I love flushing money down the toilet

[mbarrick]

I just got back from taking the Wonder Wagon in for "AirCare" (that'd be the provincial government's Orwellian newspeak for "emissions testing"). I passed by a mile because it was a retest. Last time around I failed by a few parts per million on my hydrocarbon emissions so I had to go get the required "pass or $300" repairs in order to reinsure the car. Naturally there is no option about not insuring the car, but that is another gripe. Because my car is so old and I have a perfect driving record it is in fact much cheaper for me to cough up for the unnecessary repairs than to insure a newer car. Then after the unnecessary repairs I had to go and have the car unnecessarily re-tested. Pass or fail I would have been eligible for a year's insurance by virtue of the value of the repairs. It's all a pointless money grab under the auspices of good health and clean air mandated by idiot politicians swayed by granola-farting Luddites of even greater idiocy who would like to see a return to "the good old days" of horse-and-buggy - all at the expense of the poor who cannot afford new cars and the exorbitant mandatory insurance rates that go with them.

Let's think about those "good old days" of horse-and-buggy for a moment. Blacktop, even concrete, doesn't stand up well to iron horseshoes and metal-rimmed wagon-wheels, forget about cheap paving and the ability to properly maintain the sewers (because it would be too expensive to rip-up and repave cobbled streets). The great bulk of the air pollution in any given city comes from industry, trains, and heavy trucks. Here in Vancouver you can add the century-old fossil-fuel burning electric plant that powers the "clean" electric trolleys to that as well. Good old days? Consider these statistics from the July 1851 Scientific American

The 300,000 houses of London [roughly the same size as Vancouver today - MRB] are interspersed by a street surface averaging about 44 square yards per house, of which a large portion is paved with granite. Upwards of two hundred thousand pairs of wheels, aided by a considerably larger number of iron-shod horses' feet, are constantly grinding this granite to powder; which is mixed with from 2 to 10 cartloads of horse-droppings per mile of street per diem [emphasis mine - MRB], besides an unknown quantity of the sooty deposits from half a million smoking chimneys. The close, stable-like smell and flavour of the London air, the rapid soiling of our hands, our linen, the hangings of our rooms and the air-tubes of our lungs bear ample witness to the reality of this evil.

Good old days my ass. Give me a few parts per million of hydrocarbons over 2 to 10 carloads of shit and air that literally tastes like shit ("stable-like smell and flavour"!!) any day.