Written by With christmas now behind us, i’m beginning to wonder what 2009 has in store for us. It’s a great relief to see fuel prices plummet further, with local prices here in Northern Ireland down to a record £0.82.9 pence per litre. The big question now is ‘how long will it last?’, the answer is probably not very long. Whatever happens, it’s good to see the oil companies taking a break from fleecing the people. With high fuel prices driving up food and energy prices in the last few years, and the price of just about everything else in our daily lives, i’m amazed that nobody has mentioned the oil industry’s part in the current global financial crisis. While everyone’s attention is firmly focused on the greed of bankers, credit card companies and stock brokers, one of the major culprits seems to have gotten clean away with bleeding the economy dry.
The car industry in 2009
With the car industry apparently set to become a major casualty of the global recession in 2009, it’s time for car makers to have a major rethink. While it’s nice to occasionally drool over V8 sports cars and italian supercars, for car manufacturers to continue to produce innefficient gas guzzling family cars, is really not serving the best interests of the people or the planet. For 2009, we must ask ourselves these questions:
1) What use is a 155 mph car, when the speed limit is 70 mph?
2) How much more efficient would family cars be, if they were built to a maximum design speed of 70 mph?
Giving a man a high performance car is like handing him a loaded weapon, then telling him not to fire it, and fining him obscene amounts of money when he does. What is the sense in all of that? I’m not suggesting for one moment that we fill the world with one box blandmobiles, just that we rethink our wants and needs and learn the difference between them.
