to civilly ask you to use your cars less

[mosquitofeast]

My last thread was deleted because I was not being "civil" enough, I don't actually think it is a subject there is much room for civility in, but I will try!

My last post was to try and answer some questions about me. Here they are

I think I have answered these.

No I am not a strict vegetarian. I don't buy milk or dairy, but eat it in other peoples houses,

no I don't fly,

foodmiles, well, I take them into consideration, but they are not the only indicator of the environmental impact of food. Tomatoes grown in a heated greenhouse 2 miles away might have more environmental impact than tomatoes grown outside in Spain, and flown in.

I have 2 adopted children, 1 is an adult no longer living at home I currently have 3 foster children, but that is likely to change this week

Yes I have a pet, it came with one of the adopted children.

No I don't smoke

10k to my nearest bus stop, and a height difference of 200 metres... no thanks!

Managed perfectly well without a car in London and my university city though.

OP @mosquitofeast still the same goady troll you were this morning.

Have a

Get lost

Not during this pandemic unfortunately! It’s safer to be in your own car, away from others.

Public transport operators haven’t even gone back to a normal timetable have they? So instead of 6 trains per hour it’s like 1/2 instead? How can people safely social distance if they all have to squeeze on like sardines because the next train isn’t for an hour?

@Desiringonlychild

£1.50? It's £6.20 per person here return. 6 miles, 8 buses a day.

I've not read the full thread but am I allowed to use my car? It's a piece of shit EV and I have solar panels. So can I drive my car twice as much as other people?

These threads always go the same way. Suddenly every poster on Mumsnet is either disabled, lives in the country or has some other reason that they must use their car every time they need to get a pint of milk. Given that the vast majority of the country are able-bodied urban-dwellers, I can't help but think that there is something missing among these MN posters.

Where are the posters who are as lazy as one of my colleagues who lives spitting distance from work yet still drives in? I mean, the walk from the car park to the booking office is further than the walk from his house. He's not alone either...

See also: Poster asks that people fly less to help the environment. Cue dozens who absolutely HAVE to have five long-haul holidays per year.

No wonder we've got an obesity crisis and a climate emergency.

Nah, I'm ok, love using my car and motorbike.

@okiedokieme yes and there is a hopper fare. So if you take more than 1 bus within an hour, you only pay £1.50. tube is much more expensive. Pre covid, I paid £162 per month for unlimited travel from zone 1-3 and this includes buses as well as tube...

As a point of reference, to travel from our home to a big shopping centre Brent cross shopping centre is 25 mins on the bus (including a 2 minute walk to the bus stop) and cost £1.50. According to Google maps, this is a 3.3 mile drive and takes 10 mins. So yes if I had a car, I would still save 15 minutes but would it cost £1.50 per trip for petrol and all the associated costs of the car including depreciation, insurance, taxes and essential repairs? Also this trip is stil within zone 3 so technically in the suburbs. Going into central London in a car is a whole different story- congestion charges, parking, ULEZ make it a non starter for most. But even in the burbs, public transport is a very efficient option.

DH and I have always lived in London and this is what we are used to.

Oh sure yes OP . You’ve absolutely won me over with your self gratifying post . Can I please be perfect like you ?

@mosquitofeast - if you do actually care about the environment, please leave the campaigning about it to someone else because you are making people more likely to ignore environmental impacts, not less. No one likes being told what to do - we're not children. Note - I do not have, and have never had, a car. In the current circumstances particularly, that means there are many things I cannot do, so don't blithely tell car owners that people without them cope just fine.

I wouldn't worry about people using their cars. The fuckton of single use plastic from ppe being dumped daily will do a sterling job of messing everything up anyway.

@Desiringonlychild public transport in London is great compared to the rest of the country. Never, ever move out of London. You know that shit overpriced journey you took in the provinces that time? Well imagine that being all there is, all day, every day, and trying to organise even a semi active/engaged working life for you and your kids with that being all that's available. You'd drive too, if you could.

Absolute rubbish.

OP, if you are passionate about the environment, you should definitely look into how 'cloud storage' actually works. Once you've seen that, you'll do well to disconnect from the internet altogether, because otherwise you're doing more harm than driving a diesel every day, which I'm sure you would never want to do.

@Linemanfort yes thats why I chose to buy a flat in london over something bigger in the home counties.

To me at least, it seems a no brainer that people outside cities would drive. In order for a public transport system to be affordable, it needs to have a large pool of users which is only possible in densely populated urban areas. This isn't possible in a village.

The only way people would ditch their cars is if the traffic got so bad and the public transport system was efficient. This would mean that the village/rural town has become an urbanized town. This could indeed happen with the Covid induced exodus of urban dwellers in search of cheaper property in the countryside but to me it spells the destruction of the countryside which is a great pity.

The countryside is not the countryside anymore if there are the numbers necessary to justify running buses every 15 minutes 24 hours a day.

I'll use my car as much as I bloody want! Preacher!

OP ... you’ve stated a couple of times about going to work at 5am. So how are you able to care for your foster/contraceptive failure children in the mornings?

How bout you move to a deserted island and let everyone else live in peace, driving as they require

what your asking is impractical and its none of your business how or why people commute the way they do

@1Morewineplease

@1Morewineplease

OP ... you’ve stated a couple of times about going to work at 5am. So how are you able to care for your foster/contraceptive failure children in the mornings?

Don't be silly Op has stated several times that she only goes to work that early on her days off from being the patron saint of fostering and broken condoms

Aren’t you embarrassed displaying such a vindictive nature on a public forum. The Op didn’t say any of those things they denied saying. I read both threads. But you know that, don’t you. You are just lying because you have no answer to their point. Do you honestly think that other readers can’t recognise spiteful bullying when they see it? Maybe you should sit down and have a proper think about what you get out of such behaviour.

The bus into my nearest town 5 miles away and is £2.80 each way, my commute would take 2 1/2 hours and cost a small fortune for a bus pass. When I finish at 9 pm I wouldn't get home till 11.30pm.

If I go to Edinburgh I use the bus because there are loads of them and it is pretty cheap, parking costs a small fortune too. When I lived in another city I used the bus too.

Bore off

I live 22 miles from my child‘a school. I had no say in this. I cannot afford to move. Her father would be the type to be considered a cross between a covert narc and Lundy Bancroft’s Water Torturer. He ‘won’ residency of her via lies and miss-information and charm but ‘let’s’ ms have 50% contact with her.

What do you suggest I do?