Granny Knows Best – Electric Cars

Listen to Granny because Granny always knows best!

I’m not against electric cars per se – although there is an argument to be had about where the electricity to power them comes from, and another about battery technology. However, the basic premise is a good one. And I’m all for anything that can help the planet.
But. And it’s a big fat hairy…
I have a shedload of personal reasons for hating the reality of the bloody things in the here and now.
How am I disappointed, shall I count the ways?
First of all, you can’t hear the bastards coming, and in the country lanes where Gyp and me walk every day you need to be able to hear what’s hurtling around the bend towards you in time to throw yourself in the hedge and mutter a quick prayer to the god with responsibility for the safety of grumpy old women. You can’t do that with Jemima and her middle-class planet saver, and she’s so busy talking bollocks to little Serpentine and Acne that she doesn’t even notice the pedestrians she has left skittled in her wake.
Make electric cars have noise generators, and make it a legal requirement to use them!
Point the second is charging stations. For more than sixty years I have shopped in a nearby small town. But I can do so no more, because half of the only car park to which it is physically possible to carry my shopping has been given over to charging stations for an expected tsunami of electric cars. Right now, of course, the only electric vehicles in evidence are a 1970s milk float, two invalid scooters, and a golf cart redolent of urine in which the Mothers Union ferries the bewildered elderly to and from its business.
All of which means, we have half a usable car park and seventeen crouching machines – most of which aren’t even commissioned.
Ergo me and my like can’t park. Which means me and Gyp hie the Micra to a German hypermarket on the outskirts of the nearest large conurbation.
And that’s the current net effect of electric cars and it will be so until somebody gets hold of the roll out and does something sensible.
Until then local businesses lose out and the pedestrian population remains at risk from eejits in silent killing machines.
But on the upside me and Gyp are saving a shitload of money, or we would be if the booze wasn’t so tempting.