Strikes on the Tube, how refreshing.

"Everyone, stop using your cars and get on public transport!" The message has been barked by politicians and green campaigners for years. It always has been and always will be, unless someone faces the inconvenient truth, or should I say truths.

Politicians want us all to use public transport despite the fact they all have private cars, if you're a minister yours will be driven by someone else. So why don't they use public transport? Well, simply put, it is not reliable and even if it was it is not safe for people of power and it does not convey power or status.... the exact same reasons why many people can't use it. But we will ignore that for now, that is not my point today.

My point today focuses on the tube strikes. London (and big cities generally) are the only places where public transport works: FACT. I'm not saying that as soon as a bus leaves London for Guildford the engine stops, I mean as soon as that critical mass of people disappears buses become too infrequent, stops too distant and the whole system just ceases to function. It all becomes hugely expensive and hugely time consuming. There just isn't the economy of scale to support public transport in the countryside any further than some small buses to take the old and the young around when they have no deadlines to meet.

But the Tube does work in London, even buses, which I think are pointless, generally, work very well in London. They are excellent. The Tube may be smelly, hot and often crowded, but the fact is that even at busy times one is able to navigate around one of the greatest cities in the world without too much problem and do it a lot quicker than in a car (if you need proof think about that Top Gear episode?).

So what is my complaint? Well lets pretend we live in a world where public transport works everywhere. I know, that takes a lot of imagination but humour me, if you will. All the people who work on that public transport will be members of unions. Unions will inevitably have as their heads self important people with absolutely no concept of commerce but rather the communist ideals that somehow their members are entitled to do their work, and where there is no work they should be paid anyway regardless of the inefficiency that produces. I am convinced that efficiency is the very last thing on the mind of a Union leader. Currently Tube workers are going to go on strike. I don't know what working as a Tube driver is like, I'm told their wage is around £40,000 and they holidays are good to compensate for the shift system but I don't think that is enough to make any real decision about their working lives. What I do know is that their Union is the most militant around and even people from the US brought in to help found that their attitude seemed like they lived in the 1970s.

As a result London's transport network is ceasing to function while they blackmail their employers into capitulating with their demands. Frankly I think this should be banned. The police aren't allowed to strike because it is essential that they work. Likewise the Tube is essential to the running of the London. They shouldn't be able to strike without some form of external acquiescence. I don't know if people are going to be able to get to work while the strike is on, but if they can't that is not the same as BA workers going on strike. There are no other Tube operators and buses won't be able to take up the slack.

....amazingly I still haven't got to my point, how shocking. My point is this, if we all used public transport the Unions would be able to make whatever demands they wanted. Bus drivers would be wearing Armani overalls and being paid more than your local GP. Fine... I exaggerate, but truthfully if everyone used public transport the Unions would be able to make largely whatever demands they wanted. And lets not pretend they wouldn't go against public pressure, everyone knows the British Airways strikes are moronic in a time of recession, but they still happen. Logic does not constrain strikes it seems.

So what should be done? If we can't use public transport because it is ineffective outside of major cities and even if it worked it would be liable to be an easy soft spot for unions, what should we use?

Years ago people used to drive cars. Saloon cars. Cars with 4 doors, 5 seats and a big boot. Today these Saloon cars are even bigger. The BMW 3 series is now bigger than a 5 series used to be years ago, and why? Who knows. 90% of the population these days don't need a car bigger than a 3 series. Everyone has their own car. In years gone by Mum, Dad, brother and sister would all be in the same car. Now Mum and Dad have their own car, the average birthday per woman is only 1.8 and as soon as brother and sister are 17 they get their own car, either a banger or a Ford Ka. So what is the point in having big cars?

Who needs a 5 series? Who needs a 7 series? These cars are obsolete. If you need to show status and wealth then why don't we start producing cars that are small and supremely expensive? Makes gold plated Corsas for all I care.

