cars, some people have no choice and they're the ones that will suffer the most.

Raising of revenue and profits is the goal of policy.

Wrecking Nations.

Green Goddess wrote:
I was talking about not having a car at all. Using public transport is much cheaper than maintaining a car, especially if you use season tickets, Oyster cards, etc. Because I cycle rather than use the bus, I guess I spend a maximum of £200 a year on road/rail transport. What do you pay for your car + petrol? Some people need cars for their jobs; but those who don\'t could consider a much cheaper alternative which would benefit everyone. And I resent it when people say older people need cars, because most of the ones I know don\'t in fact have one.

Approximately 40,000 non-residents travel to work in Oxford - around half the city's workforce. This suggests that the daytime population is boosted by approximately 26,000 due to travelling workers.

http://www.oxford.go

v.uk/community/popns

tats.cfm

Something to think about for the vociferously self- righteous anti- car lobby who forget that Oxford is a working city serving an entire County, not just a handful of central 'eco aware' wards.

Flo wrote:
I’m sure there was a go slow on this morning in the City. Every fool boot to bonnet crawling through the city, blocking the streets for everyone wanting to take the bus, walk, or cycle in. I think the pedestrians have got your point by now. You've pumped enough carbon monoxide into their lungs already!

Oh PLEASE! Pass me a violin!

Could all car drivers please take Flo's advice and stay at home- don't take your kids to school; nor go to work, take granny shopping, drive your recycling to Redbridge or leave the numerous peripheral estates and villages with zero employment.

Yes- that means YOU - you rat running, gas guzzling social pariahs! All 40,000 of you are obviously using your cars purely to destroy the planet and to spite good, clean living, righteous people such as Flo!

DanOxford wrote:

Flo wrote:
I’m sure there was a go slow on this morning in the City. Every fool boot to bonnet crawling through the city, blocking the streets for everyone wanting to take the bus, walk, or cycle in. I think the pedestrians have got your point by now. You've pumped enough carbon monoxide into their lungs already!

Oh PLEASE! Pass me a violin!

Could all car drivers please take Flo's advice and stay at home- don't take your kids to school; nor go to work, take granny shopping, drive your recycling to Redbridge or leave the numerous peripheral estates and villages with zero employment.

Yes- that means YOU - you rat running, gas guzzling social pariahs! All 40,000 of you are obviously using your cars purely to destroy the planet and to spite good, clean living, righteous people such as Flo!

Dan, I don’t need your sympathy thank you. On occasion when I have to drive I put up with the traffic, however nearly every day I come in from one of these peripheral estates you mention by bike. Cycling is much quicker, cheaper, healthier, pleasant, and even more social.

My sympathy extends to the few (probably just the disabled, old and those carrying heavy loads) who have to drive similar journies.. However why thousands sit caged in their cars every day, when for most it’s so easy to make other arrangements is beyond me.

Dan you may think of me good, righteous etc because I don’t regularly drive. Not so. I just prefer to leave my car at home.

commenter wrote:
Green Goddess- you are very lucky being able to only spend £200 a year on your transport costs. I work in Oxford, but can only afford to live in Banbury. My train fare is £9.10 per day, or £6.90 if i take the train after 9.30. Taking holidays into account, this equates to about £2,000 per year. JUST FOR WORK! To visit family and friends etc, I would estimate I spend at least another £1,000 per year. All in all, my travel expenses on public transport are equivalent to my take home pay for almost 3 months. 2 weeks ago, i was given a reasonable small car with a years tax and MOT. The insurance for the year is £245. It is cheaper for me to drive to work every day, and much much more convenient. I have calculated that I will save about £800 a year by running a car. wheres the incentive for me to use public transport?

What's the cost of an annual pass?

What's the cost of an annual pass?

Banbury to Oxford annual season ticket £1508. (assuming you're asking about this specific route?)

On a side note, I find season tickets, whilst clearly cheaper than daily tickets, a bit irritating in that you know you're paying for days when you don't use the service (e.g. weekends, holidays) I suppose someone from the train operator will tell me that those days are taken into account hence the cheaper price?

I'd still like to see a 'working days' ticket (or something like that) which covers, for example, Monday to Friday with a lower price accordingly.

