Quote Originally Posted by HoreTore View Post
Who the hell ever drives in a city with more than 300.000 inhabitants anyway?

Designing a city for 10 million with enough driving and parking space for everyone - now that is true waste.
Design, logic and waste had nothing to do with it. The suburban middle class has money to spend on cars and themselves, therefore it's their right to drive themselves anywhere they wish. And not just in a literal sense. Other than themselves and their material needs, what matters most in this world is their children. They will drive their children everywhere, and they will drive society anywhere that is necessary for their children's welfare, or their vision of their children's welfare. Anything that impinges on their children's right to do whatever they want while being free from whatever the real world may impose on them (such as reality) has to change. They are the ones driving Britain towards authoritarianism, not any single political party. New Labour has wholeheartedly pandered to their interests, partly because they are a sizeable constituency that is guaranteed to vote in numbers, and partly because they are so politically active so as to make it political suicide to ignore them (and the Tories won't ignore them either). Such is the result of Thatcher's politics of coupling the middle class, family over society approach, and the me, me, me attitude.