Re: Doom and despondency

[Aleksander Mierzwa <alexaudi@kki.net.pl>]

At 09:21 99-09-19 GMT, Phil Payne wrote:

>There are reports in today's UK papers that a Goverment review is looking
>at speed limits around the UK.  The main proposals are:
>
>a) 20 mph in towns (currently 30)
>b) 50 mph on rural roads (currently 60)
>c) Police forces to be allowed to retain speeding fine revenue
>
>Jeez.  Any Green Cards going free?

Certainly it's a food for thought for our US listers who often think that
Europe is a land of high performance cars and liberal speed limits.
Such legislation projects used to be annoying, but now it's getting scary.
We do not have just an anti-speed culture here, it's already a general
anti-car culture which reminds me of darks years of communism when
passenger cars were considered "politically incorrect" or the infamous
British "red flag act" from the 19th century. Our authorities are doing
everything they can to make owning and driving a car as frustrating
experience as it can be. I believe in all European countries people pay
some sort of tax for owning a car (for example in Poland it is included in
the price of fuel), so it is logical to expect in return better roads to
make us get faster from point A to B. And what do we get? Lower speed
limits and more cops to enforce them, sometimes in an illegal way (unmarked
cars with video cameras tailgating people to make them speed up). Orwell
"is turning in his grave", like we say in my coutry.

--
Aleksander Mierzwa
Warsaw, Poland
87 5KT