Maybe you could offer a sort of pay-as-you-go system where customers can 'charge' their ticket with a weeks/months/years worth of units and remove a unit for each day actually travelled? Probably too difficult to administer...

£1500-ish for a season ticket....

Its so much more convenient to drive. If people want us to use public transport, it has to be at the times that people want to travel. For example, I was looking at an evening class in oxford that finished at 9.30, but i couldn't sign up for it because I couldnt get to the train station by 9.39. The next train is at 22.56, meaning I wouldnt get back into banbury until half past 11.

If I am driving, it takes about half an hour....

I work in central Oxford, so I cycle there. But just about everyone else in the office lives outside Oxford, and they all take public transport.

The reason for this is simple: the place where I work has no parking spaces.

Even the most hardened motorist must realize that there is a down side to all the cars on the road (not least death).

Oxford is a medieval city and there is no room for cars. (I am not too keen on buses either, incidentally, but regard them as a necessary evil.)

Green Goddess wrote:
I work in central Oxford, so I cycle there. But just about everyone else in the office lives outside Oxford, and they all take public transport. The reason for this is simple: the place where I work has no parking spaces. Even the most hardened motorist must realize that there is a down side to all the cars on the road (not least death). Oxford is a medieval city and there is no room for cars. (I am not too keen on buses either, incidentally, but regard them as a necessary evil.)

What relevance does your ramblings have to this subject? Keep your eco-warrior crap to yourself, not everybody gives a toss about it. FYI, the ice caps aren't melting and global warming is a farce concoceted by money making companies, if anything it's just the natrual cycles of the earth. For instance, where is our summer?? It's not been to hot here has it?? I bet you were one of those people that vandalised that 4x4?!?

You dissagree that most conurbation hubs in England predate the combustion engine by hundreds of years,thousands in some cases?

Or that Britain ruled one quarter of the world without a single car or motorway?

Can you guess who has been here all that long time creating all the stuff the johnny come latelies coveted from afar,and not so afar?

Survivalist wrote:

Green Goddess wrote: I work in central Oxford, so I cycle there. But just about everyone else in the office lives outside Oxford, and they all take public transport. The reason for this is simple: the place where I work has no parking spaces. Even the most hardened motorist must realize that there is a down side to all the cars on the road (not least death). Oxford is a medieval city and there is no room for cars. (I am not too keen on buses either, incidentally, but regard them as a necessary evil.)

What relevance does your ramblings have to this subject? Keep your eco-warrior crap to yourself, not everybody gives a toss about it. FYI, the ice caps aren't melting and global warming is a farce concoceted by money making companies, if anything it's just the natrual cycles of the earth. For instance, where is our summer?? It's not been to hot here has it?? I bet you were one of those people that vandalised that 4x4?!?

"global warming is a farce concoceted by money making companies, if anything it's just the natrual cycles of the earth. For instance, where is our summer?? "

If you had any ounce of intelligence you would research the facts before you start spouting off your skewed opinions. Wether global warming is man made or a natural cycle, being where we are in relation to the Atlantic and the gulf stream it wouldn't actually make our summer hotter, it would make out winters mild and bring increased rainfall in the summer months - not that this would ever happen.... oh wait hang on a second...

FYI, the ice caps aren't melting

Yes, they are. Go and look at some satellite images for yourself, there are plenty available.

and global warming is a farce

You've misunderstood the term (which was coined many years ago) as our knowledge has improved the term 'climate change' is preferred as it more accurately describes the processes.

For instance, where is our summer??

Climate change does not mean more sunshine, if you don't understand at least basic climatology may I suggest you don't comment? Additionally, the changes are on a climactic scale (hence the name) so what you should be looking at temporal trends across vast geographical areas.

You are clearly arguing from a position of ignorance.

Look around the World, all the factories, all the vehicles, all the power stations etc. all pumping out gases 24/7. Do you really, really think we can do that and not suffer any consequences? Science aside, surely common sense alone would suggest that there's going to be some effect? Your comment about "where's our Summer" should give you a hint that things are changing.

Jb beat me to it. At least not everybody on this website is completely devoid of brain power.

I bet the people in 3 of the 5 cars thought it was an imminent dogging session and that was the only reason they stopped.


