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And unless government makes the road fuel duty vastly higher even than it is today, it always will be, because of the labour costs element in public transport, and the fact that you have to build in a fair amount of redundancy to provide a reasonable level of service.


We have been transporting food long distances ever since we started living in cities, and importing food on a large scale for 150 or more years.

If you look at the food you buy, there's probably relatively little that you could reasonably expect to be produced within, say, 25 miles of where you live. For example, wheat doesn't grow very well west of the Pennines, although it does in East Anglia. The idea that "most" foodstuffs could be sourced locally is a myth.

And much of what you buy from the supermarket is non-food anyway. I don't think the price or quality of washing-up liquid, light bulbs or toilet rolls would be improved if they were produced in small local factories.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Yes, very true. But this is only a problem because in our society everything has to be profitable.



Can't disagree with any of this either, but shipping over lamb from New Zealand, beef from South America can't be the most sensible option (at least as far as fuel efficency/environmental risks are concerned)? These are just two examples, there must be many more that do not spring to mind straight away.

The washing-up liquid, light bulbs and toilet roll couldn't be manufactured economically on smaller scales, so yes, having a factory nearby isn't an option. But, they could all be manufactured in Britain, what quantity of goods are imported that do not need to be? (actually, don't answer that it's a Phd in itself!)

My point is there is a lot of transporting of goods which is necessary, but equally there is a signicficant proportion which isn't, and either way the cost of goods that do need to be shipped long distances should be higher.

I guess I'm too much of an Idealist.

Merseyside apparently subsidise their public transport. Merseyside Council Tax payers are livid about the level of their council tax - and as pensioners point out: they may benefit from the cheaper bus fares - but they are paying out for more for this in their extortionate amount of tax. They would rather pay less council tax and marginally more for the bus - as this would be cheaper for them! They also have more buses and routes - as far as I am aware - admittedly from hearsay from pals, a Swiss relative (the teacher one) - but this means wages as well. There are no easy answers - services mean higher taxes - which increases cost of living - leading to demand for higher wages and inflation. We have seen it all before - Heath-Wilson-Heath- Wilson-Callaghan- Thatcher-Major-Bliar . Though Wilson/Callaghan years were the worst ever - due to oil crisis and union turmoil as we vaguely remember even though those of us in mid-40s were kids at the time. (I'm 45 by the way! And I do not feel any different to how I felt at 18! )



Trouble is - we increase cost of living - and we end up with economic chaos. Also - people demand certain foods even when not in season. Even in Cumbria - local produce is sold to a supermarket, heads for the warehouse and then is returned to our local Tesco/Sainsbury etc.

We also grow things according to our soil, climate and geography. Lake Garda is able to grow citrus fruit. Lake Windermere has neither the right climate nor the right soil. Austria and Switzerland look lush - but the mountains are not arable. They import from France, Italy and Germany to sustain themselves and always have done so since Roman times.


Likewise the UK - our green and pleasant land specialises in certain foods - which are subject to the season and area. We have always transported goodies around.


My wife uses the local farmshops and farmer's markets (and prices are a bit higher than the supermarket but the quality is superb) and the supermarket is visited one every 10 days or so for other necessities.

Internet shopping? After a conversation on C+ - Krissi is thorough - she asked my sister to log her next door neighbour's internet delivery truck. These very large vehicles which block neighbours into their driveways and are not suitable for residential roads deliver perhaps one or two items and then trave a fairly long distance - even going round in circles and creating more pollution. But - these supermarkets are serious business - and if one thinks using the internet shopping is a means of saving the planet - they are mistaken. Not that I condemn this as a means of shopping - merely pointing out that it is not the solution some think it is.

FMD was also a case in point - it showed how quickly disease can spread for starters. (I specialise in contagious lurgies ) It also showed how ludicrous the system of transporting livestock around really is.

Profit means reserves and investment into R&D and improvements to our lot in life. It also provides a lving for the sole trader - his wages and growth of his business.




