When I wrote my complaint, the "thanks for your feedback" page contained the following link in the "Notes" side column;
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Basically an article by someone complaining about the prejudice, and the answer coming back that basically they moan about 4x4s all the time as it's easier to type than "high emission vehicle"... This is despite the articles's complaint that the Mini Cooper is dirtier than many 4x4s so it's not fair to even use it as shorthand.
And how about the (excuse my language on a LR group) Fiat Panda 4x4 coming in with a whopping 156g/l CO2 emissions puting it into band D? That is definitely a 4x4 but hardly a gas guzzler.
It's clear to me we need a recognised religion.... most of us preach to the "Oh please no god" , or the more regular term "come off you f**k**g b*s*a*d heap of ****", on Saturdays and Sundays... and the respective workshop manuals must be our bible....."Thou shalt not jack without an axle stand" etc etc....
We need to keep up pressure on Media such as this, It's a cracking example of people power! Maybe we need a site to complile such glaringly obvious targetting of 4x4 owners, name and shame I say!
Or perhaphs a site that looks at the positive side of 4x4 use such as the many many volunteer groups. Many will know I have called on our local groups in my role when the City ground to a halt due to a big freeze. It was recognised by both the Council and Heads of my outfit Plod Inc that had they not turned out major artierial roads & junctions would have remained blocked for several hours more thus preventing any gritters getting through. I know for certain that I'd be telling Mr Mayor where to stick his congestion charge if they found London in a similar predicament.
I guess the 4x4 prejudice site is pretty much the above positive site I'm thinking of.
Well if anyone wants it then I have a copy of the original and then updated web pages as PDFs, send me an email to this address from a valid email address (so I can just hit "reply" and not have to dick about with people's ideas of email obfuscation) and I'll zap it to you.
Talking of which, if you check out the ludicrous "have your say" board thing attached to the beeb's latest tirade against 4x4s, not only will you see an amazing torrent of total s**te, e.g. 4x4s use twice as much of everything as normal cars etc etc ad infinitum, if you order by "Reader's Recommended" then at the end of the second page you'll see the following by a sensible chap called "The Famous Eccles" (i.e. me). If anyone feels like it, log in if you have an account and see if you can get it onto page one!
-------------------- My "enormous road-hogging 4x4" is a Land Rover Defender 110 pick-up, it's less than 2 centimetres longer than my other car, a 1997 Audi A4. Somehow though this 2 centimetres in extra length makes it a road hog, despite it being 3 centimetres narrower.
Also, the list of "band G" cars has very few 4x4s on it, because they are not the most polluting cars on the roads. Grow up you prejudiced bunch of bigots. If you want to tackle a problem, then try a dose of reality first.
"Ian Rawlings" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@desktop.tarcus.org.uk...
Lets be honest with ourselves. Smokers said they would never get stopped, we are now in danger of just that. I still say what I said about smoking, if it is that BAD then BAN THE SALE!!!! This government will never do this as they are laughing all the way to the bank. I was actually approached yesterday in Bolton City centre whilst I was unloading my disability scooter via the electric hoist, by a pillock. He was with his girlfriend and asked me if I really needed the Disco? I informed him as politely as I could of all the reasons I chose my Edie. I also explained, before he could talk about alternatives, that I had tried them. He was about to continue his tirade, possibly thinking that as I am disabled I was an easy target. However by this time I had sidled my way to the drivers door, where I keep my steering wheel lock, which is shaped as a baseball bat. I asked him two questions, 1) what the f**k had my life to do with him, and 2) why was his nose bleeding? He said that as I was killing the planet and therefore him and his offspring, my choice was his concern (honest, I could not believe the crap he was spouting). Then he checked his nose, (can you see whets coming, cuz he did not). My nose is not bleeding he told me.......I REPLIED IT WILL BE IN A F**KING MINUTE NOW PISS OFF!! I then showed him my lawful steering lock. Do you know, he walked away at that point, mumbling about polluters driving big cars or somat. Honest I could not believe what was happening at the time. As far as democracy goes, that died years ago, just ask the prisoners in jail who are drug addicts.......
Red Ken did mention 4x4s in a BBC radio interview however he didn't mention this snippet quoted from The Times: Among popular family cars that fall into band G and will pay £210 a year (£215 for diesels) are the Renault Espace, Toyota Previa and Ford Galaxy - Tony Blair's family car of choice - the Citroën C5, Vauxhall Vectra, Mazda
6, Honda Accord Tourer, Volvo S80 and some petrol-engined Ford Mondeos. and of course this band only applies to new cars after march 2006 .
He also made a point how few they were forgetting to mention that the lowest rated cars band A are practically none existent in the UK
In so many ways, democracy is the rule of the few. The great majority do not give a stuff about anything that does not affect them directly. Consequently they keep quiet and the decisions are made by those small groups that can be bothered to get up and shout. This applies to the 4x4 nonsense, as much as anything else. (fill in your own issues here) I am pretty sure we have not had a government elected by a majority of the electorate in some considerable time. Sitting around bitching about it in the pub won't get anywhere. At the very least, have your facts and figures ready and challenge the tosh. Just for a laugh, look up the CO2 emissions of a typical taxi - the MetroCab - and ask yourself how many of them there are in London.
Oh, and while I am all riled up - I tried to look up details of a trip from Staffordshire to Olympia by public transport. Turns out it would take half as long and cost half as much to do the trip on my own in my car.
And another thing (in the swing of it now) - I looked up some figures about air travel. Remember how all those evil airliners are poisoning us by flying lots of people to foreign lands? Turns out that a budget airliner packed with passengers is likely to be more fuel efficient than having them toddle off in pairs in the car over the same distance.
I've heard this fuel efficiency of planes thing a few times recently, but the original storm kicked up about planes was not the amount of fuel they scoff, but what gets spewed out the exhausts and the height at which it gets emitted makes them much worse than cars. I don't have the details but if you're interested it was covered in the articles of the time so some googling should turn up the results.
Don't push that point or they'll ban them from the roads!
In the movies, when you drive such a vehicle into range, the central computer would start saying "Does not compute!" and burst into flames, causing the cameras to erupt in a shower of sparks, freeing the population from their oppressors to the swelling strings of a background orchestra.
Why don't you drive it in there and see? Take a video camera with you.
That will probably be the next move - there was talk about a scheme being introduced (copying another country - Sweden?) where older cars get banned from the roads, but you'd get a whole £500 towards your new one (that's new new, NOT s/h new). Needless to say I mailed Vine to ask where the other £24,500 was comming from, and pointing out that it was just another tax, as the goverment would get a lot more in VAT than the £500 for a sale that would never normally have taken place (not that it would, I couldn't afford 20 quid, never mind that lot, so I'd have been out of work and house bound, which I also pointed out). Strangely, the question(s) was never asked of the prat suggesting it.
So that's what happened when I tried to register the BrandNewLeopardSkinPillboxHat as being "Leopard Skin" for colour!
Who wants to go to London anyway? An excellent place to be comming from, in my book..... unless you're going to Stoke.
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