Traffic matters

Brits, in general, are decent and well-mannered people, but there are also far too many of them living on their island, and that pisses them off. They simply don't have enough space, at least in their cities. Or what other conclusions can you possibly make of this? For all its good vibes, stuff and things, I have to concede that if there somewhere is a city where drivers may give middle fingers to funeral processions and school kids throw stones at horse-drawn hearses, then my London is exactly such a city. Thankfully I don't drive myself, and can thus somewhat maintain control over my own tides of sanity.

As it happens, Ken Livingstone (whom I otherwise don't like at all) made an excellent remark this week - calling SUVs "Chelsea tractors" and proposing a £25 congestion charge for all such vehicles. That's Livingstone at his populist best. He's doing it because of the election, but I liked it nonetheless - for it's a hilariously descriptive concept, that Chelsea tractor. Yes, my gentle readers, and as the loyalest of you probably guessed already, it's time for a rant.

Listen, SUV drivers. You people driving your automobiles in cities is an oxymoron. It's not a city car, you fucking morons. It's a fucking jeep. What does its name stand for, huh? I tell you. It stands for suburban utility vehicle, and that ought to say it all. It's a vehicle for suburbs, not cities. Do you get it? City dwellers walk, run, call cabs and use public transport, or small and smart cars if they for some reason want to drive, park, stop at traffic lights and get pissed off - they don't drive any silly acronyms such as yours.

See, SUV drivers, there are two kinds of people: city people and country people. Cities innovate, employ and provide financial support for regions outside the cities, whereas countryside's raison d'etre is to look good and be quiet. It's for holidays and bringing up offsprings, so that they don't get knifed or stoned and will learn not to throw knifes or stones at undertakers and the mourning bereaved. There are some people who can't make up their mind on where to live and try therefore to have best of both worlds (often failing miserably), and that's the reason for suburbs to exist. (You may try and tell me that the truth is never that black-and-white, and if you indeed do, I would like to seek comfort in reminding you, that then your share is grey, and grey is the bitch of the palette.) That is absolutely fine, as long as the people who live in suburbs are willing and able to recognise the fact that they don't actually live in cities. And you SUV drivers happen to be a prime example of people who have failed to recognise that fact.

Why in the hell you want to drive a 4x4 in a city? As their name suggests, they are a suburbian thing and don't belong to cities. It's a fucking off-road car, it belongs to the countryside. It's like firearms, they belong to the countryside too. Life in the countryside can be nasty, brutish and short; firearms keep wild beasts at bay and jeeps bring your loved ones to hospital from remote farmsteads with no roads or telecoms infrastructure. Yet you need neither things in cities, and you come across as stupid and primitive if you try to hold on to them while living in there. Suburbs, then, and as I explained already, are a twilight zone in between, and may well be compatible with both firearms and jeeps, but you SUV drivers obviously aren't happy with that, and that's when the problems start. You are trying to have your own cake and eat mine.

I live in a city, and that commitment has its ups and downs. One of the downs is that there isn't enough space or clean air: both are very scarce resources. When you suburban utility vehicle drivers - subhumans from subplaces - drive your tractors to my city, my space certainly doesn't stretch in size and my air certainly doesn't get any cleaner. That's why you must pay me money for exploiting them. Life is full of choices, and if you postmodern peasants can't leave your tractors to your mental (and pathetically proximate) farmsteads, then that is your choice. I'm fine with that. I simply want it to cost you money, because that makes it fairer.

Incidentally, the active people of Turku have apparently launched a campaign against the local SUVs by systematically emptying their tires. (Like most cultural innovations ever since Protestantism, also this one has diffused to Finland from Sweden and via Turku.) This blogger doesn't say juu or jaa about on, though suggests a more constructive form of action. Stop calling the automobiles in question as "kaupunkimaasturi" - you know, for kaupunki means a city. Instead, respect the original name and call them "lähiömaasturi". Simple semantics should do the trick, eventually.

The writer is a shameless Zone1-based lifestyle fascist who took his driving test twice and can't give any answer when people ask him to compare petrol prices between Finland and Britain.