… I think there's another truth to bring into the mix here – a truth that's hit me in the face over the last few months, but one most people seem unwilling or unable to acknowledge. It's this: many of us who are running cars don't need them.
Our betters have spoken! Do as you are instructed, proletariat!
We think we need a car, but we don't. And when we're brave enough to give it a try, we realise we can manage perfectly well without one – while saving a fortune in the bargain.
And spending it on public transport costs, taxi hire and those delightfully chic little hire-car schemes you get in the post areas (and nowhere else)...
Eight months on, I wonder whether we'll ever own a car again. The idea that you "have" to own a car, especially if you live in a city, is all in the mind. I live – and many other city-dwellers do too – in a community that has never been better served by public transport, and yet car ownership has never been higher. We wring our hands, as the RAC is doing today, over rising car costs, but we'd be better off asking something much more basic. Do I really need a car?
I asked myself. Turns out the answer's 'Yes'. So sod off!
You don't need a car if you live in the centre of a bustling city with everything you need including all your friends and family nearby or within easy access of regular and frequent public transport. That means the few hundred thousand who live in London and other major conurbations. Everyone else needs a car.
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely, idyllic world these people live in eh?
ReplyDeleteI would actually take it one step further and say that nobody who lives in an inner city needs a car - but many of them want one, and this is where the Fabian types come a cropper, because dear Fabians, it's about choice ... our choice, not yours!
Of course we all complain about the costs of running a car - if we didn't then that would be carte blanch for the manufacturers and suppliers of fuel, tyres, insurance etc etc to hike their prices as and when they saw fit - why does this escape those with Fabian tendencies?
Comments are now closed on that piece. :(
ReplyDeleteShe lives in London, close to amenities and transport, works from home and can't really afford a car. So she decides to go without. Big deal, except she's just made a few hundred quid telling us all about it. Nice work if you can get it.
while saving a fortune in the bargain.
ReplyDeleteOddly, the Guardian doesn’t address the inequity of the UK duty and VAT on fuel, among the highest in the world, which costs the customer way more than the actual product.
And when I say ‘oddly’, I mean not oddly at all.
Bunny,
ReplyDeleteYears ago I worked 15 miles from home and it was convinient to use a bicycle to get to work and it saved me a lot of money, also except for a couple of occasions I enjoyed it. Does this warrant an article in C-i-F? No of course it doesn't, man uses bicycle to get into work because it is convinient, shock horror. Where do they get these idiots?
A true petrolhead would never give a second thought for the approval of others when it comes to personal car ownership. Any proposal seeking to 'cure' my car dependency gets both barrels of a Charlton Heston.
ReplyDeleteThe day may dawn when fuel costs force a 'used veggie oil' conversion upon stubborn resistance...but those of us who spent our early teens wiggling Dad's steering wheel and making farting noises in the driving seat, will never countenance the return of such an indignity.
You forgot that we pay the vat on the combined fuel + fuel tax; so paying tax on a tax.
ReplyDeleteAt the moment "used veggie oil" can be used as road fuel up to 2500 litres per year.
But not in new vehicles as the fuel system is designed for the fuel purchased at filling station.
And only in diesel engined vehicles !
Oh, and pump diesel is 5% vegetable oil anyway, by law.
Joanna Moorhead: If you write for the Guardian, you don't need a brain
ReplyDeleteBrains cost - and how. According to the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, our brain receives 15% of the cardiac output, 20% of the total body oxygen and 25% of body glucose consumption. Unsurprisingly, Guardian writers are burdened most heavily, since this vast consumption of resources goes to waste.
I was nervous - desperately nervous - about becoming completely brain-free. But eight months ago I had a Eureka moment. My car was stuffed and I'd spent so much on lentils and Nigerian women's iPads that I could not replace it.
So, despite living on top of a Tube line, a main rail line and a bus stop, I went without a car.
My friends were astonished at my plan. Hitherto, they'd thought that I was a brain-dead bimbo, but now, with me crowing as though I had discovered Archimedes's principle by not having a car in central bloody London, they knew - I am as thick as shit. Ancephalic, whatever that means.
Eight months on, I wonder if I'll ever own a brain again. I live in a community that's never been better served by collective wankthought. Do I really need a brain? The answer, for me, turned out to be no - and that's why I am getting paid to write this.
--
I hate to be so rude to this woman. The title should be "I live in a city, I don't need a car". Mrs 20 and I went for eleven years without one, and I am not going to be hectored by some broad who's owned one for decades because we do now.
I'm sure that she'll feel much better knowing that her teenage daughters can safely rely upon taxi drivers instead of her to get home after a night out. What could possibly go wrong?
Next article: If you have teenage daughters, you need a car
Stonyground says:
ReplyDeleteI live in a rural area so yes I do need a car. Even if I lived in an area that was well served by alternatives, I would still own a car as that is my preference. If this person prefers to do without one, I have no problem with that, it is their choice. I have a problem with their inability to reciprocate and leave me to make my choice.
I was going to get deliberately deleted.
ReplyDeleteBut comments were closed?
Seriously, what the hell is wrong with these people.
Are they mad ?
The woman's got a screw loose...
ReplyDelete"But eight months ago our elderly people carrier (I've got four kids, so we needed a large vehicle to transport everyone around) was hit by a passing vehicle while it was parked outside our house, and the damage was so bad it had to be written off. No problem, I thought: we'll buy another. But the insurance payout didn't even begin to cover the costs of buying a new car – I worked out that, with the loan we'd need plus petrol, insurance, parking permits and tax, we could easily be looking at around £600 a month."
Woooo, it just has to be big and it has to be new. No thought given, it seems, to maybe getting something smaller and/or cheaper. What a twit.
I know a person who is very fond of saying they can manage perfectly well without a car. They usually tell me this when I'm giving them a lift.
ReplyDeleteI have to be at work at 4:45am and there is no nightbus. Walking would take two hours. There is a hill so steep my incredibly fit husband can barely manage to cycle up it so I would stand no chance.. Yes, I think I need a car...
ReplyDeleteYou don't need a car if you live in the centre of a bustling city with everything you need including all your friends and family nearby or within easy access of regular and frequent public transport
ReplyDeleteYou do if you don't want to spend your time around the kind of people who use public transport. I'm guessing well-paid Guardianistas don't actually spend much time sitting next to smelly drunks on their beloved buses.
"That means the few hundred thousand who live in London and other major conurbations."
ReplyDeleteWhich is why that'l be the places you find city-car hire schemes!
"What a lovely, idyllic world these people live in eh?"
I suspect it's a world mostly in their heads.
"...she's just made a few hundred quid telling us all about it. Nice work if you can get it."
Lots more of those articles & she could afford a car!
"Oddly, the Guardian doesn’t address the inequity of the UK duty and VAT on fuel..."
Strange, that... ;)
"Next article: If you have teenage daughters, you need a car"
ReplyDeleteOh, indeed!
"No thought given, it seems, to maybe getting something smaller and/or cheaper. "
What would the Jones say? One has to keep up with them...
"I know a person who is very fond of saying they can manage perfectly well without a car. They usually tell me this when I'm giving them a lift."
The archetypical CiF columnist!
"You do if you don't want to spend your time around the kind of people who use public transport."
Spot on!
I do need a car,I also need the second car I have,oh, and I also need my two motorbikes.
ReplyDeleteJohn Gibson