Spare a tear for the poor gas guzzlers of Richmond who are the latest victims of of environmental bullying:
A decision to charge higher parking prices for high-polluting vehicles has been branded "unfair" to large families by a motoring organisation.
The AA reckons that a family with two high polluting cars could pay up to £750 a year - three times the normal parking fees. Wow. Imagine how much a family with three high polluting cars would pay? Poor bastards.
So how to avoid these costs? We guess Richmondiuns could call the AA each time they needed a lift into town. As for the other worries, let's have a quick think about those too.
Problem: How to get children to school.
Solution: School bus.
Problem: How to get to leisure activities.
Solution: Tube.
Problem: How to journey out of town.
Solution: Train.
See, no need to set up a think tank or even call on the RAC. We lived in Richmond for a while ourselves and while it's WAY out in zone four it's not exactly cut off from the rest of London (great place to own a bike too). And that was long before supermarkets started delivering via the internet (a service we've been happily using for years).
Seriously - if having too many cars is suddenly a big concern and the AA (who kind of need your crappy cars on the road to exist) are the only organisation looking out for you then maybe it's time to downgrade and see how the other half live.
