Cllr. Gavin Ayling

Like most people I try to avoid public transport wherever possible. Not only is a car normally, cheaper, but it’s more comfortable and quicker too.

But to be fair to the services available, I had not yet tried the journey from my new home to my old work. My new home is only a two minute walk from the railway station and Legal & General in Hove is a pacy fifteen minutes walk. So the combined journey time, with the fifteen minutes on the train itself, is about half an hour. This compares very favourably with the rush hour journey time by car (because, of course, of the lack of public investment in viable roads from Shoreham past Chichester).

So, in future, if it weren’t for the frankly bizarre prohibitive cost, I would be more than keen on using this alternative. Actually, I’ll have to again tomorrow as my car remains at the garage.

On the cost, I still need to have it explained to me. How can it possibly cost more to transport many passengers than to transport one? And if you can share your car not only is the cost halved instantly, but it also becomes even more competitive. The do-gooder socialist environmentalists wish to correct this imbalance by charging car drivers more for the privilege of moving about their own country by private means (where do-gooder socialist environmentalists could, without too much squinting, be replaced with the single word “facists”).

As a short exercise, here is a comparison of the costs:

1. Private car: 13 pence per mile (if through town) or 10 pence per mile (if using the A27 trunk road which I do). This is a total of £1.20 for the 9.2 mile journey.
2. Train: £3.10 in each direction (ignoring spurious discounts if you choose to use the train every day)

Even if we add the 48 pence per day of road tax (which presumably exceeds expenditure on roads these days) the car remains a cheaper option. And if we removed the imbalance caused by fuel duty the car would be nearly a half cheaper again.

But why? How do economies of scale not come into play here? The train was full and the train in front of it was full too (I had to watch it pass as it does not stop here in Lancing) so the passengers on the train were not subsidising empty seats. The train uses electricity which everyone knows is created relatively efficiently (much more efficiently than burning a small amount of petroleum under the bonnet of several hundred vehicles) and, to cap it all, the train companies are largely subsidised by Her Majesty’s wealth-suppressor (sorry, the tax man).

So, someone, tell me why!

Adur Council recruited Consultants.

That sentence is normally enough to send shivers down the spine. Our Council, that organisation that is struggling so much to balance the books because of favouritism of Scotland by those in London, is wasting money on Consultants.

But that’s not how it is at all! The Consultant gave a presentation to the Council’s State of the District debate yesterday which, along with her report, makes for amazing reading. Linda Phipps’ report picks away at the whole ‘Fit for the Future’ consultation and leaves the PCT’s claims as a bleeding hulk of nonsense.

Never has the word ’spurious’ been used so often by one person with such relevance.

Suffice our response to the consultation will be robust, well written and (if any notice is taken) likely to change the result! It doesn’t hurt, though, to sign the KWASH petition.

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We had a lovely presentation this evening from SEEDA about development at Shoreham Harbour in the future.

But I want to share (and save for prosterity) this quote from one of the presenters (whose name I sadly did not catch):

If the public don’t like aspects of [the plan for consultation] we will certainly go back to the drawing board.

If you believe that, then you believe the definition of ‘consultation’ has not been stretched by all in authority recently. If the PCT went by that method of ‘consulting’ then the whole Fit for the Future thing would be dead and buried by now and we’d be assured no cuts to services (KWASH).

Naivete is not the preserve of the wet left-wing. Us libertarians (who share some of the so-called liberal beliefs of the left) have grown up with farms offering free range eggs for sale with honesty boxes alongside; we’ve worked hard and paid for our could-be free newspaper in WHSmith.

So I’m at-first heartened to see this on the BBC’s Magazine today about Honesty Boxes and then, when you get to the end, dismayed at the cynicism that suggests it is peer pressure and/or a fear of being caught that makes some people honest.

Oh well, so long as many continue to be honest and so long as society and its governors take action when honesty is absent, we can live in a more peaceful world.

But when will our governors punish those who harm others? And when will they stop imposing draconian surveillance measures while utilising a proven failed process that is called ‘rehabilitation’ in place of punishment?

I cannot find the good and great Alan Drew’s Prison Works website at the moment, but I’ll add a link here later.

I was described, not inaccurately I believe, as a right-wing anarchist last night.

But what’s so wrong with that? I believe that the law should provide protection for people from the cruel twists of fate that life brings and from those members of society who do not act with consideration for others — to use religious parlance those who do not “treat others as they would wish to be treated”.

And that should be the end of it.

If I want to drive without a seat belt and potentially injure myself, if I want to take mind altering drugs in the privacy of my own home, if I want to do anything at all that harms no-one else, I should be allowed.

And who would object? Actually, the answer is surprising to my naive mind!

There are several groups of people who would object. There are those Tories who supported Section 28, the Road Traffic Act 1991 and the Single European Act. There are those socialists who believe in positive discrimination, redistribution of wealth and behaviour modification (state-funded anti-smoking adverts for example).

But worst of all are the so-called ‘centrists’. These people believe that because there are large-ish numbers of people on the ‘right’ and ‘left’ of them that they represent some form of better political ideology. Of course, they are wrong.

There is nothing admirable about sitting on a fence but when the fence means that you believe in ‘modest’ redistribution of wealth, ‘minor’ racist treatment of the indigenous population and when you believe only in legislating in behaviour management some of the time you are not helping anyone. Small steps towards a police state are worse than large steps because people notice them less. Being between a clear, well thought through ideology of socialist equality and the clear, well thought through (and superior) ideology of libertarianism (classical liberalism or right-wing anarchy — call it what you will), then you are standing for nothing at all.

For once I am ranting about political ideology without complaining about religion in politics. And I think this is not because religion in politics has become less of a problem (as Cllr. Eade well knows), but because right now our political leaders are being made aware, through polls, that policy-theft is no longer to be tolerated.

Policy-theft is a symptom of being ‘centrist’. You cannot hold a clear, respectable ideolological position and find any benefit in the opposition’s policies. The truth is, if you feel able to steal policies (or believe it is likely your policies could be stolen, actually) then you’re not sticking to your ideology and, by default, you are suffocating democratic choice.

Say 50% of people want a government that does not interfere, does not impose behaviour-modifying legislation and does not support so-called ‘good racism’, who should those people choose? A-list Cameron? Ethnic-training-programmes Brown? God-forbid Mr Campbell?

If we want to have a healthy democracy then we need fewer people to vote ‘the way their Dad did’, more people to be adventurous in their voting, and more people to care what the politicians do with their vote. And this from a people’s representative.

But the blame is not only the electorate’s. It’s massively the media’s fault obviously, but it is mostly the fluff-spined politicians. Stand up for what you believe in, and stand for election on that too. Don’t change your opinions because there’s been a change in leader, and don’t change your opinions as a result of opinion polls. Please.

What sort of patriot did not make time for the game this afternoon?

Congratulations England (my heart is still racing). Bad luck Australia