Private transport is here and here to stay. I wish the government would realise that and get on with it. The sooner they do the sooner we can start pouring money into real solutions to traffic problems like motorcycle lanes or car parking for those with small light cars. The smaller cars get the more confident people will be to get smaller again and this will decrease congestion (see what they have done in Tokyo) and decrease emissions. Who knows eventually we can get rid of those big buses too.

Obama, what were you thinking?

Obama has recently made the 'courageous' decision to support the building of a Mosque near 911 ground zero.

For those of you not familiar with British political sit-com "Yes, Minister" I will clarify that courageous means that the decision will lose votes and/or the next election.

Now, I'm a very pro-freedom kind of guy, so why do I think he made a complete cock up? Well first of all lets be clear, freedom to worship is centrally important to every country. If you can't walk into a church and worship Jesus, then there is something wrong in your country. But I don't believe that people should limit worship in the sense of having an official relgion of the country. Such behaviour usually just attracts the wrong people and as a result the religion often becomes nothing like what it should be, because the adherents are there, not to worship God but because they want to be associated with the states religion.

So if I want to support religious freedom (where it is not damaging a country) why is there a problem with having a mosque near ground zero. Well, for the same reason that I wouldn't want people having a protest against the war at Wootton-bassett (the place where British soldiers who are killed in action are returned to the UK).

If you want to make a point and protest, or if you want to worship that is one thing that is in your choice, however if you want to deliberately offend and annoy people, provoking violence and riots that is something else. The thing is all these things can be done at another time. or another place. Protests against the war would make more sense in London that in Wootton-bassett, a Mosque can be built elsewhere in New York without needing to be near ground zero.

The difficulty with this of course is where does one draw the line. Recently Christians were arrested for giving out Christian literature at an Arab festival. Could they have done that at another time? Of course, but that is not the point, the point is to reach Arab Muslims. What about pro-gay and non-pro gay people protesting at the same time? What about the really strange decisions in the UK where they allow English Defence league (EDL- anti-Islamisiation) and anti-EDL protests to go on in the same city at the same time?

Surely the anti-EDL protest doesn't think that by having a protest themselves at the same time they are going to convince those of the EDL to change their minds? So surely it must be for the purpose of confrontation and altercation?

It is a difficult line to draw in some cases but in this case one thing is clear, Obama has made a very courageous decision.

Environmentalists, how long until they start wearing long flowing white robes?

This one is going to be a proper rant. Something needs to be said, as it is starting to really grind on me whenever this is mentioned. I speak of: environmentalism.

This is a pretty big topic. When I say big, I don't mean large, I mean controversial. One of those topics where if you bring it up at a dinner party someone is going to end up upset, someone will be annoyed, there will be tears and a few people won't talk again. Very much the same as if you talk about politics and/or religion... and there, there, lies the problem.

Why do people care so much about green issues? Is it because the sake of the earth rests on the out come of the conversation? Well no, some of those involved may believe it does but lets face it we don't really know that.

What we know is for the last ten years the earth (overall) has actually got cooler, not warmer. Is this a blip? Well maybe so, but that leads me on to my next point. How long do records of the earths overall temperature go back? 10 years? 20? 30 maybe? Lets call it 50 just to give it a good chance. Right and how long has the weather been changing on this planet? Well if you're a literal-creationist you may say 10,000 years. If you're not then you will say 4.5 Billion years old.

So at best our records cover 0.5% of the whole of history and at worst 50/45 million years my calulator cannot work out what that is but I think it works out as about 0.000001% so one millionth of the earths history. Now tell me what other complicated system you can define patterns in having only that size fraction of the data involved? Answer, none.

I'm not saying there is climate change, I'm not saying there isn't. I'm not saying it is our fault, I'm not saying its not. I'm just saying anyone who thinks they know, is probably guessing or a fraud (in light of further evidence).

So why do people (notably those who believe that it is certain and scientific fact) care so much when there is so little data. Well first of all the government don't help by backing the whole thing to the hilt. Lets remember green issues means green taxes. So climate change is the governments chance to tax everything you need, but unlike with cigarettes and alcohol it won't come back to bite them in the form of a big NHS bill.

