The Liberal Democrats’ Environment Spokesman, Norman Baker, has been banging on again, via the Today program this week, about how people in Britain shouldn’t be allowed to have 4×4 cars, unless some busy-body, such as himself, agrees to it. At least, that’s what he seems to be saying.
Back in May he started an anti-SUV campaign which attracted lots of supportive comment from the usual suspects. Hearing James Naughtie and Mr Baker discussing this, on a regular basis now, is becoming a staple gap filler on the Today program.
Now socialists and environmentalists I can understand wetting their pants over whether I love my wonderful Honda CRV or not, or whether I should get one of those new baby Jeeps next time, which look rather nice, but what is an MP from the Liberal Democrats doing criticising my choice of car? Will somebody please remind Mr Baker, and other members of the supposed political party of liberalism, that we in the United Kingdom are supposed to be living in a free country, and whether I choose to drive a Honda CRV, an Amazon Land Cruiser, or a disarmed Scimitar tank, it is entirely my free choice. Or at least it should be. And when it isn’t, I will know for absolute certain that I am no longer living in a free country.
When will the Liberal Democrats get it? When will they realise that the reason they have been out of power for nearly a century is because they are nothing more than the bleeding-heart wing of the Labour Party, having long spurned the causes of freedom under that great statist double-dealer, David Lloyd George. As Mr Carr points out, there may be a great opportunity out there for the rise of a new Classical Liberal party, which could return to the Old Whig roots of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to upset the statist struggle between New Labour and the Conservatives. With idiotarians like Norman Baker around, I fear it may be a some time yet before the Liberal Democrats grab this chance. William Ewart Gladstone must be weeping in his grave.
hmm… It’s not quite as simple as that though is it; if it was *just* about your rights, yes he’d be an interfering busybody, but it’s not… it’s about my right as a pedestrian not to have close-to-no chance of survival if hit by a car (those utterly unneccessary but oh-so-cool roo bars really shatter bone nicely). I dunno.. i’m of the opinion that if there are safety regulations concerning cars, they should concern the safety of those who might be hit by them; the person inside chose their vehicle, & can live (or die) with the consequences, seatbelt or no seatbelt, bolts in the middle of the steering wheel if you fancy.
Having said that, it doesn’t sound as though this is his line of reasoning, & much as i hate the big ugly stupid macho buggers, I’m not in favour of banning them!
However, I think you’re misrepresenting the libdems as a whole; they do at least occasionally adopt courageously liberal stances on some issues where the other parties drag their feet; marijuana decriminalisation springs to mind as a good example.
Norman Baker potters around Lewes in a venerable mini that is probably less environmentally friendly than a Cherokee. He is an exponent of political sanctimony and an attention-seeker, hopping from agenda to agenda – wherever the spotlight is shining. He made his parliamentary name because he was fed with awkward questions to Ministers mostly, one presumes, by other awkwardly minded Members. Now he’s seen as a busted flush. The supply of questions has dried up. The parliamentary awards have gone elsewhere.
At least he doesn’t live with his mum anymore, having got married last year. But serious he ain’t.
I get amused by this whole debate because there can be no kind of regulation without definition, and as far as I know, there is no logical definition of an “SUV” that can be mutually agreed upon.
The other funny thing is the blanket statement that “SUVs are wasteful”, “SUVs are dangerous”, etc etc. An elementary school debating student could easily demolish this argument by simply asking “WHICH SUVs? ALL of them?” and then pointing out that there is a substantial difference between a Suzuki Vitara and a Chevy Suburban, and that many SUVs (your CR-V among them) actually get BETTER fuel economy than many cars.
Finally, the irony of criticism of middle-class SUV owners by people who are routinely chauffered in gigantic limousines or flown in private jets is just beyond parody.
I had an SUV. But four years ago I traded it in for Toyota’s big pickup truck (called a Tundra in the US). My Tundra weighs in at almost 5000 lbs, goes from 0 to 60 in a jaw-dropping 7 seconds, and gets about the same gas mileage as a Humvee.
But my conscience is clean — I no longer own an SUV.
they’ve just started talking about banning 4WDs over here too. bastards.
you can buy a disarmed Scimitar tank? cool!
William Gladstone…RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!
Andy, a disarmed Scimitar tank? You wuss!
Few people NEED a SUV or truck and they can all too easily be converted to para-military uses like putting a machine gun in the back or carrying thugs to intimidate voters, etc. If you feel you need a polluting truck, consider hiring one and using a qualified safety-qualified Teamster AFL-CIO driver.
There were two mistakes in this country. The first was turning against the Turnpike trusts – they were the organizations that improved the roads in the 18th and 19th centuries and had we stuck to private tolls there would have been less of an excuse for either the government finance (and the road tax, car tax and petrol tax) or for the government regulations on road use.
The other mistake was the Holy War the government waged against the railway companies. The regulations started in the 19th century (and sadly Gladstone was one of the people to blame) but only really got out of control after 1906 with unions being put above the law of contract and the railway companies being hit in many other ways.
Yes David Lloyd George was involved in all this up to his neck.
In Britain the railways were under all out attack long before nationalization.
