THE CAR CULTURE

The dominate car culture is so little challenged that one cant help but to start thinking conspiracy. Its more likely a group of linked vested interests, but it certainly stinks. Aside from the now well rehearsed argument regarding the detrimental impact on the environment through pollution, an aspect that that never seems to break into common consciousness is the physical space that cars consume. When they are not being driven, which is most of the time, if every car in the country took to the road at the same time it would probably result in an infinite traffic jam, they just sit there taking up space and getting in the way. It has allways struck me that the presumption that one should be able to put these large metal lumps almost anywhere and inevitably obstructing the movement of persons going about their business is one more misguided assumption that is made almost exclusively for these hallowed objects called cars. The cumulative space taken up by the thousands of parked cars must be the size of a small County.
Possibly the most absurd buildings that have ever been created and that can only really be explained by a sort of car mania are the inappropriately named multi-storey car parks. How the word 'park' ever became linked to these grotesque repositories for these machines is a mystery.
Lets go back to 1930's Germany. The Fascist National Socialist party are in power. One of their first priorities is to produce the People's Car : Volkswagen. The ' auto ' mobile. The self mobile. Strangely the rear end of the early models looks like a gas mask, and indeed adapted Saurer trucks were used as mobile execution vans. The firm is still in business. Then there were the autobahns, one of the first being a dead straight road from Berlin to a lake some miles away. I read an article in Punch from that time where the writer had gone to Germany specifically to drive along this piece of road at unlimited speed. He conceded that it was not actually a very interesting experience, but, as would happen all over Europe, driving was becoming a ' leisure experience ' in itself, unconnected to the actual need to get to a remote place.
The autobahns remain speed unlimited, and this obsession with speed, again not linked to anything but in itself, as a goal, an expression of will, was a notable feature of Fascist culture. In Italy the Futurists, who blurred the line between art and politics, were advocates of speed and mechanised warfare. This was also the period when motor racing developed, this bizarre automated form of horse racing which developed with the car industry, and, indeed with Fascism.
To add another illustration, there were night rallies of French Fascists which were organised gatherings of cars outside Paris.
Ford operated in Germany during the Nazi regime.
It may or may not be a coincidence that Max Mosely, son of Oswald,the leader of the Brish Fascist Party of the same period, is currently head of the European motor racing organisation.
Both the marginalisation of criticism of the car industry, and the incredible degree of toleration to the negative impact of the ubiquitous use and slavish promotion of the car that continues to be shown by successive Governments and the mass media is remarkable. One small but telling example : the nationally broadcast two hour programme on BBC radio 5 from 16 :00 - 18 : 00 every weekday is called 'Drive'. Is the assumption that the audience are all in their cars ? The suggestion is that the natural thing to be doing at this time is driving. Why ? I can think of no other radio programme that specifies a form of transport to its listeners.
It is well past time that car culture was challenged. One person is murdered and it tends to get airtime, hundreds die on the roads in so-called 'accidents' , my next door neighbour was cruelly crushed by a HGV, yet this is virtually ignored. Meanwhile the senseless wittering and juvenile stunts of car worshippers such as Jeremy Clarkson and his cronies are given acres of airtime and unfettered funds ( my bloody Licence fee ) to fritter away on pointless promotion of these detestable machines, these paragons of selfishness.
Damn the things.