We import to sustain our existing suppliesand meet demand as well. There are only so many lambs in Cumbria and the Dales and Wales! Prime UK produce is expensive (wages? overheads? cost of vets like Krissi ) and the New Zealand stuff - despite the long ditance - it is cheaper and just about affordable to those on low incomes.



We are a small country. Lot of the Bum paper manufacturers, light bulbs (Phillips), safety valves, pharmaceuticals etc are multinationals as well. Plants everywhere and all diversified acording to local skills and geography. We can be self sufficient to a point - but the large firms do make it difficult for a newcomer to enter the market as well.




In an ideal world - everything would be a bowl of cherries! But costs need to be kept down to control the economy. Passing costs to consumer leads to inflation - which serves no purpose. We export and import to maintain this equilibrium to a point as well. Our high quality and renowned produce is demanded abroad and we export to make money from that demand. Similarly - we like French cheese and wines, Italian olive oils and tomatoes, German beers and sausages - so we import!

Cars and bicycles - we import most of these as well - having run down our manufacturing plants to point of extinction.

They could be aimed at the Motoring Lobby, and then rebutted with reason and logic when everyone is paying attention.

For too long the "social" view has been the only one seen from kindergarted to government.

That's been the problem for too long.

And more reason and more logic is never going to solve it whilst no one is listening.

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No, but enough things have to be profitable to pay for the things (like defence and most policing) that aren't. A lesson painfully learned by the former Soviet Bloc.


But, as a proportion of total costs, transport costs are very small. I have mentioned before the example of how it was cheaper per tonne to ship coal from Colombia to Immingham Docks, than to move it by rail (or lorry) to a power station 30 miles away.


Oh, a bit of good old-fashioned mercantilism. I thought Adam Smith had demolished that idea. If I live in Portsmouth, is it more economical for me to buy bogrolls made in Dundee and transported by lorry, or bogrolls made in Le Havre and transported by ship? Why is it desirable, unless you're a blinkered nationalist, for goods to be manufactured in your own country?


But "necessary" can only be defined in terms of cost.

And don't forget that increased prosperity ultimately depends on increased specialisation, so people/regions/countries make what they're good at, and trade the end-products.

The opponents of "globalisation" should remember this.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

One of the characteristics of a "market" is that it becomes ruthlessly efficient in finding the best cost/quality ratios. If equal quality can be obtained elsewhere at a lower price, it usually is. If that involves more transport, well, then it involves more transport. I don't see much in the way of alternatives in the foreseeable future...

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Me too mate. It's my view that "the market" will one day implode and leave the world in a right royal mess.
It could be the de-stabalising of the global market, the shifting geo-political climate, the exhaustion of a vital resource, or some other phenomenon. Whatever it is, no amount of our precious money would get us out of the mess we'd be in if most of our goods and services came from places no longer capable or willing to provide them.
What then? Ready the Eurofighters and Challenger tanks to go get them? Or accept that the 'good times' are gone for ever and we'd better get back to a few basics?

Jeez, remind me not to try to argue with you guys. Talk about Capitalist Economists!

I have neither the knowledge or the inclination (actually I just don't have the knowledge!) to start debating the pros and cons of a global market economy, so I won't try, but just a couple of points.



I don't know what mercantilism is. I don't know who Adam Smith is.

I was trying to make the point about locally produced goods, locally as in Geographically locally, rather than Politically locally. Therefore, yes shipping goods from France to South East England does make more sense than transporting it from Yorkshire. I don't really consider myself a Nationalist, but freely admit to being blinkered. Isn't everyone to some extent...



Interesting opinion. Sometimes reason and logic are entirely personal concepts though.

That's about it. I'm just going to pop out and pick up the latest edition of "Socialist Worker" do you want me to get one for you too Rigpig?!!

Basically a belief that each nation state should be economically self-sufficient.