But this doesn't explain why people themselves go for this stuff... but I think I have an answer.

Which news papers adore ranting on about green issues more than anyone? Well judging by the big green ENVIRONMENT tab in the Guardian (notably absent from my beloved 'Times') I'd say it is the left wing Guardian. Which, perhaps not coincidently is also the paper that is the most anti-god or at least most leaning to an atheist slant.

This could of course be total co-incidence. No doubt about that, but I don't think it is. If you don't believe in God then you're forced to believe that you're a worthless peon with no relevance or purpose in history and that you are essentially just the result of a giant comic fart. Since we're oddly designed with the desire for purpose this poses a problem for atheists. Accept that you're pointless and that there is little reason for you to get out of bed in the morning or make up some really important reason and then get irritate about it in dinner parties if the subject is brought up. In other words make it a religion. Not one based on love and kindness as such but one based on ritual.

Think about it, it fits so well! You need ritual so sort your plastics from your glass. You need to believe that your doing something important, so believe you're saving the world! Although try not to think about the fact that evolution should have taught you that trying to save other worthless peons is pointless and probably counter productive, since they are you competitors).

So this gives you a reason to get up in the morning, but you still need something else. You need righteousness, something to make you feel good about yourself. Something to make you feel like you can work towards your own righteousness... you need a Toyota Pious... I mean, err... Prius! What an excellent machine! You can pump slightly more carbon into the atmosphere than if you owned a small European diesel, but with the added bonus of feeling like you are good and set apart from the evil non-pious driving masses. Sure your car does the same, if not slightly more damage to the environment, but you are seen to up more upstanding in your own eyes and the eyes of other adherents to your religion.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with recycling and frankly the destruction of the rain forest is just stupidity on so many levels. The fact is we live in this environment and so it is moronic not to take care of it... but really? If you're missing God is your life then it is your call if you want to replace it with a bit faith in climate change, go plant some trees.

Why you should never trust opinion polls

Put simply, why you should never trust polls:

"A survey by Lib Dem Voice finds that 90% of some 347 party members who responded support the decision to enter talks with the Tories"

...

"The first question was asked, however, in a way that meant they could hardly say no: respondents were first asked "Do you support Nick Clegg’s decision that the party with the most seats and most votes has the right to first seek to govern, either alone or with support from other parties?"

then asked: "Given the Conservatives won most votes and most seats, do you support Nick Clegg’s decision to enter into discussions with the Conservative party?""

So, basically, first decide what you want the answer to be, then thing of a question that elicits this answer.

http://timesonline.typepad.com/election10/

Tesco is taking over the world, apparently...

Tesco is building houses now, yes, that is right, they are building thousands of houses in the South East. So soon you will be able to buy a Tesco House on a Tesco Bank Mortgage, kit it out with Tesco Home goods on a Tesco Credit Card. You may be surprised to know, the Tesco bit, I couldn't care less about.

I know the obvious thing is to take shots at how Tesco is taking over the world and how they will have more information on you than the government, etc etc. But frankly it just doesn't bother me at the moment. Tesco doesn't rule to world, it rules the UK. Which frankly is just a slice of the world (even if it is the best slice) the world has many huge retailers and Tesco is just one of them. If it doesn't grow just like the rest of them, it will be taken over by Wall Mart or Macro or something and then everyone in the UK will be out of a job. Not good.

No what I think is idiocy is building houses in the South East... yes, the South East, one of the most densely populated areas of Europe, and they want to put MORE houses in. Presumable they have found a patch of green that still exists.

But this is just the underlying problem. The reason everyone goes to the South East is two fold:

1) all the good jobs are there;

2) because then you can make fun of Northerners.

Usually people go there for one of those two reasons, or a mix of both. And don't get me wrong, we all know bashing Northerners is good fun (in a light hearted manner). You've all heard the jibes... you live in the North if you live anywhere North of Luton and all that.

