2 Million Dollar Bills

Lets get one thing very clear! I cant live without a car, I don’t want to live without a car and I wont live without a car, it is as simple as that. It is a personal choice and one that I’m perfectly happy with. For me life without a car is like being sent to live in Hell.

I may not be too happy about the cost of fuel, in fact it has reached the stage where I don’t even look at the cost of fuel anymore when I’m filling up.  I couldn’t give a dam about the constantly rising prices. There isn’t much I can do to change the price of fuel, unfortunately that is in the hands of corrupt oil companies that are making billions of dollars of profit and corrupt governments that are also making billions every year from  long suffering consumers.

Earlier this year I had the misfortune of having to go without a car for about 6 weeks and life became a total nightmare. At the time I was living in my home city of Aberdeen which is in Scotland. My car had been stolen by a low life, my car was never to be seen again, which meant I had to wait for insurance money to come through and then find a car which I liked and could afford.

This meant that for the first time in about 20 years I had to suffer using public transport for a prolonged period of time, until that point in time, I only occasionally had to use buses and they didn’t seem so bad. I don’t suppose they do when you only have to use them sparsely. Aberdeen is a city which basically has 90% of the bus routes operated by a company called Crap Bus, I meant to say Frist Bus and the other 10% run by Crapcoach, I meant Stagecoach!

This lack of competition of bus companies in Aberdeen is obviously a bad situation for the public, you know the problems you get when there is a lack of competition, I suppose it is almost an monopoly. It would suddenly take me 2 hours to get somewhere, I use to be able to get to in 20 minutes by driving and that was on a good day. The amount of times I would be standing at the stop waiting for the bus to turn up and for some reason it wouldn’t turn up and you would have to wait for the next one. Or even worse the bus would be packed full of people and it would go speeding past the stop.

What choice do you have with such a pathetic service? you either have to wait for the next bus or you have to walk, I would have gladly walked, but at the time I had quite a serious knee injury and I didn’t want to make it any worse. There is no point in complaining to the intellectual bus driver, they will only bark at you for having the audacity to ask them why they are only 30 minutes late! it has nothing to do with them! they are only driving the bus and are an employee of the bus company!

I once wasted my time phoning up the local council to complain about the amateurish bus service, which I felt was a poor reflection on Aberdeen and was told that there wasn’t much that could be done. I thought that is fantastic, Crap Bus are allowed to make millions of pounds worth of profit out of the bus users in Aberdeen, by providing a second rate service

People told me I would get use to taking buses, it wasn’t that bad, all the people that were telling me this, had cars and virtually never used buses! Things like going to the supermarket had to be carefully planned out, it is obviously only possible to carry so much shopping bags when you are using public transport.

Why do so many people not bother to bathe properly or use deodorant before they get on a over crowded bus? Do they really think it is acceptable to go out into the world stinking! . A bar of soap and deodorant doesn’t cost that much!

I personally cant understand why anybody would want to spend half their life waiting for and traveling on buses, it is such a waste of valuable time, that could be spent doing something more enjoyable or productive. If that’s your personal choice good luck to you! But it isn’t for me, my life and time is too valuable to be wasted on waiting for  buses that never turn up when they are meant too.

I have heard the  argument a thousand times that car drivers are bad for the environment, I say bull shit to that! The amount of black smoke that I see pouring out of buses on a regular basis is a disgrace, I feel like throwing up every time I’m unlucky enough to be behind one.

I also hear the argument that I should get on my bike, not on my life, quite frankly their are to many unbelievably bad driver on the road and the state of the roads is a disgrace. Now that I have moved to Barbados the drivers are even worse than in the UK and the roads are in a slightly worse condition. The one consolation is that fuel is a hell of a lot cheaper in Barbados compared to the UK, I laugh like crazy when I hear people moan about the cost of fuel in Barbados, they haven’t got a clue.

I will tell you what is bad for the environment, THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT! they have chopped down millions of trees over the past few years in the name of advancement, and they have factories pouring out pollutants that are detroying the ozone layer, at levels which probably equals what the whole of Western Europe is producing. The CHINESE are also responsible for knocking down millions of trees throughout Africa, again certain African countries and their corrupt leaders are all too happy to take the CHINESE money to make their own life’s richer, I meant to say the life’s of their long suffering citizens.

In order to combat the high fuel prices, I now drive in a more fuel efficient manner and as a result I’m probably not spending any more money on fuel than did this time last year. I’m going to continue to enjoy driving my car, I love the freedom that having a car offers. As I said at the beginning, I cant live without a car, I don’t want to live without a car and I wont live without a car.

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