And it was the undermining of the railways (and other forms of transport) that made people dependent upon the car.
Who the fuck is this Common Person and what is he talking about? Can SUVs (etc) really be converted easily with MGs on the back? Great! I’ll order one tomorrow.
Leaving aside such voices of lone eccentricity, it does not surprise me at all that a LibDem spokesman should want to ban something that lots of people use, enjoy, choose freely to spend their money on. The LibDems still retain this quaint, cuddly image as well-meaning nonentities, which belies the vicious desire to control & bully that characterises a great many of their members. I loathe the bastards, and will use the ‘roo bars on my gas-guzzling SUV to destroy them if they get too cocky.
Don’t worry folks. Banning them won’t work. It won’t even be tried.
SUVs are incomparably vulgar, and thus unstoppable. Every prole in the western world wants one. Every bling boy already has a modified one. They’re crowding out Mercs and Lexuses among the London jet trash. No law and no politician ever bucked the admass.
“…and whether I choose to drive a Honda CRV, an Amazon Land Cruiser, or a disarmed Scimitar tank, it is entirely my free choice.”
I agree about free choice and liberty and all, but I don’t see what good a disarmed Scimitar would do you. Myself, I wouldn’t want one if it had to be ruined like that, my neighbors all snickering and laughing, gazing out their living-room windows at the poor, emasculated light tank sitting in my driveway.
Damned gun control.
Scimitar?!
Why drive a pansy recon track? You know really you want 75 tonnes of Chobham armoured goodness with a 120mm Rheinmetall smoothbore.
Get a real tank. The parking is hell, but the collision insurance is optional.
(Filling out police report: Yes, the Cayenne (That blackened lump of metal over yonder) rear ended me at 190mph, see this new scratch? I’m going to sue his estate!)
Fred
A_T:
“However, I think you’re misrepresenting the libdems as a whole; they do at least occasionally adopt courageously liberal stances on some issues where the other parties drag their feet; marijuana decriminalisation springs to mind as a good example.”
That’s about the only example. In most respects they are the most Statist of all the main political parties as well as being the most mendacious bunch of politicians around (see this quite good piece by Simon Heffer in the Speccy from a few months ago on this very subject)
Ian writes:
Andy, a disarmed Scimitar tank? You wuss!
Sorry, Ian. Wussiness acknowledged! 🙂
I’m just thinking of that Wolfie Smith episode, from the Tooting Popular Front, where old Wolfie got banged up for five years for driving an ‘armed’ tank, around Tooting.
I did win a bottle of wine in a shotgun competition once though! 🙂
Tony H writes:
I loathe the bastards, and will use the ‘roo bars on my gas-guzzling SUV to destroy them if they get too cocky.
Go, Tony baby, Go!!! 🙂
Top effort.
Guy Herbert writes:
Every prole in the western world wants one.
Well, this prole has got one, although he can’t really justify the full 4.0 litre jeep, even though he really really wants one. Though a nice Defender might do the trick! 🙂
Mike James writes:
but I don’t see what good a disarmed Scimitar would do you.
Actually, now you come to mention it, I think you’re right. Unfortunately driving armed vehicles around the Thames Valley is frowned upon by the occasional policeman you see wandering around giving law-abiding people speeding tickets. It seems I really am destined either to end my days either in New Hampshire or Texas. If only I could square the circle of how to get there, against the wishes of she who must be obeyed. Hmm… Holidays in Disneyland, I reckon, then Boston, then San Francisco.
Fred writes:
Get a real tank. The parking is hell, but the collision insurance is optional.
I always fancied one of those Russian T-34s. Beat the Panthers and Tigers at Kursk, and rolled the Germans back to Berlin. By God, if communists were good at just one thing, it was knocking out tank factories in WWII.
But those Abrams, boy are those tanks. Did you know the British Army wanted Abrams, and not Challengers? The Challengers got shafted onto them for political reasons, to do with the collapse of the Shah of Iran.
If we’d got Abrams we really would be fully integrated with the US Army. And then NAFTA, and then 51st state with the Queen as Life Governor. Charles would win the election, afterwards, so we could sort of have a democratic monarchy. Err… this may not work for Rothbardian anarcho-capitalists, but if fits my mental framework! 🙂
Put me down as the proud owner of a Chevy Silverado 4WD. I rarely use the 4WD or the truck part, but that’s really nobody’s business but my own. I like it, and I plan to buy another when it wears out, and I don’t have to justify it to anyone.
RE: scimitar tanks
I think they would be a generally Bad Idea as I heard their tracks aren’t that good for tarmac. Wouldn’t want more potholes that the government will spectacularly fail to use our road tax to fix. I’m no expert on military technology, nor on your personal taste, but surely an armoured vehicle with tires would be equally valid a choice? 😉
Maybe a Saxon or something.
When I was twenty-something and had the time to spend a lot of weekends and evenings fixing it… I had an MGB. Not an SUV for sure, but by the time those dual carbs with slow damping and dual tuned exists and the 040 bored cylinders opened up fully, I challenge any SUV to a contest on who got the most gallons per mile!
