The BBC's "Have Your Say" page is more interesting than usual today, as the public speak their mind-brains about the forthcoming "mileage tax" scheme. Straightaway they've demonstrated that the scheme doesn't take less environmentally damaging vehicles into consideration, and pondered about whether or not they'd really like the MOT to know where they are all the time. You can't help but imagine (unfairly, I'm sure) the relevant politicians reading through the comments and thinking "Oh yeah! Hadn't thought about that!"

But as an ardent non-driver, I can't help but feel that what is currently happening with motoring is that people are finally having to pay for the Cost Of Motoring. Most people are appalled at the likely increase in road related tax that the proposed scheme will incur, but at the end of the day, motoring should pay for itself, rather than have everyone burden everyone else's responsibilities all the time. What's really sad is that people are complaining about the fact that they live miles away from elderly relatives; this is the world that motoring has created in the first place, freeing businesses up to move around, freeing up individuals to move around. As energy, and hence travel, becomes more expensive our once shrunken Island will begin to grow again, but it's already too late, because we've all been scattered to the four winds.

Years ago I predicted a likely return to villagedom, to pocket communities the length and breadth of the country whose populous would rarely travel beyond their local borders unless it was truly necessary, unless the benefit would outweigh the cost. Perhaps this is an extreme possibility but I think it is becoming more and more probable, especially if the oil giants hang on to their clean and free fuel patents til they can work out how to charge people for it. You might also call me a reactionary, but I would disagree. The shape that society has is in a continual flux, but to suggest that the present is always better than the past, that we are on one long slow progress is the highest of all arrogances, a way of saying that yes, in the past we've made mistakes, but we don't make them any more. There must have been a time when slavery was a new and exciting idea...

Human progress seems to run as follows:

Man tires of cold hard floors - he invents the rug.
Man tires of the rug getting dusty - he invents the rug beater.
Man (alright woman) gets tired of taking the rug into the garden and beating it - man invents the vacuum cleaner - time is saved!
Rugs no longer need to be removed and taken outside - man invents the wall to wall carpet - time is filled in again.

Thus it is with the motorcar that we don't draw the line at making the slightly too long distances accessible - if we can't get from London to Scotland within a day we feel we're missing out. And hey! Why go a quarter mile into town to do your shopping at the local store when you can take a forty minute round trip to the hypermarket built miles from anywhere! And heaven help you if you try and work out if you're better off after the road tax, fuel tax, car, mechanics bills, etc, etc. A job in Manchester? I can move! If I want to visit the family seat, it's only three hours away, and you've got to go where the work is these days...

(I should now point out, as a declaration of interest, that my immediate family are all intent on leaving the country - three relatives, three countries...)

In the space of a generation or two a trip to France has become commonplace, and we send our privileged students off to India, America, Australia. We even flout our wealth at countries too impoverished, cultures too different, til we have starving African children clutching carved wooden mobile phones. Sadly the world has shrunk far too quickly for us to deal with the global problems that already existed and thanks to the shrinking we've gone and made a load more.