But wait, Danny, wait! What about the Shiny New Eurostar Terminal?
This did make me smile. However, even though commentators all over the place are queuing up to declare that this is a Jolly Good Thing and Why Did It Take So Long, and despite the fact that a two-hour-and-fifteen minute journey from London to Paris should make any flight-free holidays I might want to take in the future notably easier, my cynicism muscles still won’t stop twitching.
A fast train to the continent is clearly a good thing if it gets people out of planes, but why isn't this kind of money and organisational clout being used to sort out local bus services, cycling facilities, inter-city coaches and so on? Where are the decent, affordable public transport facilities for all of the people in the
I think this article on Indymedia illustrates this problem all too well:
“Around 30 cyclists met at 8.30 this morning for the opening of the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras station,
As well as the complete lack of cycle access and parking at the station, the author also notes that if you want to take your bicycle to
“you either have a choice of dismantling your bike, putting it in a bike bag and carrying it on as luggage - I've done this and it's not great! - or you can take it to the station the day before you want to travel, and send it ahead for some £40 each way (adding another two-thirds to the price of a cheap passenger ticket).”
This is just one more small example to add to the heap, but once again a huge gleaming "prestige" project has taken priority over less glamourous but equally vital people-scale solutions. Sadly, it seems that the government (on the rare occasions that they’re prepared to give some serious backing to a public transport project) have decided that sorting out bikes, buses, coaches and pedestrian routes is fiddly and boring compared to big shiny trains, and might involve pesky "controversial" stuff like clamping down on profit-hungry private bus operators, subsidising "unprofitable" public transport routes and making things a bit less convenient for car drivers. Plus, of course, there isn't much scope for the government’s corporate mates to siphon large amounts of public money out of bicycle lanes and free bus rides for the elderly.
We definitely need more fast, reliable train services, but we mustn’t forget to get out there and shout for all the other, less prestigious (and less elitist) kinds of sustainable transport too. Even though the very thought of yet more bloody transport campaigning makes me want to crawl under a big pile of John Whitelegg transport policy documents from the early 1990s and weep.
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global warming swindle
The self-proclaimed "consensus" behind man-made global warming is one enforced by threats, intimidation and ignorance, as is again being proven by media coverage of the latest UN meeting in Bali, where skeptical climate scientists are being shunned and ignored if they dare express an opposing viewpoint.
Representatives of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition , which include a member of the IPCC since its inception in 1990, were almost barred from attending the meeting when their credentials were rejected by UN officials.
"UN organizers refused my credentials and appeared desperate that I should not come to this conference. They have also made several attempts to interfere with our public meetings," said climate researcher and former British government cabinet member Christopher Monckton.
Australian scientist Dr. David Evans slammed the conference as a "circus" and warned that the UN's politicization of science had created a dangerous atmosphere.
"We have a split here. Official science driven by politics, money and power, goes in one direction. Unofficial science, which is more determined by what is actually happening with the [climate] data, has now started to move off in a different direction, away from fears of a man-made climate crisis, " Evans explained.
"The two are splitting. This is always a dangerous time for science and a dangerous time for politics. Historically science always wins these battles but there can be a lot of causalities and a lot of time in between," he concluded.
Evans cited a report in this month's International Journal of Climatology which concludes that climate change over the past thirty years is largely a result of solar activity and that attempts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are irrelevant.
UN IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr. Vincent Gray of New Zealand, who has been involved in vetting IPCC reports since its inception in 1990, shattered the much vaunted infallibility of the IPCC, which is routinely put forward as evidence that "the debate is over" about the man-made causes of global warming.
"There is no evidence that carbon dioxide increases are having any affect whatsoever on the climate," said Gray.
"All the science of the IPCC is unsound. I have come to this conclusion after a very long time. If you examine every single proposition of the IPCC thoroughly, you find that the science somewhere fails."
"It fails not only from the data, but it fails in the statistics, and the mathematics," he added.
Dr. William Alexander, Emeritus Professor of the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a former member of the United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, warned that the UN's drive to force poorer countries to adopt policies on climate change would increase poverty and lead to more death.
Owen McShane agreed, arguing that such policies will lead to financial ruin for struggling countries.
"Having the same set of rules apply to everybody will blow some economies apart totally while others will be unscathed and I wouldn't be surprised if the ones who remain unscathed are the ones who write the rules," said McShane.
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