I read with fascination the recent letter from Kas Graham – you seldom see such a curious mixture of self-interest, smugness and wrong-headedness. It’s hard to know where to begin.
He/she opines that some people think the prime purpose of the roads is for the storage and operation of motor vehicles. Let me enlighten him/her – it is. What on earth does K Graham think they are for?
He/she says that motor ownership is a minority activity in London. My advice is for him/her to get out more and open their eyes, almost every house in London has a car outside it, Cars may have their drawbacks but clearly a large majority of people feel that their usefulness outweighs their ‘Pollution, noise, death & destruction’.
I agree with K Graham that people should walk or use public transport where possible, and in my opinion most people do, but it’s not always possible or convenient.
If people need to (a) travel somewhere public transport doesn’t serve well (b) carry several people (c) carry a heavy load (d) get somewhere in a hurry (or any combination) and they have purchased a car for just those situations, I don’t see why K Graham should tell them not to use it.
Has he/she consulted the other residents of Fishponds Rd about this radical plan for them to all give up their cars?
As for the poor children of Fishponds Rd, I think K Graham will find that children almost always live where their parents live, so it is not the general public who have put these poor waifs in such an ‘unpleasant’ environment – it is their own parents who have chosen to buy or rent on a busy road.
By the way, pleading a cause in the name of ‘the children’ is one of the surest ways of telling people it is themselves they really care about.
In short, K Graham’s mindset is all about hypocrisy – they want to keep us off their road while they drive along ours, they want us to walk everywhere while they use their cars as they please, and they want us to care for the plight of the children of Fishponds Rd while apparently not caring a whit about children living on any of the many other busy roads in Tooting.
Steve Muir, via email
- Send your letters to: letters@wandsworthguardian.co.uk
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