Tour de France massively improved air quality in Huddersfield

severs1966 wrote:

edit: As a resident of the area, I have written to the councillor to ask for his response to my wondering about this inaction.

More likely to get a response than any amount of venting here. Good luck!

severs1966 wrote:

[...]As a resident of the area, I have written to the councillor to ask for his response to my wondering about this inaction.

No answer this week. I now expect no answer at all. I also expect the councillor most directly responsible to do nothing whatsoever, but that was my starting assumption, so they have not disappointed any locals more than we already knew.

zanf wrote:

Some cold hard figures would be good otherwise its nothing more than hearsay really.

Kim wrote:

Sadly our political leaders would rather pay massive EU fines and watch thousands of British citizens die prematurely each year, than tackle the problem of car dependency created by Government policy.

Its a bit more than just 'policy'. The whole car explosion of the early 70's was down to the greed of Ernest Marples (Go and read up on the guy to see what kind of scum get into ministerial positions), who employed a guy to 'restructure' the railways but went far beyond his remit and decimated them, leaving a wide opportunity for a road building programme that had not been seen before in the UK. And guess who happened to be a major stakeholder in a civil engineering company?

Throughout the 90's and 00's, you've had supermarkets pushing through planning applications on out of town big box units (and quite often retroactively) because they know that if people drive to the shops, they will buy more.

If people buy more of the energy rich processed foods now available, they tend (feel compelled) to consume them and so you have people not expending energy in travelling to buy energy dense foods that they over consume.

And that, boy and girls, is how we have the obesity crisis we're all finally beginning to notice.

What I think you'll find is that government policy reacted to what the electorate wanted at the time. The government didn't force people to buy cars. People wanted them, they could afford them and they wanted roads to drive them on. That it also provided jobs and created infrastructure that enabled growth was clearly also popular with the Government.

We have an obesity crisis because food is relatively cheap and millions of people eat too much and do too little exercise. They do this because they choose to. Not because it's a government plan. If people wanted a nice healthy salad for dinner then the food companies would gear themselves up to producing that instead. It's a lot easier to make a profit selling people what they want to buy than it is entering into a forty year conspiracy to make them buy something that they don't really want.

oozaveared wrote:

zanf wrote:

Some cold hard figures would be good otherwise its nothing more than hearsay really.

Kim wrote:

Sadly our political leaders would rather pay massive EU fines and watch thousands of British citizens die prematurely each year, than tackle the problem of car dependency created by Government policy.

Its a bit more than just 'policy'. The whole car explosion of the early 70's was down to the greed of Ernest Marples (Go and read up on the guy to see what kind of scum get into ministerial positions), who employed a guy to 'restructure' the railways but went far beyond his remit and decimated them, leaving a wide opportunity for a road building programme that had not been seen before in the UK. And guess who happened to be a major stakeholder in a civil engineering company?

Throughout the 90's and 00's, you've had supermarkets pushing through planning applications on out of town big box units (and quite often retroactively) because they know that if people drive to the shops, they will buy more.

If people buy more of the energy rich processed foods now available, they tend (feel compelled) to consume them and so you have people not expending energy in travelling to buy energy dense foods that they over consume.

And that, boy and girls, is how we have the obesity crisis we're all finally beginning to notice.

What I think you'll find is that government policy reacted to what the electorate wanted at the time. The government didn't force people to buy cars. People wanted them, they could afford them and they wanted roads to drive them on. That it also provided jobs and created infrastructure that enabled growth was clearly also popular with the Government.

We have an obesity crisis because food is relatively cheap and millions of people eat too much and do too little exercise. They do this because they choose to. Not because it's a government plan. If people wanted a nice healthy salad for dinner then the food companies would gear themselves up to producing that instead. It's a lot easier to make a profit selling people what they want to buy than it is entering into a forty year conspiracy to make them buy something that they don't really want.

Very good post - we get the politicians we (collectively) deserve.

oozaveared wrote:

We have an obesity crisis because food is relatively cheap and millions of people eat too much and do too little exercise.

The cheap food is shit, that's the problem. Saturated fats, salt, sugar in cheap ready meals, and people are lazy. Eating healthily is more expensive and takes more time...precious time away from the telly or Nintendo.