The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, everyone 🤦
We're all in on the culture war now
We're all in on the culture war now
finding this clip of frankie boyle shitting on clarkson made my life qualitatively better
clarkson is just a shithead kid who's somehow an adult. He has the views and humour of a particularly obnoxious teenager
Even clarkson is smart enough to realize trains and planes make more sense for mass travel, he just likes cool and high end cars because they’re cool. He’s not out here advocating for everyone to sit in traffic in festivas all day
Carbrains certainly feel that way when they are menaced by the sight of someone on a bicycle. 
Thanks, I hadn’t seen that word before and had assumed it had something to do with cars (car-nist).
Next step: “we are a nation of smokers and millions of us smoke daily. We are making the life of these people easier. Stop to the No Smoking areas. If a pregnant woman is present she can go eff herself. Stop to taxes on tobacco.
“We are a civilization of fossil fuel users, billions of us use electricity generated from fossil energy sources daily. We are…”
Luckily, these are just the last desperate acts of an unelected Prime Minister, who only got the job because the last one crashed the economy inside a month (who only got the job because the last one was Boris Johnson). He knows that the party will be condemned to irrelevance next year and is anxious to find anything that could possibly resonate with enough voters
Ironically Rishi Sunak famously doesn't really drive, and once had to borrow someone else's car for a publicity stunt where he inadvertently demonstrated that he doesn't even know how to fill one up with petrol. Sadly he doesn't drive because hes a gazillionaire, not because he uses public transport
Have you seen the polls in the last two years? Or the that a majority of prominent Conservative MPs for the last ten years have already announced they won't run next year to avoid their own little portillo moments?
They know they're done and are holding on for either a miracle or something like this policy change to stick. Which isn't impossible, but that there's a good chance of him winning an election is what is wishful thinking. They're done.
God I hope so. I really can't imagine having to put up with another 5 years of this Tory clusterfuck. I genuinely think I would rather move abroad
VOTE EARLY VOTE OFTEN. And make sure your friends vote. Make sure you've all got voter ID - don't get caught out by the Tories' voter suppression tricks. VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE
I'm just taking a moment to remember the massive smear campaign against Corbyn, including the centrists in Labour working to undermine him during their election, and how ultimately it led to this dumbass taking the reins instead.
well this guy is the tory leader
but it's mad that corbyn was ousted for antisemitism he didn't do and now the SS are fine again
Now I'm just waiting 'til starmer does some blairite lowest common denominator research, by reading some red-tops and decides to support this.
It'll be like Tony Blair's housing policies.
New national parking platform
...if that means what I think it means, it's probably the worst of the lot.
Take it from an American: mandatory minimum parking will absolutely ruin your towns and cities.
And thank goodness for that! I hope the trend continues until we have actual, livable places.
Sorry for downvote, it's not that at all.
At the moment each carpark on the UK can use any app it likes on mobile to pay, so you end up with every place having its own. Dozens of apps on phones to pay for parking, having to remember which one is right for the one you're in today.
The proposal is to have a single app and have different car parks sign up to it so it's easier for people to pay.
I say proposal. It's not a plan is it. Idea? Dream? Fantasy? I dunno how much they can do before they are forced to call an election and get kicked out.
Just put one big parking lot for every car at the center of the country and then everyone can walk to their destinations! parking solved!
It's straight out of the American conservative talking points book. Somehow, driving has been equated with freedom and not fully embracing driving over all other firms of transportation taking away individual freedom.
How is it freedom to be forced to own a car, pay for gas and maintenance, and waste your life in car traffic every single day?
It's the dumbest talking point.
Typical conservative strategy:
Are we winning yet?
Absolutely fucking not. Privatisation is literally the worst thing you could do. Do we really want some random assholes to own something we rely on and try to squeeze it for as much profit as possible? I don't, fuck capitalism
Privatized public transportation rarely works. At most you'll find some success stories of companies that partnered with a government to jointly service a transportation line.
Thanks for providing these examples. They completely changed my mind about public transportation privatization
The example is across the channel - the whole of EU. And Japan as well. One must blind to think that nationalised transport can work.
In France, nationalized transport worked for decades before rail was opened to private compagnies circa 2014 (would have to check exactly). Since then, no one has been able to afford a train ticket. You have no idea what you're talking about
Japan literally has privatized roads and it's kind of a nightmare. You have to pay tolls for nearly all highway transportation because it's owned by 3 companies.
Yeah, privatization is great...
Didn't England already go through that, and wasn't it a complete failure ? someone knowledgeable quick please
Relevant video: https://youtu.be/DlTq8DbRs4k?si=y-muiI81MKk3gin0
Privatized railways are mostly failures most of the time. Besides Brightline, and I think a bunch of the Japanese railway companies, no nation really has privatized passenger rail. But I think the Japanese system has a weird setup.
Actually, I think Italy and Germany have started allowing private companies to operate on their railways, but I think they need to fit it between the nationalized services. I could be wrong about that tho.
