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Junior envirotyrant Georgina Viveash, 15, presents her climate change solution:
I think it would be a lot better if children were made to walk.
I think we could save electricity by unplugging all the clocks when we don’t need to know what time it is.
Posted by John Fembup on 2006 11 14 at 12:36 PM • permalinkI think it would be a lot better if children were made to walk.
Ten miles. Uphill. Both ways!
/in my day…Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 11 14 at 12:37 PM • permalinkRight! When I was a lad, we all were made to walk, and the eldest had to carry the youngest on our backs!
We couldn’t even afford shoes, and in the winter, we wrapped barbed wire around our feet for traction!
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2006 11 14 at 12:41 PM • permalinkIn my day, we had to walk and carry ourselves. That’s why I’m a hunchback.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 14 at 01:31 PM • permalinkAwwww! Kids parrot back the darndest received orthodoxies!
What’s the point of this? “We found six kids willing to slightly rephrase what they’ve been told six hundred times”. Who cares?
Posted by Don't Bogart that Midget, Comrade! on 2006 11 14 at 01:44 PM • permalinkGeorgina strikes me as being a naive 15 year old. After stating that children should walk, she says:
I don’t think cars should be taxed higher, because parents will still drive as much as it they did before. They’ll just complain about the higher tax.
So maybe there’s hope for her. Maybe, as punitive taxes (which is what the envirotards are always proposing) are a valid complaint from taxpayers. She seems to view it as a whine (which is a common form of communication from her age group, come to think of it).
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 11 14 at 01:44 PM • permalinkBan bicycles? I don’t think you—or Georgina—would get much disagreement from P.J. O’Rourke.
Posted by Ed Driscoll on 2006 11 14 at 03:33 PM • permalinkGosh, Georgina, don’t fret!
Most kids in the world do walk everywhere!
They have to.
To escape drought, evade disease, get away from slavery, find a source of food or avoid the latest tribal conflict.
And they have to walk such a long way without even the latest Nike footwear to cushion their feet!
But don’t worry, thanks to the big Gaia-friendly plans that clever environmentalists have for the planet, we’re all going to be subsistence-level peasants soon!
And we’ll have to walk everywhere!
Posted by JJM Ballantyne on 2006 11 14 at 03:51 PM • permalink#18, cosmo:
At least you had feet and hands. In my day, we just had stumps . . . stumps that froze in the snow on the 150 mile crawl to school.
Oh how we used to dream of having stumps! We had to wiggle on our bellies and pull ourselves up stairs with our chins!
And there were shoes, that’s what they used to beat us with, all night long, while we were trying to sleep.
You had felt hats? Lucky rich bastards.
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2006 11 14 at 05:12 PM • permalinkBesides, they made up drop the anvils on top of ourselves. We had to throw them off the roof and then run back down in time to be under them when they landed.
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2006 11 14 at 05:14 PM • permalinkKids don’t need bikes. They need this.
Posted by Gary from Jersey on 2006 11 14 at 05:16 PM • permalinkChildren should not only be made to walk but to tow the cars and trucks of their elders and betters. And work the pedal generators to keep their tvs going!
Posted by arrowhead ripper on 2006 11 14 at 05:53 PM • permalinkOne of my biggest concerns is dealing with some kind of claptrap ideology my kid might bring home from school in a few years. I don’t want to create friction with his teacher by openly disagreeing, but if he starts mouthing off about the Environment…
Meanwhile, the BBC is wearing its heart on its sleeve these days, isn’t it? They probably didn’t have to ask too many kids to get those answers, but I bet we’re not looking at a random sample there!
Nice comedy skit redo, fellas. Now help me out: I saw the original, with Spike Milligan and a couple of others - were they from Monty Python? Can’t remember.
Dminor:
It’s some strange combination of comedy skits and stuff we’ve all heard, in one form or amother from our fathers, grandfathers and uncles.
You know, the same guys who wander around the house shutting off all the lights everyone else leaves on, bellowing “when did we change our name to Rockefeller?” or “what do I look like, the electric company?”
Georgina won’t have to worry about walking anywhere, anyhow.
Her sons and husband will be doing all that while she remains permanently indoors in her body tent.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 11 14 at 06:05 PM • permalink#31, bonjour triteness:
Children should not only be made to walk but to tow the cars and trucks of their elders and betters. And work the pedal generators to keep their tvs going!