Of course when I tired of the yearly total replacement of things labeled “Lucas Electric” I switched to a more reliable form of transport. A *REAL* Jeep Cherokee. Not the wimpy yuppy bus. A functional 5000 pound station wagon built on a Jeep truck chassis with enough ground clearance to drive over good sized logs and make it through most streams (although I did let off the accelerator once in the middle of a small river at Seneca Rocks and had to get towed out!).
On the same note, from livefrombrussels:
This morning on the Belgian radio news: Fientje Moerman, minister of economic affairs, lamenting about the woes the Kyoto protocol is causing. Either it means very heavy investments in even further (minimal) polution reduction (which causes companies to run away and jobs to be lost) or it means sending large amounts of cash abroad for no good reason (‘buying clean air elsewhere’). And some people in the government even want to put a cap on the amount of ‘clean air’ that can be bought elsewhere, thus forcing the loss of jobs.
Oh, and since there is policy to ‘get out of nuclear energy’ in Belgium, the pollution reduction forced on the industry has to be more severe than it already was when the protocol was signed: Nuclear plants don’t emit greenhouse gasses, but their future replacements surely will.
Freya Van Den Bossche, the minister for the environment, refused to comment.
Some in the current cabinet blame the cabinet of two governments ago for having made a bad deal: the Germans and the French, you see, are much better off… They just have to close some old plants they were already going to close anyway, and their commitment is fulfilled. Not fair!
Seems reality is finally setting in on the ‘new’ cabinet: Kyoto is nothing but a sham to extract jobs and money from rich countries in exchange for… air!
However, logic is still problematic for them, because so far nobody even suggested maybe we should get out of the treaty entirely. That solution would probably be too… American 😉
Guy Herbert hit the nail on the head. You can’t buck the admass. Once the wannabees and the egotists get hold of something like this, you would have to pry their cold dead fingers off it to take it away from them. There may be good reasons to own an SUV and I’m neutral about them, but another example of Guy’s admass comes to mind: million decibel car stereo systems. Driving down the street, they drown out TV, radio and conversation inside peoples homes. Stopped at traffic lights, they also stop pedestrian conversation. No such tiny space as a car “needs” such decibelage and its presence infringes the rights of every other person within hearing distance (and that is quite some distance), but stupid, empty headed young men and drug dealers want them and there is not a hope in hell they will ever be banned. Empty-headed Admass Jerk wants it. Plus, of course, the police and legislators are frightened of young men.
I heard the Norman Baker diatribe, too. His arguments were at best specious… Given the earlier stunt R4 played, I can’t help but think there is a modicum of bias involved (what? Not the beeb, surely): 2 drivers, one of a small car (Audi of some sort) and one of a Land Rover 110 station wagon, were asked to swap for a week. The LR driver was very considered in her response – a nice car, but not practical for us; the small car driver was sneering vitriol. “It obstructs other road users”, “There’s no justification for a vehicle that seats 12” and so on. Most of the coverage was taken up by this imbecile’s witterings.
I’m biased. I don’t drive an SUV. I drive a Land Rover 110, hardtop. 300Tdi, so not a particular inconvenience to other road users. No bull bars (got light guards though) – not out of care for idiots who think that stepping in front of a moving 2T vehicle should somehow be a soft and fluffy experience, more because I don’t feel a need for them. Of all the vehicles to target as being advertised as urban jungle transports, it baffles me why the LR should be singled out!
For a variety of reasons, it isn’t practical for me to own an additional car, so the 110 gets used for pretty much everything going. No, I haven’t had the time to take it offroad over the past 6 months – but I can’t imagine one of Baker’s squitmobiles being able to handle what I’ve done to the poor thing recently – transporting a 3cwt anvil, building materials for house renovation, 1/2 tonne assorted steel, trips to the tip to dispose of the crud crowbarred from the house, and so on. It works for its living. And I can fix it without having to resort to a garage with an engine management system diagnostic suite.
Personally, I think that what should be done is to ban all small cars. All the Smart cars, the Micras, the Daewoo Atozs (?) and so on. They’re only designed as urban runabouts, and far from appropriate as long-distance vehicles. The very fact that urban driving is encouraged in this way is counter to the ideal of getting everbody onto public transport. Further, the driving style of many of the owners of these is frankly terrifying – and the vehicles themselves are pathetically unsafe. Tongue only slightly in cheek…
Besides, I can probably fit a Smart car in the back.
Peter
David Hall writes:
Maybe a Saxon or something.
Ok, the Saxon for weekday driving it is. But I quite fancy one of these for the weekend. I’ll roll the Scimitar out for public holidays! 🙂
The Alvis Stalwart (http://www.stalwart.org/) is the handiest for Londons mix of streets and river.
I have also seen the DUWK cruising up the thames and then driving past my flat later.Have a look at this site http://www.100th-monkey.org/AlamedaPoint/public/MVPA/DUWK.html it says its “the ultimate SUV”
Lately, I’ve been feeling more and more sorry for you people over there. Here in the States, if some politician told me I couldn’t have my Nissan 4×4, I’d either laugh at him or shoot at him. Or both.