But what do i know.

Is it morally acceptable or unnaceptable to tax the mentally deficient?

JB wrote:

FYI, the ice caps aren\'t melting

Yes, they are. Go and look at some satellite images for yourself, there are plenty available.

and global warming is a farce

You\'ve misunderstood the term (which was coined many years ago) as our knowledge has improved the term \'climate change\' is preferred as it more accurately describes the processes.

For instance, where is our summer??

Climate change does not mean more sunshine, if you don\'t understand at least basic climatology may I suggest you don\'t comment? Additionally, the changes are on a climactic scale (hence the name) so what you should be looking at temporal trends across vast geographical areas. You are clearly arguing from a position of ignorance. Look around the World, all the factories, all the vehicles, all the power stations etc. all pumping out gases 24/7. Do you really, really think we can do that and not suffer any consequences? Science aside, surely common sense alone would suggest that there\'s going to be some effect? Your comment about \"where\'s our Summer\" should give you a hint that things are changing.

I assume you've heard of photoshop haven't you? And I'm sorry I haven't bought global warming or for the more easily led "cliamte change" for a very long time. I agree that it's a nicer world to live in not breathing in horrid fumes but lets face it your claimte change has been happening long before humans strolled the earth. Did you know we're still technically in a ice age. This is counted by the fact that both polar regions are continualsy frozen. Just because you choose to believe the hype dosen't mean all of us whish to be sheep and follow the heard! There is plenty of evidence to suggest that there isn't anything happening to our climate and there is even more evidence to suggest that a lot of people are making a lot of money of easily led people like you.

The Great Immigration Scandal
By Steve Moxon

Imprint Academic 2004

Reviewed by Michael Newland

‘Systematic abuse of procedure and open invitation to fraud allowed by the Home Office at ministerial and top management levels extend across the whole of migration.’

Enoch Powell observed that matters of vital importance to humankind are contested at the limits of human endeavour.

Most vital events in history invite the invention of counter factuals. Seemingly trivial changes, as a result either of chance events or a different decision by the leaders, would have led to an entirely different result. A small publishing industry thrives on discussing ‘what might have happened’. A recent BBC documentary, for example, suggested that Rasputin might have been murdered for fear that he would persuade the Romanovs to seek an armistice with Germany - leaving that nation free to concentrate its forces on the Western front, and perhaps winning the Great War.

Are Britain and its people to be terminated by mass immigration? Are we to end up like the American Indians marginalised and sidelined?

I have a little private joke about areas of the country becoming ‘reservations’, as native Britons flee in the face of living as foreigners in the cities. Far-fetched? The head of the Commission for Racial Equality has called for black children to be taught separately. The thin end of a very long wedge indeed.

Opinion among those who do not believe in a future multiracial multicultural paradise divides between those who say “too late”, and those who argue that almost any situation can be turned round given the political will.

The difference between the outlook for the British people and that faced by American Indians in the 19th century is not simply in the resources available to us to defend our continued existence. The Indian tribes had no hope of resistance against European weapons and numbers. Counter factuals are difficult to imagine in that case.

The present British struggle is obviously not military. The vital and critical difference for the British is whether the will exists to resist, or even adequate comprehension of the bad faith of our own leaders. The Indian tribes understood very well what would happen to them when the first transcontinental railway was built in the 1860s, and made a futile attempt to attack it. A similar outcome for the British people is just as certain if immigration policy is not changed.

For decades, the British appear to have been lulled into a sense of false security by deception about immigration on the part of every government, both in respect of numbers and concerning the intention to allow mass immigration on a permanent basis.

For example, the last census figure for the numbers of Chinese in Manchester was 8,000. But when a civil servant gave evidence on oath, in a trial concerning Snakehead gangs, he revealed what he said was ‘highly classified’ information in that the real numbers were between 40-50,000!

But those who claim to be able to divine the inevitable outcome for us with certainty are arguably wrong. Neither the eclipse of our own people nor a last minute 1940-style ‘Battle of Britain’ survival story is certain. We are not fatally technically disadvantaged like the Red Indians. Our fate will be decided by our comprehension of our situation, and by our ability to organise ourselves politically. All that can change rapidly as a result of events unforeseen either in nature or effect. The Dutch political situation was radically altered by the murder of a politician and a journalist. The unexpected can trigger a sea change.