Wasn’t the original argument for the invention of children based on the idea of having someone on hand to do the stuff that us bigger folk didnt want to do?
Every time I notice the remote control for the TV is on the other side of the room from me, my first thought is “humm..wonder if that kid next door is busy?”
Parents ought to be suing the people in government right and left for what they are doing to our children. By force of law. And they use our hard-earned money to do it. Which they take by force.
Of course, an educated population would never allow the people in the government to get away with all they do. Especially by using our money.
Of course, an educated population would never allow the people in the government to get away with all they do. Especially by using our money.
Unless of course much of that population has been educated into blindly feasting off of whatever feel good crap is squatted onto their plate by those they have been taught to believe are their rightful thought masters.
If you strike “educated” and insert “competent” I think you’d be more accurate.
Wouldn’t it be better for The Children to learn to do more swimming, since that’s all they’ll be able to do once the ice caps melt, the cities flood and the hungry polar bears roam the barren lands?
Posted by ErnestBludger on 2006 11 14 at 07:12 PM • permalinkActually, cosmo, I thought it was headed to this:
cosmo Smith-Smythe-Smith has an
O-level in chemo-hygiene.
Grimmy-Zinc-Trumpet-Harris, married to a very attractive table lamp.
wronwright-Incubator-Jones, his best friend is a tree,
and in his spare time he’s a stockbroker.
JeffS Brook-Hampster is in the Guards,
and his father uses him as a wastepaper basket.
And finally paco St John-Mollusc,
Harrow and the Guards, thought by many to be this year’s outstanding twit.May the best twit…um, biggest twit…win!
I think it would be a lot better if children were made to walk.
Damn straight! Could shave 10% of the costs at the salt mine, if you little shits didn’t need a bus there and back.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2006 11 14 at 09:03 PM • permalinkAnd we could bring back pit ponies for mining!! Aww arent they cute with their blindmilky white eyes staring out of their black, ore stained faces..
Or the treadmill for minor offences such as littering or fine defaults.
Or they could go back to using their brains rather than calculators to work out sums.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 11 14 at 09:17 PM • permalinkI think it would be a lot better if loudmouth children were put to useful work handstitching expensive sneakers and blue jeans…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 11 14 at 10:06 PM • permalinkThere’s a reason we don’t let kids vote or have real jobs are run for office. It’s because kids are stupid. Does the BBC not know this??
Posted by Shaky Barnes on 2006 11 14 at 10:31 PM • permalinkShaky, the BBC is doing this for the children.
How could you not know?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 11 14 at 10:38 PM • permalinkIs it true that it is mandatory to wear a helmet when wearing a bicycle? I heard that when this was brought in, ridership plummeted. Is this true?
Anyway, I shall ignore it and plead ignorance. Hopefully I will get a lefty judge who will concure and give me nothing.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 11 14 at 11:27 PM • permalink#53 - ‘Tis mandatory to wear a helmet when “riding” a bicylce in Oz. We seldom wear bicycles except on National Dress Like a Dutchman Day.
And surely enough since the “helmet law” was introduced, I have not ridden any sort of bike except the occasional “village” variety.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2006 11 14 at 11:44 PM • permalinkSpeaking of bike helmets, (which we weren’t, but hey) I wore my old Army steel helmet while riding my bike during a “police blitz” on riders not wearing helmets on bicycles.
I got pulled over by a young motorcycle cop.
Cop: “That’s not an approved bike helmet, I’m going to give you a ticket”
Pedro: “It was good enough for soldiers to wear in plenty of wars”
Cop: “You’re going to make trouble in court over this aren’t you?”
Pedro: “You bet”
Cop: “Go on, piss off then”No ticket. Happy Pedro rides off, whistling.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 11 15 at 12:35 AM • permalinkYou know that young Georgina intendfs for all the OTHER children to walk. You know that young Georgina would not be happy AT ALL being forced to walk to soccer practice, dance classes, the mall, or to her friends’ houses. You see, she is environmentally “aware” which is more important than actually taking action yourself, and which empowers the “aware” to order all the rest around.
Posted by David Crawford on 2006 11 15 at 01:06 AM • permalinkKids could walk more. At least here in the US.
But surely if the little cherubs were walking the streets, they’d be set upon by the hordes of perverts, paedophiles, serial killers and escaped psychotics that the worthy Stranger Danger campaign was set up to save them from.
