A PM from the PM

Like about 1.7 million other people, and no doubt 0.1 million miscellanious family pets, I signed the anti-roads petition on the Downing Street website. Although Friends of the Earth would like to make it clear that all 1.7 million of us signed it through our own stupidity or being hoodwinked about facts, I believe that any form of all-out  road pricing is far from the answer.

And today, along with 1.7 million other people and 0.1 million family pets, I got a response from the PM.

I could argue about the various points it raised. I could argue that his Tonyness spent far too much time trying to convince us that it wasn’t a stealth tax, but I fully acknowledge we must be taxed for using a car just like we are taxed on electronics purchases and utility bills. I could argue about the hypocrisy of the PM using a government report to bolster a case on the same day the government was being held to account by a group of pensioners for ignoring a different government-sponsored report. I could argue the farcical nature of the sentence “Our aim is to relieve traffic jams, not create a “Big Brother” society” from a Primeminister who has brought in more CCTV and laws to remove civil liberties than ever before.

But I won’t. I agree congestion is bad. I agree public transport should be used by people with daily commutes.

The only problem is that those transport systems cannot cope. How many ‘number 3’ busses are going to have to go one behind the other at 8.20am in the morning if everybody living on that route used it to go to work? One average street of commuters would fill a double-decker bus, so how many streets of regular commuters do you think a city has? In Bristol just a few weeks ago commuters protested about poor, cramped train services. If everyone chose to leave their car at home tomorrow morning, the 8.10 from Bristol to Bath would look like the Dheli express with 8 year olds’ scarfs blowing in the breeze as they cling to the rails along the roof of the carraiges in the pooring rain.

The answer is simple. At the moment, the road/car system is the only one capable of coping with the current capacity. Show us the colour of your money by improving busses and trains and we’ll start to use them.

And here’s another problem. Most key workers (nurses, teachers, doctors, fireman) working in major cities cannot afford housing within those cities, so live in commuter belt towns. If they’re now going to be charged to drive to work what will happen? The probable answer is that they’ll have to suffer the extra expense and budget more. Or, key workers will all take jobs outside of cities to cut costs and cities will struggle to recruit teachers and doctors to those deprived inner-city areas.

But the real problem with the email has nothing to do with roads and tolls. Tony Blair is a publically elected figure, paid for by the public purse, and accountable to the public. His email reply to the petition’ signaturies has no mechanism for dialogue. We cannot reply. He does point out that Dr Ladyman will be sent out to do a webchat tomorrow at 4pm (and I have already entered the question posed in my previous paragraph as an advance question). It does appear however, that although Downing Street encourages the public to get involved with politics via the internet, if it says something they don’t like they can close the stable door as soon as the star stallion has bolted.