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Green ? |
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| New Labour came to power in 1997 with big words about being "Green" - that was years ago; now we know all their words are just that - words. Just spin. They promised us a better transport system, to get cars off the road and reduce pollution. |
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They've done the opposite - our railways now are a total shambles. Trains are unsafe, overcrowded and hardly ever run on time. For most people the only reliable way to make a long journey is by car. So it's not surprising that instead of less cars, there's far more cars driving round than in 1997. |
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Families First would re-unite the fragmented railway system into a single, seamless network; integrated with local buses to give a REAL public-transport alternative to cars.
All Urban bus-services would be timetable-free and cash-free. "Timetable-free" means the route runs at least every ten minutes from 5 am to 11 pm. Passengers don't need a timetable, if they know they only have to wait ten minutes or less; and the drivers don't have to worry about keeping to fixed times - they just drive the route as fast as they can. "Cash-free" means boarding is by pre-bought tickets ONLY - so drivers can concentrate on just DRIVING the bus, instead of having to be cashiers as well. Kyoto is supposed to be the planet's first step to a united clampdown on emitting pollutants. Kyoto's only just come into effect - and already it's not working. Not surprising - the whole thing's just a sham - "spin" to show European governments in a good light, while enabling them to collect even more taxes. Kyoto never had any chance of really working. The biggest flaw is that the USA, the world's biggest polluter, hasn't signed. Everyone has condemned them; but China is just about to take their place, and no-one has put any pressure on the Chinese. They've started building hundreds of planet-poisoning coal-fired power stations. Kyoto lets them off, as "Developing" economies, they must be allowed to go through their "industrial revolution", just like we did in the 19th century. What crap! Nobody can go back to the 19th century - it's been and gone. We didn't understand then, that hydrocarbon emissions could kill our planet. WE DO UNDERSTAND NOW. So China can't be allowed to have it's "19th Century" today. They must be made to STOP this project; by a trade ban or high tariff on their exports. And we need to re-negotiate Kyoto putting ALL counties on an equal footing. That way, the Americans will sign as well. We're told there's "not enough houses to go round". That's crap! There's loads of perfectly good houses, but a lot of them are vandalised or in places where people don't want to live. I know houses in Kensington, in Liverpool which are on the market for £10,000 - but nobody is buying. That's because the streets around there are dangerous, with a poor quality of life. So the government is knocking down thousands of perfectly good houses in our Northern cities. If people are too scared to live in a house because the streets aren't safe - you MAKE the streets safe - you don't knock the house down! Any idiot knows that. New Labour's latest mental plan is to build thousands more new houses in the already-overcrowded South-East of England. They want to double the size of Milton Keynes. How are all the new people going to move? All the roads round Milton Keynes, and all the South-East, are already jammed to bursting. Any more development in M.K. will put more traffic on the M1. Doesn't the government realise that the M1 motorway is already totally, completely full up - there's not room for even one more vehicle on it! |
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Another total shambles - "Metrication". Nearly everyone in Britain uses the so-called "imperial" units, for distances, weights and measures. Our new baby's weight is in pounds; our motorway signs are in miles; the speed-limits and car speedometers, in miles-an-hour. For our heights we use feet and inches.
But our children are now leaving school, without ever learning these measurements. They're only taught in "Metric" (metres, litres, kilos etc.). How are they supposed to live in the real world, without being taught properly? What we've got now, the mixture of metric and imperial, is an utter mess. Go to a D-I-Y store, and you find that the timber is sold in Foot-lengths, but metric cross-section. When petrol goes up, they always announce the price "per Gallon"; but prices on the pumps are only in Pence per Litre. If the BBC news report includes a distance, they sometimes give it in miles - sometimes in kilometres: there's no rule - it just depends how the newsreader is feeling on the day! The Weatherman tells us how many "Inches" of rain fell today. We must accept that the "imperial" measurements are the ones that most of us (85%) use in the real world. Maybe one day in the future, people will accept buying vegetables in kilograms, but some more important things are never going to convert. Civil Aviation in Britain, like everywhere in the world, uses imperial units (1000's of feet); that can't be changed or the planes would all crash! We need to teach BOTH systems to schoolchildren. Why do we continue the ritual of changing the clocks twice a year? Every March, we put them forward. In October, back they go again. It costs millions; causes confusion for Airlines and railway-timetables. And there's no need ! You can't alter the number of hours of daylight - that's down to the sun. If vested interests such as farming and industry, need to make the most of the daylight hours - they should get out of bed earlier, not expect the rest of us to change the clocks. The standard working-day in offices should be "8 to 4" instead of "9 to 5". As far as schoolchildren are concerned, the answer's even simpler ! Change the school hours to give a shorter school-day in the winter. School in the winter, for small children: 10 am to 2 pm. That way, no child in Britain ever again needs to go to school in the dark. We make up the lost hours, by having a longer school day in the summer; or by shorter holidays. Some idiots actually want us to go the other way - and keep the clocks permenently one hour later "to be the same as Europe". Can't they understand there's no economic rationale for all of Europe to have the same time-zone! The U.S.A. has got 5 time-zones and manages its economy perfectly well. The fact is that the sun rises over Portugal in the West of Europe, at least 3 hours after it has risen on Poland in the East. |
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No wonder the Royal Mail is losing money. They're getting worse and worse at doing the things we want them to do: delivering our letters, our birthday-cards and our giro-cheques on time. Instead, every day they stuff our letter-boxes full with a load of stuff we don't want, and didn't ask for: the so-called "Direct Mail Advertising". These are the millions of glossy letters and leaflets, trying to sell us stuff we don't want; offering us credit-cards that we can't afford. Most of us just put these letters straight in the bin.
So every day, we use up a few trees' worth of paper to fill our hallways with junk mail. They fill up our bins, and are turning Britain into one giant land-fill site. Families First would OUTLAW Unsolicited, so-called "Junk Mail". We would stipulate EVERY new-build house to have solar panels as standard. We would also revise the rules on staircases to make them slightly less steep, in new houses. Stair-falls are one of the commonest accidents at home - and not only for children. Even if staircases were only slightly less steep, this would save many deaths and injuries. |
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Families First GREEN Policies:
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