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#1
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OT(ish): Over on aus.bicycle re petrol protests
in message , John Blake
') wrote: In a thread headed 22 Sept. No petrol day There seems to be a desire to have a protest over there re high fuel prices. Might be an interesting read - might not. Why should cyclists (as cyclists) want to protest about high fuel prices? -- (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/ ;; L'etat c'est moi -- Louis XVI ;; I... we... the Government -- Tony Blair |
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OT(ish): Over on aus.bicycle re petrol protests
Simon Brooke wrote:
Why should cyclists (as cyclists) want to protest about high fuel prices? That they're not high enough? ;-) R. |
#3
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OT(ish): Over on aus.bicycle re petrol protests
in message , John Blake
') wrote: In message id on Thu, 15 Sep 2005 11:30:08 +0100, Simon Brooke wrote in uk.rec.cycling : in message , John Blake ') wrote: In a thread headed 22 Sept. No petrol day There seems to be a desire to have a protest over there re high fuel prices. Might be an interesting read - might not. Why should cyclists (as cyclists) want to protest about high fuel prices? Because the cost of delivery of goods to retail outlets increases with the increased cost to manufacturers / processors / hauliers / distributors? It affects us all even though we are not directly dependant. It does indeed affect us all. If the price of fuel continues to rise steeply, commerce and industry will wake up out of their torpor, get on the clue train, and start designing and making us products for a low energy future, so that we can continue to live lives of close to current levels of material comfort even when the fossil fuel has all run out. If, however, fossil fuel remains absurdly cheap until the last barrel is pumped, we're in for a very hard landing indeed. Possibly not in our lifetimes, but definitely in our childrens'. You may recall that after a few days protest last time around there were fears that stores would run out of stocks of food. Costs of delivery to retail outlets, even those out of town stores, get passed through to all customers. I don't know of a store that gives me a refund because I complete the final leg of delivery to home by bicycle or for not using their carrier bags to get the stuff home. But they do charge if I want them to do a home delivery. One of the major supermarket chains has all the sandwiches for all its stores throughout the UK made by a firm in Aberdeen. Every one of the supermarket chains sources its fruit and veg nationally, with strawberries from Perthshire and apples from Somerset being trucked into the same distribution hub - typically in the English midlands - and then trucked all the way back to Somerset and Perthshire. Rising prices for fuel will mean that a lot of this nonsense just stops. It means that the farmers who are currently busy protesting about the price of fuel will suddenly have a real market again and will no longer have to live on subsidies from the rest of us, because it will be cheaper to source food locally than fly peas from Peru. The 'cost of delivery/retail prices will rise' nonsense is largely just that - nonsense. Yes, we won't be able to buy the same fruit and veg all year round. Yes, we'll have to get used to the fact that crops are seasonal. These are not tragedies. And in any case much lower energy distribution systems - railways, canals, ships - already exist in a high state of development. If trucks are priced off the roads, the food will still get through. A high fuel cost economy is not a disaster. A low energy economy is actually inevitable within two generations. The problem is to get from here to there smoothly, without massive disruption - and the way to do that is to keep hiking the price of fuel smoothly but steadily, whatever the underlying price at the wellhead. The government has an energy generation crisis looming and will in this term of government have to sanction the construction of power generating plants. Alternative fuels should be considered and whilst nuclear is least desired, it may soon come to be the only option. It's not an option I favour. We have Windscale just across the water from us, and americium and plutonium blows around in the dust in this village - not healthy stuff. I'd much rather see an economy which learns to do more with less energy. So going back to your comment, we as cyclists may not want to protest about high fuel prices per se, but we can try to propagate increasingly well thought out reasons for lobbying for a shift in emphasis on what is causing the lemmings to act in the way they do. I think we're more or less in agreement. -- (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/ .::;===r==\ / /___||___\____ //==\- ||- | /__\( MS Windows IS an operating environment. //____\__||___|_// \|: C++ IS an object oriented programming language. \__/ ~~~~~~~~~ \__/ Citroen 2cv6 IS a four door family saloon. |
#4
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OT(ish): Over on aus.bicycle re petrol protests
Simon Brooke wrote:
Every one of the supermarket chains sources its fruit and veg nationally, with strawberries from Perthshire and apples from Somerset being trucked into the same distribution hub - typically in the English midlands - and then trucked all the way back to Somerset and Perthshire. Waitrose is starting to get a clue. It sources some of its fresh produce locally (local to the particular store, that is). R. |
#5
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OT(ish): Over on aus.bicycle re petrol protests
and the way to do
that is to keep hiking the price of fuel smoothly but steadily, whatever the underlying price at the wellhead. Won't the increased demand from China coupled with the need to get oil from more expensive sources do this anyway? |
#6
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OT(ish): Over on aus.bicycle re petrol protests
On Fri, 16 Sep 2005 10:33:08 +0100, Richard
.address.uk wrote: Simon Brooke wrote: Every one of the supermarket chains sources its fruit and veg nationally, with strawberries from Perthshire and apples from Somerset being trucked into the same distribution hub - typically in the English midlands - and then trucked all the way back to Somerset and Perthshire. Waitrose is starting to get a clue. It sources some of its fresh produce locally (local to the particular store, that is). Did you catch some farming programme (possibly On The Farm) on Radio 4 the otherday. Couple set up a goat cheese enterprise and sell it hither and yon, locally, West Countryish. They've managed to get the local Waitrose to stock it but to do this the stuff goes to Stevenage first then back to "their" Waitrose. Mind you, I though Waitrose HQ was Bracknell not Stevenage. Tim |
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