Community Killing Commuting
The Times - Squashed, stressed, weary. Twice a day. Why? by Janice Turner
The absurdity of commuting
There is something heroic about commuters, their stoicism, sacrifice and lack of complaint, as they scrape ice off the windscreen on a dark morning and leave the town they barely know, where they have few friends, because they moved out here for the kids, for the schools, a place they rarely see in daylight. …
Commuting is unnatural, anachronistic and wrong in so many ways that it behoves companies and governments to work out how to eliminate it. The EOC estimates that 6.5 million people would be using their skills more fully if flexible working was available. And I just think of friends who burnt out in their mid-thirties, many with expensive degrees and years of experience who downshifted to escape schlepping to a glass box to spend nine hours a day with people they didn’t really like.
Commuting undermines communities and means towns lack residents who feel they truly belong. It kills marriages and maroons non-working spouses, who become soured by waiting, like the perpetually grumpy girlfriend in the Arctic Monkey’s song Mardy Bum: “And yeah I’m sorry I was late/ but I missed the train/ And then the traffic was a state.”
January 27th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Hell, what a buncha wimps, Ima commute every morning leaving around 6 a.m. usually. I get to work by 6:15 or 6:40 depending on if Ima biking or walking, dawg factors etc.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
I’ve got the same timetable as you, Half, except about 3/4 an hour later.
You have to check out the Japanese for commuter stories from hell, and they work Saturdays and part time Sundays in some cases, and don’t even take holidays they are owed - so they hardly ever see their own home. I guess that is changing with the younger generations coming through - just as well I’d say.
January 27th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
A Japanese friend of my mother’s, he does all that, but his wife is one of the modern ones, so he comes home to the house he never sees and listens to her berate him for never doing any housework, etc.
Peter rolls out of bed at around 8.20 to get to work by 9. Suckers!
January 27th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Not to mention the ninme commute - of about 15 feet, I’m guessing?
January 28th, 2007 at 4:19 am
You’re in deep doo Brett man.
January 29th, 2007 at 4:30 am
My commute’s 5,200 paces.
January 29th, 2007 at 5:06 am
Two miles?
January 29th, 2007 at 7:07 am
At a guess, yes. Five minutes in the car to where I park, then c40 minutes walk in. There’s nowhere to park in the middle of the city, and walking in only takes 10 mins more than the bus, so I get my exercise without having to go in for lycra or trainers - too too embarrassing. Do the same in theopposite direction too.
January 29th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Well, I didn’t like to boast…
But then, I think one’s commute is offset by the amount of money one hasn’t made. So I’d say that makes it… several leagues.
January 29th, 2007 at 10:13 am
So you do 10,400 paces a day just for destination? That’s a fair amount.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:32 am
Well, yes, I suppose it is. It’s only a net 20 minutes out of my day, though, and I can listen to the radio while doing it. Doesn’t seem to have any obvious effect unless I combine it with a lo-carb diet, which most of the time I can’t be bothered to. Though, thinking about it, three years ago I was 14lb heavier, but 8 inches fatter round the waist, which I suppose says something. I must be condensing.
Why did God give us beer when He knew it’d make us all fat once we’d stopped spending the day at the back end of a plough?
January 30th, 2007 at 7:25 am
Why did God give us beer when He knew it’d make us all fat once we’d stopped spending the day at the back end of a plough?
Now that’s a fine question. I suppose the need to store grain has been outrun by cheap transportation. Ima ponder on it.
January 30th, 2007 at 8:51 am
Walk faster. Seriously it’ll work.
January 31st, 2007 at 1:13 am
Just marched in at 130 paces per minute. Any faster and I’ll join the Light Infantry. (King’s Own Yorkshire, as was.)
January 31st, 2007 at 7:52 am
Hasn’t Gordon Brown killed it?
January 31st, 2007 at 8:40 am
No, they were merged in 1968. Just recently they became part of The Rifles. They’d put themselves about in their day, mind you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King’sOwnYorkshireLightInfantry
January 31st, 2007 at 9:22 am
Oh, see what you mean. Yes, he killed the Light Infantry. Bleedin’ Jock.