But mainly people go for the work. All the best jobs go to the South this draws everyone with a brain from the rest of the UK and so as a result everyone in the South can feel like an elite little club and look down on everyone else. But there is a problem, namely this is truely, monumentally idiotic, on a Gordon Brown scale!

The South East has all the good jobs so you HAVE to go there if you want one. This means that the house prices shoot up, because whether you like the place or not you HAVE to live there if you want to earn over £3.50 per annum.

As a result houses all cost £7,000,000 even if it is for a complete dive, it could be a one bedroom flat and it would still cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. This means employers have to pay more and crucially... my main point more of your wage goes on rent/mortgage payments.

So lets look at what would happen if all the jobs were not focused in the SE. Well, your company can afford to pay you ££55,000 per year. They must be able to, because they do. Of this £55, most of it will go on your mortgage, in fact if you had a £600,000 house and you were paying it off over 20 years (interest at 3%) your annual repayments would be £39,931.08. That's right £40,000 of your Great British Pounds just to like in bricks and mortar.

That is £40,000 that you could be spending on real things, but instead you are spending on a roof, that is before you've got to higher council tax, rates, etc.

If however jobs were spread out over the whole country that means there would be less demand for houses and prices would go down. If you buy a house in Wales, the West Country or the North it would cost you a fraction of the price and you would be able to buy somewhere twice as big and twice as nice. More to the point your company is going to be paying you the same amount of money. Lets remember there is no conversion rate for taking your money to Yorkshire, you'll still be on £55,000 per year. The difference is now your house costs £300,000 so your annual mortgage bill is £19,965.48.

So lets sum up, you have the same wage, you have a bigger house, you have more room, your garden is huge, the drive to work involved less congestion (so you have more time) and you now have an extra £20,000 per year to spend on whatever your heart desires! That is a new BMW 3 series every year!

The only people who would lose out are those who have paid off their whole house in the South East already, and lets face it, they are going to be rich enough and probably own a couple of houses in the provinces anyway (which will go up in value) so everyone is a winner.

Finally, I hear you nasally whine "but then I'd have to live in the North". Well even if you do want to assume the North is a dive, filled with the tasteless and the toothless (which I'm not saying it is) as soon as the jobs are moved then the intelligent and the refined will be moving with them... all the fun of the South, but for half the cost. Frankly, I have no idea why someone hasn't done all this before.

Hurray for debates... oh wait, no BOOOO!

The first UK election TV debate ever! How exciting! 10 millions people tuned in, making the first one, the most watched program for the whole channel that night. How exciting, what a way to inspire interest into the election!

Then, Nick Clegg won. I think I was quite interested to see what happened in the debate. But after seeing what happened, I think that they are a bad idea... yes I know, that is because I'm massively bias. That is true, I'll be up front and say that I'm a Tory (despite being of a throughly working class background).

The reason why I don't like the debates (after seeing one) is because of my old simple complaint. Nick Clegg won, no, that isn't the complaint. Why did he win? He won the first debate because no one knew or cared about him. He was a nobody and so when he said something no one really criticised it, because they didn't know enough about him to know all the really stupid things that his manifesto contains. Is that his fault, not at all. But is that a good reason for someone to succeed, not really.

Let me put it this way, the policies that he made were the same ones that existed before when no one would bother voting for him. What changed was that he looked good in the debate. No new policy, no change in substance, just he looked good, he looked new.

As a result apparently he has garnered quite a following amount floating voters. He has even got lots of new people to sign up to vote. Great! most people are thinking, he has increased interest in politics.

But why is that great? The people who are voting for him couldn't care enough to be bothered to look at his policies before and yet they now want to vote. He has gathered to himself, those who can't be bothered to put any effort into voting, the 'he looks quite good' vote.

In short this debate has made politics less about policy and more about personality. This is shallow and pointless. Why not just skip out the debate and decide purely on which tie the leaders choose. Make it even more asinine?