I disagree. Aside from privately owned Brightline who already owns the land around their stations, owns their tracks, and has a lot of incentive to expand their coverage, I have not heard of a single other piece of privatized infrastructure that actually benefits the users or actively engages in expansion
@mondoman712
Best driving experience in the world? The Netherlands, because when you shift a significant number of people off the roads into alternative transport the remaining drivers have less traffic and higher average speeds than an over-reliance on cars.
Risak is just committing the same mistake Robert Moses made 80 - 50 years ago, building more roads to "solve" traffic but it just induced more car traffic - - and then repeat again and again.
Do you have a good source? Not denying, just on the lockout for stuff to shove in diehard motorists' faces that they will struggle to deny with anything coming anywhere close to resembling facts
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox
Adding extra capacity to a network when the moving entities selfishly choose their route can in some cases reduce overall performance. That is because the Nash equilibrium of such a system is not necessarily optimal. The network change induces a new game structure which leads to a (multiplayer) prisoner's dilemma. In a Nash equilibrium, drivers have no incentive to change their routes. While the system is not in a Nash equilibrium, individual drivers are able to improve their respective travel times by changing the routes they take. In the case of Braess's paradox, drivers will continue to switch until they reach Nash equilibrium despite the reduction in overall performance.
Freedom to travel except if you're taking the train, then you can get fucked with delays, overcrowded trains and expensive fairs. Glad to be living on this hell rock
Forcing everyone to own a car due to lack of public transport/safe cycling infrastructure fucks over motorists as well. Imagine the traffic in London if suddenly everyone that commutes by train was forced to drive in.
What a fucking idiot. Has he been living under a rock? He's going out of his way to remake all of America's mistakes. Absolute buffoon.
What mistakes? The ultra rich have a great life in the US. He's just serving his own interests. But remember you're poor because of immigrants! /s
That's what brexit means - fuck 99% of the population so the 1% gets to enjoy the same inequality as in 'murica.
That's been Britain since the 2010s, they all caught Ameriboo fever and want to be a carbon copy of burgerland.
It's alway funny when a Brit gets really mad at any non-Brit discussing politics and says, "it's not like the US!" Idk their politicians seem to be trying pretty damn hard to ape whatever the Dems and Republicans are doing.
The Tories here in the UK are trying to emulate the GOP, of that there is no doubt. They'd also force us poors back into victorian era workhouses given the chance.
Poor motorists having only like 99% of infrastructure reserved for them.
So victimised right now.
Let's take away railway sleepers so they can drive on the tracks.
Ah yes, the freedom to be stuck in traffic jams. Now where have I heard that before...
houses, shops, offices, city centres. parks, they've been waging war on cars for since 1666.
It's about time someone did something to put a stop to them.
"I love cars. Therefore we should mandate that EVERYONE drives!"
As someone who is forced to drive because I was unlucky enough to be born in bumfuck nowhere: fuck you. I hate always-busy traffic. If waiting in line is your idea of fun, go watch paint dry or something. I'm too busy to lengthen my commute.
Have you seen the latest from Macron ? he said exactly that a few days ago. You can make out the car & oil lobby through his words https://youtu.be/Tpbci1kOMEM
Rough transcript :
"We (the french) care about our cars. Me ? I dig/love it."
More freedom for people that can afford to buy a car and live in an area with ample parking. But no freedom for everyone else amirite
You're free to travel how you like as long as you keep the fuck out of my way and breathe in my car farts
I can afford a car. There's plenty of parking where I live. But I'd much rather use my transport as an opportunity to use my bike, raise my fitness, and reduce my contribution to climate change, thanks. All of Sunak's ideas here are bad news.
LTN is low traffic neighborhood.
Anyone else notice the pluses don't actually do anything?
Use bus lane when it's not rush hour? So it does nothing.
Parking? Doesn't solve traffic.
The beauty of all of this to the Tories is that it gives them something to crow about, without actually having to do any work.
Hey you can now use the bus lanes at midnight pm on a Sunday, and have extra parking spots in Peckham. It benefits everyone!
Ahh yes, the same PM who has a list of 5 directly contradictory statements as his so-called ‘plan’, that one right?
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.
Brother our infrastructure is why our kids are all weak and obese and all of ours cities are unlivable.
Well I don't have any of those problems, I live in a small town and life is great here. Cost of living is low, crime is low, and the air is fresh.
Nothing much I can do about the rest of the country's problems. I vote against the Trumptards each November.
"It doesn't affect me therefore it's not a problem and nothing should be done. Doing things might inconvenience me in some way."
What a shitty attitude, but you vote so good for you have a sticker. (/s in case you're as dumb as I assume)
Americans like you are why things are so shitty in the first place and why we're an international embarrassment.
Do better.
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.
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 see, taking notes from their overweight neighbors across the pond, they've chosen the way of teh hambruger
