Why I’m smug about being a non-driver

Linda,
Try to use your brain and think before you speak out – likewise the 14 agrees: forget the “smug” non-drivers and for a second consider the people who cannot drive due to age, disability, financial hardship, illness and so on. Remembering that at any moment YOU could become one of them, perhaps through crashing your car or being crashed into by another motorist, or maybe through some terribly illness that I would not wish on anyone such as a stroke, tell me why such unfortunate people should be ripped off by high fares because of YOUR selfish attitude. Bear in mind too that most people in the position I describe are tax payers like you too.

Quite apart from the above also try to think about the fact that non-drivers through choice, smug or not, also pay the taxes to which you refer as if only you pay them.

I’m not a smug non-driver, – I can’t drive. I just don’t have an aptitude for it. After 50 lessons I I was getting nowhere, and anyway I can’t afford to have more lessons and run a car, even if I did pass. I’m sick of how there is a mindset in society that everyone must drive, and it is getting very difficult to find a job where they accept non-drivers. I would say the smugness lies on the driver’s side.

Dear dear Linda! You are on a rant arn’t you?

Presumably you chose to live on the Ise of Skye? I assume you were not exiled there for some reason? IN that case you could, if it was really desperately important to you, move to a mainland location with access to trains.

HOwever, that isn’t really the point: none of us deserves and still less has the right to be sanctimonious about the rest of society in the way which you and the people posting “agrees” to your remarks, are being.

Nikki si absolutely right and if you want to get into a “why should I pay” argument lets mention that many of my taxes will pay for services that only apply to offshore islands and maintaining services such as healthcare to them which I won’t ever use. However I’m not saying that you should be denied access to NHS emergency treatment just because there is no hospital on the isle of Skye.

I think your comment about Which?’s revenue is also laughably inaccurate, but I am forced to admit that the number of people sharing your view on here does make me fear as I have before that many of the people who get involved in Which? are, the better off and the more than slightly ego-centric.

I don’t understand why Dave’s getting so much stick! It seems like the main disagreement is about what the taxpayer should and should not be funding. Essentially the taxpayer will always end up funding some things that you don’t use and some things that you do. If you have a car you won’t use as much public transport (but even then I’d challenge the majority of people to say that they *never* use public transport).

We’ll all have differences of opinion on how much of each service the taxpayer should fund, but it would be crazy if the taxpayer didn’t fund any public transport at all – we’d all have to have cars! That would make any journey painfully slow because of congestion, it would drastically increase emissions, not to mention costs for the average household.

Linda – I appreciate your point that there are services in more rural areas that could be supported better, but I wanted to let you know that Which? *does* work on these issues. We try to work for the benefit of all consumers, so we don’t like people feeling left out. To pick two examples, we’re currently looking into the issue of heating oil (a huge problem in certain rural locations where people have to rely on heating oil instead of gas, and prices are rising rapidly), and we have also been looking into broadband speeds, as we’d like to see all homes with access to fast broadband: https://conversation.which.co.uk/technology/broadband-rollout-frustratingly-flops-into-2015/

Your comment about our revenue – I don’t know the answer I’m afraid or which geographical area gives Which? the most subscriptions. But what I can tell you is that we try to choose our campaigns based on the impact they will have for *all* consumers, whether they subscribe to Which? or not. Consumers who subscribe get the benefits of the magazine, the reviews, etc, and consumers who don’t subscribe (even those who have never heard of Which?) still benefit from our campaigning work. You can see more of our campaigns here: http://www.which.co.uk/campaigns

If you do have any ideas about issues that you think Which? should be getting involved in, do contact us – we can’t promise to follow up everything, but we do want to hear from consumers – rural, city-dwellers, everyone – to make sure that we’re best representing their views.