Road pricing bill before Commons

[Paddy]

I went for an interview with First Trains and Buses. It was for a year long feasibility study to upgrade software at all their offices. As much travel would be involved I asked at the interview if I would get a rail pass. They replied: “Yes, but don't use it. We want you to use your car because it is quicker and more reliable”.

[fzbucks]

DANG65 can I borrow your magnificent timetabling/publictransport/cycling/walkingrouteplanner to plan my commute from Royton (OL2 xxx) to Milton Keynes (MK19 xxx)?

I start at 7am work 12 hour shifts for a few days then would be able to set off home from 7pm.

I currently selfishly do the journey by car but I now realise this is a luxary and in addition to starting to render my own soap I want to get rid of the car and do my bit to ease congestion.

Thanks in advance.

[Churchill]

DANG65 can I borrow your magnificent timetabling/publictransport/cycling/walkingrouteplanner to plan my commute from Royton (OL2 xxx) to Milton Keynes (MK19 xxx)?

I start at 7am work 12 hour shifts for a few days then would be able to set off home from 7pm.

I currently selfishly do the journey by car but I now realise this is a luxary and in addition to starting to render my own soap I want to get rid of the car and do my bit to ease congestion.

Thanks in advance.

Feck me, it's the "Tandle Hills Kid"!!!

Is there any life left in Royton?

[dang65]

DANG65 can I borrow your magnificent timetabling/publictransport/cycling/walkingrouteplanner to plan my commute from Royton (OL2 xxx) to Milton Keynes (MK19 xxx)?

I start at 7am work 12 hour shifts for a few days then would be able to set off home from 7pm.

I did say before that public transport for commuting obviously caters for normal people. If you choose to work such odd hours and about 170 miles away from home then you're hardly likely to be considered normal and will have to accept the penalties for choosing such a bizarre way of life. In fact, you're exactly the sort of person who will hopefully incur massive extra penalties just for being such a blatant moron!

[Euro-commuter]

that's exactly what they used to do with traditional industries-locate the factories in places like Liverpool or Scotland, but the beauty of IT is that it is easily locatable anywhere for minimal costs so I'm not sure you would have to give incentives.

Indeed. Inverness and the north of Scotland has a superb high-speed data infrastructure. I could work there as easily as in London or Frankfurt, more easily even.

My point is, if you put the infrastructure in place, then (with or without incentives) the work still won't come. They like the company being in London.

[Vito]

DANG65...do you own a car?

[dang65]

DANG65...do you own a car?

Yes. But personally I rarely use it and if I had a choice I would get rid of it completely. But I have a partner and four children and I'm out voted. We went a couple of months without having a car at all at one stage and I thought it went very well, but as I say it wasn't up to me in the end.

[threaded]

My point is, if you put the infrastructure in place, then (with or without incentives) the work still won't come. They like the company being in London.

So true! Many of the startups I've worked on the VCs always insist that we had to open an office in the City. For the life of me I don't know why. Seems so pointless.

[BoredBloke]

"If you choose to work such odd hours and about 170 miles away from home then you're hardly likely to be considered normal and will have to accept the penalties for choosing such a bizarre way of life."

Ahh so what you are saying is that you should only do jobs which are commutable by public transport rather than use my luxurious 100,000 mile Ford Mondeo. So fzbucks should give up his role due to his inability to commute using your preferred method of transport.

As I pointed out before, my commute was impossible and that was only on the other side of Manchester. So using your rules I would only be able to work in North Manchester and the city centre.

So Dang, are you a contractor? If so, what will you do when your contract ends and you are offered a role which doesn't fit with your public transport commute? I assume you'll be turning it down then.

As a reasonably well paid contractor I will be able to pay the road charges when they come in. But many will not. A friend of mine was recently made redundant from his permie job. A couple of months down the line the company got in touch to offer him night work in one of their factories, but he had to work in Mold (north Wales). Having a new kid and another on the way, being relatively unskilled and his savings running out fast, he took the job. He used his luxurious Ford Focus to commute. Under your rules, presumably he should have turned this work down and lost all the other luxuries in his life like his house. After all the state can provide these also.

[DodgyAgent]

Dag65

I'm not really clear why 1.8m blinkered idiots going onto a website and clicking a button should have earned any sort right to force the other 60 million of us to put up with their noise, smell, speed, psychopathic behaviour, obesity and general destruction of the countryside and clogging of towns.

Owning and running a private car is an outrageous luxury which people have got away with for way too long, and a feeble road pricing bill will go nowhere near as far as it should.

well well what have we got here? dag65 you call yourself! I have read your threads matey and what I see is a self righteous little ***** lecturing everyone on how they should become "normal". Normal according to who? I see that you have labelled people who use public transport as being "normal". Well let me tell you many of these people are not my idea of normal at all.

I also object to righteous ****** like you telling me that because I use a car that I am obese, lazy and the rest. i also notice that you do not sacrifice your car, instead making some pathetic excuse about it not being your decision. Why? because you know that your missus would punch your lights out if you tried to tell her to get rid of the car.

Let me tell you "dag" or whatever your name is. If you think millions of people enjoy sitting in smoke filled traffic jams for hours on end to travel needlessly, then not only are you a complete fool but also a sneering arrogant idiot.

Yet again we have someone on this site who is making arguments based on false assumptions just like the Nazi who was on here about race earlier in the week.

Tony English, you are being too nice to this fellow, it is about time he/she faced some challenges to their own smug self righteous existence.