****
One Sunday in March 2004, the Sunday Times published damning revelations about how immigrants from Eastern Europe were being allowed into Britain in blatant contravention of the ‘strict’ controls which the Labour government claimed were in place.

For the first time, a civil servant who had worked within the immigration service, had blown the whistle on how things were actually done. The one-legged Rumanian roof tiler, supposedly coming to Britain to start a building business, became a tabloid cause celebre.

Steve Moxon worked in the immigration service for some months on a daily basis at the level of assessing and approving applications for entry to Britain. He handled and processed the documents upon which individual decisions were based. The incredible extent of the deception, deliberately engineered by the most senior levels of government and the civil service to fool the public into believing that there are substantial controls on immigration into Britain, is laid out in his book.

Moxon’s book is a crash course on immigration, the realities of policy, and the many false arguments, both social and economic, which have been thrust upon the British to deceive us. It’s a **** good read whatever your previous level of appreciation of the monstrous imposition made upon the British people by those supposedly paid to serve us.

Three examples from the many in the book, concerning how immigration controls actually work, give the flavour of what Moxon found working for the immigration service in Sheffield.

It is now widely known from recent press reports that many of the ‘language schools’ which immigrants claim to be coming to Britain to join as students are bogus. But when Moxon attempted to make elementary checks on schools named by migrants in their applications, by looking to see if they had a working telephone enquiry line or web site, he was told he was showing excessive zeal and given an official reprimand.

Students visiting Britain are supposed to be here under strict controls about working. Yet, when Moxon saw clear evidence from bank statements that the rules were being ignored, he was told not to bother in characteristically suggestive, but deniable in its implications, civil service language. He also deduced that the immigration control branch of government is deliberately under-staffed to ensure its ineffectiveness.

He was further reprimanded for questioning the extension of visits to Britain in order to obtain medical treatment, when it was very likely that NHS treatment would be obtained illegally.

Why then are things like they are? Why have Britain’s political leaders put themselves into a position where they can be found out rather than openly pursuing what they appear to believe in.

The embarrassing pursuit of their own creature comfort is one motive. It is only recently that the leftish political establishment has been willing to make the kind of hubristic admission made by Will Hutton on television. Britain needs immigrants to provide nannies. Right-on Will. And don’t forget those of us suffering life without butlers. You just can’t get the staff since the war.

Recognition that there is little support for what they doing, and so a disinclination to admit to it, is another motive. But, as Moxon says, the motive goes far deeper than political tactics, or nannies for wealthy Labourite apparatchiks. The leftish establishment has retreated into its own incestuous in-group in the face of the failure of its own favoured ‘vanguards’ - like the working-class and students - to stay true to the cause.

The establishment lives in a state of denial like a failing but arrogant military staff pushing symbols of non-existent or defeated armies round a map table.

The working-class is implacably opposed to immigration, and the students generally not absorbed by politics in the way they once were. Getting a good job is now the preoccupation, not upsetting the social order.

It is easy to see the attractions for people of power and influence, deserted by their own political troops and living on borrowed time, in seeking some new constituency of followers prepared to listen - and one which lends itself to romanticism. The religious fervour with which heretics about migration are pursued betrays the psychological imperative behind it.

As Steve Moxon says, the migrant is now the championed figure in politically correct thinking - ‘another class of saviour for the cause being the disadvantaged person from outside the core of the capitalist world untainted through never having declined to grasp the chance when offered of ‘rising up’ against the bosses’.

Those pesky working-class and students, corrupted by capitalist false consciousness, no longer deserve even the courtesy of having laid out for them the intentions of the superior and socialist class who, chosen by fate, alone guard the truth in their lonely position of responsibility.

The sheer looniness of imagining that immigrants in the main have any enthusiasm for anything other than making money, and using their own numbers and solidarity as a lever for their own advancement, betrays just how far the Guardianista class have retreated from reality.

Neither of the two main strands of argument employed to justify mass immigration holds water.

