spaman

Well, this is where the common sense comes in....... I agree that by providing a number of well placed rail depots, we would seem to be shifting the problem.... BUT:
1. imagine how much emptier the main trunk roads would be
2. as well as investing in state of the art rail depots, the infrastructure would also be provided to support them....... something that we in this country have clearly failed to do for the last 100 years
3. if adequate depots were built, the impact on our road system would be so much less, as we wouldn't always need great ginormous trucks to shift things in a local area
4. this in itself would provide more local employment
5. it would reduce the number of foreign trucks on our roads who pay nothing for their upkeep
6. the depots would be located in rural areas, again providing local employment, but more importantly, reducing traffic in our big towns


Large businesses started small, and with the natural cycle of growth, bust or expand globally/ get swallowed by a big company, there has to be a way to encourage small business to start up and grow....... otherwise we go INTO phpbb_decline as a nation... and having a less centralised method of moving freight around has to be a bonus for this....

Something else - a side issue on reducing freight generally, is to stop the globalisation tide by encouraging more goods to be produced and sold locally...... it's not an imposssibility - allow the natural innovative nature of British people to be rewarded by also, possibly, maybe, improving the quality of life for people who would no longer have to rush around the country going insane

Sorry - this is all part of a pet idea of mine

ops:

Buffin

As a generalisation, any policy which is additional to UKIP's core proposition of withdrawal from the EU should be

- clear and simple and popular

- an undoubted votewinner.

I don't think this policy suggestion qualifies.

C_steam

No, but neither would the detailed energy policy. What is needed is clear unambiguous statements of intent. The detail of policy sits below that, but must be properly costed and researched. See research groups for details, and personally I await with interest the one for energy, transport and heritage, all of which push my buttons. (sad git that I am)

kernow

[quote="spaman"]


6. the depots would be located in rural areas, again providing local employment, but more importantly, reducing traffic in our big towns [/color]

No thank you, we have enough farm land here in Devon due to be concreted over thanks to Mr Prescott without adding more.


, there has to be a way to encourage small business to start up and grow....... otherwise we go INTO phpbb_decline as a nation.

Agreed, but building on farm land isn't one of them, remember we have to feed the Nation!

Something else - [color=darkblue]a side issue on reducing freight generally, is to stop the globalisation tide by encouraging more goods to be produced and sold locall

Agreed!

spaman

[quote="kernow"]I am not suggesting farm land at all - there must be plenty of out of town brown sites that could be used........
As for 2jags destruction of good land for housing in the south and little infrastructure (water) to support it..... well, I feel another policy idea coming on..

Buffin

But this is controversial, and it's only one policy option open following withdrawal from the EU.

It would make the UKIP proposition more complex, it's not a necessary corollary, it's not an easy sell, and it's not a guaranteed vote winner.

The fact is, UKIP has not begun to get over to people the cost & implications of the EU. That's what UKIP needs to sell.

SGK

spaman, rail depots in the countryside would be disasterous. The route to and from would have to have new wide roads to allow for the lorry trafic. Around the depot itself you would need storage warehouses. People who worked there would have to commute through the countryside or you would have to allow housing nearby.
As a similar example, go to the beautiful Peak District national park and go to the Hope Valley cement works. See the blot on the landscape it creates and experience the disruption great cement lorries have on the surrounding villages.
There may be some suitable sites, but to make this INTO phpbb_some kind of policy would be awful.

Generally speaking, most intervention aimed at getting lorries off the roads tends to conflict with improving the transport network as a whole. I agree with improving railfreight options through investment, but there's little else you can do after that. The rest heads towards state control of the economy to an overbearing degree.
Encouraging locally produced wares is a nice idea, but you'll have to explain how you think you can achieve it.

SGK

Maybe, but figures aren't going to vary dramatically from one year to the next without good reason. I also accept that comparing yourself with someone worse off is not reason to smugly do nothing. I'm only suggesting that the Swiss solutions can't be so fantastic if, at the end of it, they haven't got dramatically safer roads.

Which is a fair point. The problem for me is that you would be dramatically reducing some peoples freedoms (as we have built our society around the ability to travel and especially by car) and without surety that it will make a difference I'm reluctant.

Which is fully understandable but the question for me is how much of a one-off is she or isn't she?

How about a probation period for new drivers? How about a zero alchohol tolerance for the first 2 years, or a limit to 6 points on a licence, or an immediate ban and re-test for a driving offence in the first year?
We could probably use a few more speed camera's to enforce it, though.

<ducks for cover>

John Carter

This is something of a problem for me too. However, I don't think we should accept lower driving standards simply to solve the problem.

I reckon she's an extreme example of something quite common.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. All good.

<goes off to get bazooka>

SGK

I've just remembered I used to work with a bloke (top bloke, in his late 60s now) who used to complain about his wife's driving. He told us that when she went shopping she would drive around the car park for as long as it took to find a double space, one behind the other, so that she could drive INTO phpbb_it, through to the second spot and stop. This meant that she could then drive forwards out of the spot to go home. This was because she couldn't reverse the car.