See: http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/cou ... ilism.html


You are kidding - the founder of modern economics:

http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jun/smith.html

"Smith laid the intellectual framework that explained the free market and still holds true today. He is most often recognized for the expression "the invisible hand," which he used to demonstrate how self-interest guides the most efficient use of resources in a nation's economy, with public welfare coming as a by-product. To underscore his laissez-faire convictions, Smith argued that state and personal efforts, to promote social good are ineffectual compared to unbridled market forces."

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I think he's probably a distant relative of Paul

Yes, Dawkins who stirs up Christians in the letters column of the Guardian ... he believes that God doesn't exist because He (God that is) has no mass and no energy and according to the laws of science, anything without those qualities cannot exist. But poor Dawkins has to concede that the laws of science also have neither mass nor energy! So goodness knows where that leaves us spiritually.

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I've never heard his arguments of that nature, but presumably from a scientific point of view it would be that god could not affect the world as we know it, without mass-energy.

Really? That's a hopeless position. We can't even prove that god has no mass and no energy in this universe, let alone in an infinite number of alternative universes (which may or may not exist).

I don't buy the god thing, but this argument is hopeless.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

And by the same token, neither could the laws of science. As the laws of science appear to exist within the mind of the Human Observer, and exist nowhere else, they have a lot in common with God, don't they?

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I don't like that. Take F=ma... Doesn't it "exist" in the nature of matter, time and space?



I like that better.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I'm not neccessarily defending Dawkin's viewpoints, I'm pointing out that what he's saying seems to be logically consistent - that if there was a god affecting what was going on in the universe, then it would contradict all observations that have led us to come up with these 'laws' (more accurately, models) in the first place.

We can prove a lot less than that. Everything (from science through religion to culture) appears to be based merely on belief of what we see, touch, smell, hear and taste. Given the limited amount of input that can be absorbed through our senses, the minute time available to absorb it, and the easily deceived nature of the mind, I'm very sceptical that any human can be sure of anything at all, much less prove it! Don’t forget that we are not at the end of things yet, and the ideas of Richard Dawkins may very well be consigned to a backwater by the next big idea, similarly to how the ideas of JOSEPH PRIESTLEY (of a few generation ago) are now laughable!

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First of all, I don’t put too much faith in the 'law of logic'. For one thing, it is poor at dealing with things that are not fixed certainties. You can, I am told, make a kind of mesh of probabilities to describe a thing in a fuzzy, uncertain way, but the explosion of parameters when modelling in this way is enormous and overcomes the usefulness of the tool - hence the need for lots of estimates and talk of 'no substitute for experience' and so on. Second, one could also say that if there are “scientific laws” affecting what was going on in the universe, then it would be possible to define a grand, unified theory to describe the effects of these laws everywhere. Yet the best so far (quantum mechanics and celestial mechanics) are miles apart and the only thing that seems to bridge them (string theory) is a hopeless thing that is unified but entirely baffling to everybody! If science cannot be understood and has no consensus and can't be confirmed, then what is it's purpose? Is the purpose of science to make an ever-more complex model that fits a ever wider diverse range of non-convergent observations? That seems to be where it is going!

Last, one could say that it is super-science that contradicts all natural human observations, and that has created a vacuum for a spiritual world that has the decided advantage that it is comprehensible and fits most cases, whereas super-science is incomprehensible and fits all cases that we know about but we know there will be more.

At the end of the day, I’m comfortable that religion and science are different views of the same world at different levels of granularity. To reduce the wonder of humanity to a blackboard of equations (which is the trick of Dawkins) is OK if that is what turns you on, but it is a lot to expect everybody to proceduralise their culture and beliefs of the world to that level. It ain’t gonna happen!

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I stole this .sig

I am a very keen and commited cyclist, but Paul has not alienated me. Still, I'm new here .

Cyclists and motorists are not, IMO, enemies. I find those that think so, in either lobby, are impervious to reason.

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I pay tax on all my cars