Just about every speech by a major political leader during the last decade appears to include as de rigeur a ‘tribute’ to mass immigration and ‘diversity’. Political leaders appear to think it too risky not to mention the subject on every occasion ad nauseam. But how any society can hold together when it is the policy to create the maximum division among its members in their aspirations as to the social fabric?

The head of the CRE, Trevor Phillips, now says that multiculturalism is not such a good idea after all, and that separatist projects would no longer be funded. He presumably does not see racially separate teaching arrangements as separatist. Maybe he really does now reject multiculti, but the numbers able to form critical masses of varying ethnic composition, and pursue separatism whether government likes it or not, are now so great that it will make little difference what he thinks.

Moxon cynically thinks it likely that Phillips’ remarks are merely the pretext for more resources being directed towards ethnic groups. If that is the case, then it will be said that the Government is funding integration. As always, the real reason will be to buy votes.

Question diversity as a justification for immigration and the standard switcheroo will appear. Britain’s prosperity depends on migrants - ‘labour shortages’, and so on.

Moxon’s book includes a very good rapid tour of the detailed arguments for mass economic migration - every one of which is easy to deflate.

Anyone who has had the misfortune of trying recently to get a job through Labour’s Job Centres in the main national melting pot - now dubbed ‘Londonistan’ by the politically aware - can see what is happening at least among smaller employers. Nearly every one of them has expectations of being able to get his work done - and often skilled work - at farcical wages associated with ‘foreign students’. The black economy is creeping into the white-collar workplace. Often employers are imbued with inflated ‘animal spirits’ about the low wages they can expect to pay. Even the fabled ‘students’ sometimes cannot be found to fill the job. Shelf-fillers in London are now paid 10% less than in other areas of the country with lower living costs.

The leading immigration economist, Professor George Borjas, joked that economists have no difficulty in agreeing that an increased supply of labour will lower wages. Until the increased labour supply is attributed to immigration, when economists become mysteriously tongue-tied!

As Moxon says, increasing numbers of local British workers feel it is simply not worthwhile to work for the wages now being paid. This creates a ratchet. Existing workers disappear into the benefits system or crime (or both), and the near three million classified as sick. Immigrants are brought in to meet supposed shortages of staff, who further force down wages and encourage more to give up on work. Past immigrants are themselves disadvantaged by those coming in later as the ratchet tightens.

Particularly duplicitous is the Labour claim of ‘staff shortages’ based on the half-million or so advertised vacancies. As any economics text book can tell you, there is something called ‘frictional unemployment’. Jobs take time to fill. Advertising, locating potential staff and interviewing them cannot be done in a day.

Even if there were an infinite number of the unemployed available to fill vacancies there would still be a substantial number of job advertisements. Half a million is only a percent or two of the total number of jobs, and in a fast changing and mobile economy certainly no indication of labour shortages in itself. And especially not when a large proportion of the jobs are part-time or temporary.

‘Active promotion of mass net immigration into an already crowded and fully developed economy is unique to Britain’ says Moxon.

But the Labour Government is caught in a trap of its own making.

To admit the error of its ways would be politically calamitous when its entire policy is based around immigration both as a social device - ‘diversity’ - ‘vibrant multiculti’ - and as a supposed economic necessity. The Tories - witness Michael Howard’s recent speech (January 2005) - have more latitude after towards a decade in opposition.

Cui bono?

A coalition of strange bedfellows certainly benefits for now from the destruction of British society. Labour expects to be rewarded with votes from immigrants. The remnants of the ideological left hope for a new revolutionary political army made up of foreign mercenaries. Many employers, consumed by short-sighted greed, want foreign workers for low wages. Some of the middle-class enjoy cheap servants. But a growing majority are becoming aware that preserving their own social fabric is matter of importance to them even if they still have little grasp of the economic pup being sold to the country.

Blair appears to attribute Labour’s increasing unpopularity to managerial failure. Perish the thought that the ideology - such as it is being a rag bag of fashionable leftish sloganising and some half-baked economics - might be calamitous.

But people are waking up says Moxon, and there will be a big political score to settle.

Dave wrote:
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the high cost of fuel, protesting about it by driving slowly and disrupting other motorists is such a stupid idea. Its makes about as much sense as protesting about inflation by burning £20 notes.

i cant think of a bolder protest, u r a hypocrite, and weak. and me too, now