I understand why people don't bother voting, the complexities of the economy are so difficult to grasp not even those who are trained in it get it right (inter alia the recession!) so what chance does Joe Bloggs have who doesn't know how the stock exchange works, has no idea what the IMF does and can't manage his own credit card bills let alone understand our countries credit?

I'm not being harsh, I'm not saying people are stupid, it is just a perfectly valid observation. So why do you want such people to then decide who is best to help the economy recover? Everyone is going to say they know best and everyone is going to say the other party will ruin it. How is the public going to decide? Most of them, on personality and class. The Tories are going to look out for toffs, Labour are going to look out for single mothers and Liberals.... no one knows... or should I say knew. Which is why they were failing so badly. They had failed to ally themselves to a class of the population.

Now they have the young and hip vote... anyone who doesn't really care but has decided they don't like the parties in at the moment because they are too 'mainstream'.

So that is what our countries future is going to be decided on... who has a reputation for being nice to their 'class' and who is seen as a bit alternative, a little bit edgey... suffice to say it 'does my head in'.

Independence for Scotland and Wales... just means Dependence on Germany and England.

I'm not English. Not even slightly, I don't have a drop of English blood in me. No matter which line of decent you follow I'm Celtic through and through, which is why it should be all the more notable when I say: devolution for Wales and Scotland is the most stupid idea around and people who adhere to such ideas probably try to go to toilet through their elbow.

I was listening to Radio 4 today while driving through the countryside, windows down and the sun shining like a bucolic dream listening to people ask questions of the two national parties of Scotland and Wales.

People were asking their usual questions like whether council tax could be frozen etc when someone mentioned how pointless 'independence' for Wales and Scotland is when the power of the UK is increasingly being vested in the EU.

HURAH, someone hits the nail on the head. Don't get me wrong I find is all very amusing that Scotland wants independence now that it has realised that it has a couple of million barrels of oil of its coast but what are they going to achieve if they just become a smaller nameless state in the EU.

Lets be frank, the EU cares about the UK because it is in essence a third of its money. Germany, France and the UK power Europe and the rest of Europe tags along because they get something out of it... usually money in the form of billions of Euros of subsides.

However can you really imagine the EU giving a flying' about Scotland? A country where Whiskey makes up 20% of its exports alone. Don't get me wrong I'm sure Scotland is important I'm sure Wales is important (even if it was left out of an EU map once) but they are more important as a United Kingdom, even in the EU.

Outside of the EU they are meaningless. Are we doing to have Scottish embassys across the world? Do you think Wales would make it into the G8? Do you think Scotland is going to fund its own MI6, MI5 and GCHQ? International influence would become practically 0.

As for influence through the EU, how much less influence do you think Scotland would have in the EU... a whole continent as opposed to the UK which is an island. That is like thinking that you can go into a bigger busier room speak at the same level and more people will be able to hear you. It is rubbish, your voice just gets drowned out. Ironically it wouldn't surprise me if Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland had more influence in the EU through bring part of the UK than they did individually. In other words the sum is greater than its parts.

But what is this desire for independence really about? For Scotland they want to spend their own money on themselves, they have realised they have enough oil to go out for a binge drink and they want to get drunk. They don't want to have to hand the cash over to London who will spent it on defending the country or diplomatic relations, or other things that don't seem to have an immediate pay off, but from which we all benefit.

But lets face it, I know my people. The Celts are a hard bunch, you pick any war that Britain has been involved in and it will always be the Welsh, Irish and Scottish who have done the fighting and won. The English, just point us in the direction of whoever they want us to beat. However the Celts have never excelled at ruling themselves.

The problem is if Scotland does get independence they are just going to cock it all up. They will end up like Ireland, they have independence and they have nearly bankrupted themselves and now they are selling their independence to the EU to be bailed out. So what is the point?

Independence from the UK is just dependence of Germany, only real difference is that in becoming so you lose any influence you had. To put it another way, I can name every country in the UK, I can't name every state in the US, and of the 48 I can I know only about 5 of them matter.