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34 comments on Transport and adaptive capacity: An integrated approach to UK policy evaluation
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34 comments on Transport and adaptive capacity: An integrated approach to UK policy evaluation
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Hello Robin (huh),
Your post doesn't seem to have attracted much comment (yet). I speculate that that may be because it is rather out of line with a lot of the trend of thinking at theoildrum.
Myself, I was for years involved in cycling campaigning, secretary etc of the cycling campaign in Birmingham.
The police tolerance of pavement-cycling was introduced following a letter I had published in the Guardian in the 1990s, showing the previous policy to be utterly counterproductive with no positives.
I published this article about excessive mobility in 1998: http://www.energyark.net/za/urbna.htm.
So I can see where you are coming from and see the sense (up to a point) in what you've written.
Mr Pywell who designed your cycling wonderland in York moved to Bham to supposedly put pedestrians first and cars last, but the reality has been tons of pedestrian obstruction barriers being put up.
Reading your post I guess you are a bit young, have never spent any time outside the institutional/voluntary-sector fantasy world, and indeed been confined to a rather untroubled cocooned existence. I'll try not to be too harsh, though I do have to do a lot of upturning of assumptions.
Your article (and also your career trajectory) appears very much premised on assumptions of BAU (business as usual) rather than a fairly soon collapse of the institutional system. Assumes the possibility of a government that's actually in the business of solving problems rather than just more of the same worthless Criminalocracy: http://www.lulu.com/content/140930.
On oildrum.com and my energyark.net (just being put together) are some of the reasonings against those assumptions.
People have been making sensible proposals about transport for many decades. "Motorways versus Democracy" (by John Tyme I think) was published thirty-five years ago. Don't just take my word for it, check out the facts I provide in substantiation that: trying to persuade governments to do anything useful is an utter waste of time; and it is now too late to do anything but prepare ones' lifeboats to ride the waves of collapse of the globalised-corporatised-creditised-oilised life-support system we all now hang our lives on.
It goes without saying that no "university" or "professor" therein is going to be remotely friendly towards such ideas. Tough.
You talk of "collapse of the institutional system", how are you using the term institution? Do you see a difference between say a publicly owned corporation and a university? Are you suggesting the institutional system is more susceptible to collapse than the corporate system (if indeed you are differentiating between the two)?
Perhaps I should have said corporate system there. (I'm not brilliant with words.)
It appears to me that universities are very much inseparable from the rest of the globalised-corporatised-oilised etc world. They too are large heirarchical organisations, are also dependent on long-distance transport of personnel and goods, and the globalised hi-tech such as advanced computer networks, and other big suppliers. And have crucial mutual links of dependency. Big biz needs institutions to provide its "trained" (sorry for my cynicism) workforce, and to provide its ideology propaganda (e.g. Mellon Institute founded to give "authority" to Andrew Mellon's fluoridation hoax; more recently the hugely profitable hoax that hiv causes aids). Meanwhile universities need the money from big biz, medical schools for instance funded by big pharma.
So if/when the globalised-corporatised etc system has a terminal breakdown (from e.g. oil/food/credit market paralysis, electricity blackout, hyperinflation) then the universities would go down with them (and all large organisations similarly dependent).
You'll be aware that at the moment record numbers are enrolling in uk universities, but that that is liable to change when (a) the money becomes short and/or (b) people lose hope of seeing any recovery for their studies to be paid back from. On that basis perhaps it is conceivable that educational institutions may start to bankrupt even before Tesco et al. (Food is always going to be higher priority than qualifications.) (Off to sleep now.)
Hi Robin
Yes, bang on with the young, and still relatively idealistic branding. I read in your book the future is here about the corrupt nature of British politics. I see your your point that presenting useful suggestions to a band of crooks is like giving the Ku Klux Klan a practical guide to nonviolence.
The new generation is naive to the political battles that preceded us. The present is presented as an airbrushed, perfectly competitive free market: everyone can buy their car, their house, their processed food and 10 pints of Stella to drown the alienation that accompanies life in the Brave New World wherever you go. (We can also choose not to.)
A continuation of this is what I would refer to as Business As Usual (BUA), not the rather utopian statist vision of my article. Yes it is politically naive, but it is certainly not business as usual.
I obviously must make the assumption that there will be a future if I am to talk about the future. Otherwise it's as simple as saying "we are all doomed" and then drown away your worries with whatever vice you fancy.
Trying to stay positive,
Robin
I appreciate the distinction you make there. My (and others') use of the term BAU is pretty vague but I think users of the term usually have in mind something much more radical than a transformation of government/society thinking away from consumerism, growthism etc.
More like some sort of collapse of the whole system.
Agreed.
Disagreed. Rather it's as simple as saying "many/most are doomed, particularly those who haven't a clue what's coming". Huge difference because it means one can work at helping or being one of those who are not doomed. And one is in the remarkable position of being one of the few with a clue.
I agree. It's a steep learning cliff which far too many are proving unable to climb. I don't want to rule out the possibility you may yet make it! The positive electrode of your camera's capacitor will give you a nasty 10kV shock if you touch it, but it's still positively useful nonetheless.
I see some positive in that you ventured to raise the eyebrows of Prof Ashmore, in a situation where many others would be fearful, careful to avoid doing so.
On www.energyark.net my "your future" pdf in progress is just about to get to the point of explaining why I consider a total system collapse to be almost inevitable within a few months or years. Sorry I can't be quicker about this but my illness makes everything get done at geological time-scale! (Hopefully the dentist in York will at last liberate me from this situation.)
Robin,
Your email address appears not to work
Robin!
The hosting company of that domain is getting useless. I'll have to extricate it to another company somehow. Meanwhile there's rpclarke53[at]btinternet[dot] com
I have meanwhile sent you a reply. I'll just copy here a bit of the correspondence that seems of relevance.
Really? On what evidence? I would think many people would be very grateful for an honest non-cocooned discussion of how the future will work out (and that point of mine was unremarkable by tod standards). Being in denial is what is counterproductive, not the honest stating of what is being denied about. [....] my main travel mode is my bikes (and I'm an expert in bike tech rather than qualified) but I am glad I am not unaware that the day may not be far away when that becomes useless history.