Transport -
Policy
By Richard
Littlejohn
The government's war on mobility
is being stepped up. It won’t be long before
the whole country will be under voluntary house
arrest. Thousands of trains are being cancelled
in January and fares are being increased. Soon
most people will decide getting out the car is
not worth a candle. Motorists remain public enemy
number one. Parking fines in London are going up
to £100 — half a week’s take-home pay
for some people. In the spring any driver using a
mobile phone will be fined £40 — even if
stuck in a traffic jam or sitting at lights.
Given that creating jams is now official policy
and that, in London at least, traffic lights turn
green for about seven seconds before going red
again for a fortnight, it’s difficult to
know who’s parked, who’s in a queue and
who’s dead, having lost the will to live.
Clearly the plan is to bring every road in
Britain to a standstill. And then, while drivers
are phoning ahead to say they’re running
late, legions of wardens and traffic cops will
come along and slap parking tickets on their
windscreens while at the same time nicking them
for using their mobile phones.
If the Government’s transport policies
operated at sea, the English Channel would now be
closed for three months following the container
ship crash at the weekend. Ministers would be
pictured visiting the scene in tugboats, wearing
hard hats with anchors on the front, and
denouncing the private sector for putting profits
before safety. There’d be a public inquiry
costing billions and the Channel would be brought
into public ownership under a new not-for-profit
quango called Ofshore.
Meanwhile, all shipping would be paralysed while
salvage work was carried out. In the event, no
one drowned and all that was lost was £30million
worth of luxury cars. Just our luck. A ship sinks
in the Channel and not a single asylum seeker on
board. Unless they were stowing away in the boots
of the BMWs.
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