Chinese Quality Motors

[PhilA]

I thought for a moment that you were just copy paste from a Huxley page.

[LynehamHerc]

You live in a house, you have lived there 25 years and owned a car to get about in.

Your street is now in a "zone", the city has six zones.
To enter a zone, you need a permit.

If you enter a zone where you do not have a permit, £65 per offence
If you use up your permits for the year, currently 200, £65 per offence

A circuit of the city in one day would cost you £390, fines double if not paid

Fine amount is subject to review.

https://news.oxfordshire.gov.uk/proposa ... announced/

I guess they got the idea from visiting one of the twin cities.... Well city is a misnomer they have twinned with the entire Cuntry


The main proposer for lives in Witney and drives to work every day.

I don't know Oxford so this may be a stupid question.

My youngest son and his girlfriend live near Headington and also work near there. If I go to visit them will I go anywhere near this shambles? I'll be approaching Oxford from the East.
Thanks.

[mercrocker]

I do wonder where Oxford thinks it would currently be without the huge benefaction of a certain Lord Nuffield. This strikes me as little short of political point scoring and Council fiscal greed. It won't benefit citizens.

[LynehamHerc]

My impression over the last few years has been that it's pretty woke but that's basically from the things that he says.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Oxford is a fucking nightmare, and has been for the last 20-30 years. I hate the place.

[SiC]

Blackwell's book shop in Oxford is a fascinating place.

You enter through an unassuming shop front


Walk past a couple of fairly ordinary looking bookshop isles


To find a narrow staircase with a large (apparently famous artist) mural and signs indicating it's for the Norrington Room.

Screenshot_20221029-214842.png (1.25 MiB) Viewed 400 times

You decend this staircase to enter this enormous cavern. Three miles of shelving and over 150'000 books. Apparently the largest single book selling location in the world.




Back in the 90s, pre internet shopping, I absolutely loved going here with my dad to stock up on Computing and Electronics titles that you simply couldn't get elsewhere in libraries or local bookshops.

[FatherJack]

I have been down into the Norrington room many times.
Starting in the mid 80's looking for obscure computing books while studying,
Z80 or 6502 assembler anyone ? LDA, BNE 0, CMP B... I forget the rest as I never used it in anger.

Back then books had PRESENCE, my now ex worked for a publishing house and had access to a massive range of books.
After book shows any books "on show" were supposed to be pulped as they could not be sold.

FUN FACT : you can fit £800.00 worth of books in a Ford Orion boot and sneak them out of a book show for cash sales.

Online book stores have just about hobbled the retail maket for printed media.
Since the ban on parking in Broad Street I havent been to Blackwells.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I first went there in 1977 with my folks and my old man bought a copy of Paul Frere’s ‘Porsche 911 story’ which I still have.

It was late in the year but before the huge snowdrifts. Parking was easy. A Britain long gone.

[SiC]

Its a world long gone. Essentially the motor industry has been too successful and too large, which is destroying its own market.

Number of registered vehicles has quadrupled since the early 70s. With roughly everyone still using them the same amount.

EhjlMToXkAIpVgY.jpeg (37.79 KiB) Viewed 354 times

Which means a huge amount more traffic.

Ehjln_RXcAAorxf.jpeg (50.68 KiB) Viewed 354 times

Incidentally it's not more people as that growth hasn't even gone up by half.

Figure 1_ The UK's population has grown year-on-year since 1982.png (32.61 KiB) Viewed 353 times

It's a case of many more cars and many more people driving. There simply isn't enough room for them all to be passing narrow, old streets in cities. You could flatten the city and rebuild with large roads - like many parts of the world. However I don't think anyone here would think that's a good idea to destroy any of our very old cities just so people can park next to shops.

If you increase capacity for roads, you don't reduce congestion either. It actually goes the other way as more people use them and more likely need to use their car (because walking/cycling/etc infrastructure removed), thus ending up with even more problems. Anyone trying to drive through and getting stuck for hours on an 10 lane expressway in Los Angeles can realise this.

While I don't think the Oxford scheme is necessarily the best way of going about it, there does need to be a major rethink on how cities accommodate transportation, especially with private cars. It's just not feasible to allow everyone to be sat in a massive engined/electric/etc box on their own trying to get across a city.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

When I visit my accountant in Oxford I just park half a mile up Banbury road and walk in.

The car industry needs a massive cull. You just cannot keep building the number of cars being built now indefinitely.