Col, I think it will be a long time before petrol gets to $10/litre. But, if/when it does the average taxpayer will not be at all interested in seeing their tax dollars spent on roads they don't use. So you might still be driving, but the roads will be crumbling under your wheels. You might also find agressive cyclists and pedestrians and bus commuters ready to hound and harass motorists.

Pericles: good spiking of the 'Governments shouldn't tell us what to do' line spouted by some on this thread. In fairness to Col it is very difficult to pinpoint absolutely and with confidence, the range and degree of services that governments should provide. However, it is absolutely clear that urban transport is an area that needs heavy government involvement and it cannot be left to market forces at all. Apart from anything else, there is more than one market force applying here, eg the economics of private v public transport and the need for an efficient economy to have efficient transport, which forces and needs may or may not be working in accord with each other. I believe that governments should develop transport programs that have regard to economic, social and environmental outcomes. There is a very long way to go for that to happen. And it may involve some incentives and penalties to deter private transport.

PK, I believe that where public services are concerned, following any kind of economic argument is utterly pointless.

How long would you care to spend arguing the economic value of an extra year of life? Or the economic value of sending our troops to Iraq or Timor Leste?

Here's a true story. My UK-based little white-haired mother, well into her ninth decade, can still get around fairly well under her own steam. Until the bus company closed her bus route, the one that took her to the nearest town. "Oh well dear" she said to me over the phone (she's a true-blue Tory) "it was only used by a few old dears like me anyway."

So she didn't get around much for a while. Then her Bank phoned to tell her they had some documents for her to sign. "Can't you send them in the post?" she asked. "Can't do that Mrs Pericles, haven't you got any relatives who can drive you in?" "I have one son in California and one in Australia, which one do you suggest I ask?"

It did galvanize her to research an alternative. "I now take one bus up to your old school, and change there" she told me on Sunday "I have to cross the road (you remember how scary that can be) and wait for twenty minutes. It's fine at this time of year, but it gets a little chilly in winter, what with the wind and that..."

Services should be needs-based. Col doesn't need them, so he is quite happy to bag them on the basis that if he can get by without them, so should everybody else.

The prevailing political wind is in the same direction. Abdicate as much responsibility as possible by claiming that the private sector is so much more efficient at providing these services, and you can then wash your hands of any responsibility for the vicious price-gouging that ensues.

Until we can answer the basic question – what services do we need – we are at the mercy of the economic rationalists.

Pericles: I can but agree with your well-argued and well-illustrated point. Col Rouge - have you abdicated from the discussion?

Pericles, thats a rough tactic bringing your elderly grey haired mother into the debate. Does Col have space to put answers without it looking like an attack on your mum?

I tend to be somewhat more on the side of common services than Col but not as far as some. I'm going to have a go at answer to the situation you have outlined (and try to do so without looking like I'm picking on dear old grey haired ladies).

Assumptions
- There is a taxi service available in your mums area.
- A choice not to use it would be based on financial reasons rather than a dislike of taxis.

Options
- One (or both) of the sons living overseas send mum some money to cover taxi fares for those occasional trips she needs to make.
- Your mum pools with some of the other little old ladies who were using the bus service and they share a taxi on those occasions they need to travel somewhere not serviced by viable bus routes.
- Mum moves closer to major facilities if this is a big issue in her life.
- Mum does what she sounds like she is doing now and makes the best of the reality that not enough people were using the old service to keep it going. She has found other ways of doing what she needs to do and good on her for that.

It seems that you are suggesting that Cols twin brother (invented by myself) should be required to subsidise a severly under-utilised bus service to be available on those occasions when somebody wishes to use it. I'm left wondering what the cost per actual passenger trip of an under-utilised bus service is compared to alternative such as a taxi. I suspect that the only advantage of the under-utilised bus service is that somebody else pays most of the cost rather than the person making the trip.

All I know of your mums circumstances are what you have posted and what I have written is an attempt to provide an alternate viewpoint.

R0bert

Pericles “Services should be needs-based. Col doesn't need them, so he is quite happy to bag them on the basis that if he can get by without them, so should everybody else.”

If the “needs” were sufficient, the economics to provide them would be sufficient to warrant their supply on a commercial basis.

When did public bus services become a “need” when little more than 100 years ago, buses did not exist? Are we basing “needs” on historic observation or are we basing “traditional values on some contemporary socialist definition of needs and union authority”?

As for Mum Pericles, might I suggest taxi or local friend. One thing the notion of “needs based services is this – who decides what is a “need” and what is an indulgence?

Doubtless your white haired mum remembers the society of institutional basket cases where a nationalized steel business, car company (quasi) were “needs” to say nothing of telecomm companies, power companies and coal mines with Arthur Scargill trying to bring down the duly elected government.

She probably still rocks in horror on recalling the demands by Michael Foot (denizen of the rabid left) who, with Anthony Wedgewood-Benn (the fella so ashamed of his heritage, he kept changing his name), fought a general election on the notion of nationalization of insurance and every other form of finance company and the insertion of union / socialist political cadres to oversee the publication of every newspaper in the land.

She probably thought, like me, we do not “need” a government who is building economic dinosaurs with our tax payers money.

“Needs” are what we “need” and the only resource or utility service which we “need” is water. The rest, Power, transport, telecoms, airlines, banks etc. are based on historic notions of desire, not “need” and the desire is maintained first and foremost by vested union members who are too fat and lazy to survive anywhere but on the public teat.

Robert – no twin brother, but realistic to imagine hoards of cousins :-)