That’s why the peakhour roads should be clogged day and night with myopic midgets peering over the dashboards of their luxo-landbarges ferrying precious to and from ballet, water polo and elocution (no football mind- too rough for Tarquin-Beau or Kylie-Naomi), so they’re safe from everything*.
And it serves to slow down all those carbon-crunching hoons with their hotted-up planet scorchers as well, so two public benefits.
*Except when the incompetent boob driving said technical loses control on a patch of water that’s seeped out of a leaky hydrant and upends 3 tons of personnel carrier, spilling the contents of the rear seats into the path of a rubble-filled dumptruck. Eeeooouuuu…...messy.
Okay you kids whose going to be the first to chuck their xbox/playstation in the recycling bin to do their bit for the Earth and your futures?
Posted by the nailgun on 2006 11 15 at 02:44 AM • permalinkRight!
In my day, the anvils were MUCH heavier AND were still red-hot from casting.
When we were insolent, our parents cast them out of depleted uranium.
THEN we were sold off for medical experiments!
AND the gravity was much higher on our planet!
Posted by oswald bastable on 2006 11 15 at 03:18 AM • permalinkWay back when I was in school, we children (there were 72 of us) not only walked the 33.4 miles to school (located on the peak of El Capitan), but since we were dirt poor, had to take turns acting as mule pulling the cart (hauling the 71 siblings). Unfortunately, the path to school went directly through an active mine field, 4.2 miles of which was strewn with broken glass. On the plus side, we were down to 55 siblings upon my graduation, making for a much lighter load. At that time, each of us had 42” thighs and calluses 17” thick.
As a graduation present, I was given my first pair of pants. Oh the joy! Up to that time, I’d worn strips of old tires, sewn together. We were poor, but were doing our part in the recycling effort.You lot are goons. We should listen to 10 year olds, at least when it comes to TV programming. If we put our 10 year old and his mates on the ABC Board, this is what your average day of TV viewing would look like:
- 6 hours of The Simpsons
- 4 hours of South Park
- 4 hours of Rage
- 4 hours of Top Gear
- 2 hours of nature programs, but only the type where killer whales eat squishy fluffy penguins in close up, and preferably slow motion
- 4 hours of historical documentaries, preferably of the type with endless reels of Spitfires shooting down Krauts or Romans chopping up barbarians. Scenes of Heinkels crashing into the ground in an enormous fireball are always accompanied by much yee-ha’ing and cheering.So I say forget about packing the Board with conservatives - pack it with boys between the ages of 10 and 16.
No more news. No more Kerry O’Brien. No more 4 corners and Lateline and Media Watch and all the earnest dribble. No more pontificating.
Kids can be put to good uses.
Posted by mr creosote on 2006 11 15 at 05:44 AM • permalinkNo, The Goons. Precursors, trailblazers for Monty Python.
My contribution to this thread is to announce that last year I ran over a bicycle courier in Melbourne.
Bourke Street.
And I didn’t have to pay any damages. I said sorry very nicely, and offered to pay.
Apparently, bike couriers get run down regularly, yet apologies are not usual.
I think there are far too many bicycle couriers in the world today, so banning bikes would certainly help reduce that rabid subspecies of city denizen.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 11 15 at 07:26 AM • permalinkDon’t undestimate 15 yo Georgina. She after all has received international atttention for telling the interviewer exactly the kind of thing they would want to hear.
While I might get frustrated at the crap that quite a few teachers try to foist onto kids today, I also reflect on what I thought of my tacher back in the day. If modern kids hold anything like the same respect for their tachers, I have nothing to fear.
I thought I had it bad with childhood woes, but now reading these stories with a tear in my eye I realise that even though I had no stumps and no body, since school was at the bottom of the hill, mother could simply bowl me from the front door to the classroom. On a more serious note, I think she’s right (Georgina, not mother) and we should take a leaf from the professional cyclists. Riding to work is fun and healthy and there is such a great choice of steroids to take nowdays.
Ha think thats bad! I was born dead, and they still sent me to school!! (I got better)*
*Depending on who you ask#
# True story.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 11 15 at 09:36 AM • permalinkAnd once we get the kiddies of on their walks we can plan their next haircuts and posture lessons.
Posted by Pat Patterson on 2006 11 15 at 10:23 AM • permalink
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Reading that link
One little fella suggests recycling e-waste
My first thought was - how do you get rid of all those words on email and on blogs - the ones that are a waste of space
But he’s talking the hardware not the words