The Moped Spot

Several government’s have recently introduced a ‘Scrappage’ scheme which guarantees a trade-in value of several thousand pounds, dollars or euro’s etc for *any* vehicle over 10 years old against the cost of a brand new car. The poor, long suffering, ‘wreck’ then has to be crushed, never to be seen again.

According to all the publicity these schemes are environmentally motivated carrots. Get the old bangers off the street and replace them with nice shiny, eco-friendly new cars. Some countries, such as France and Italy, even go so far as to specify the emission requirements for the vehicles being purchased under the scheme.

One of Britain’s motor industry spokesmen, Paul Everitt the chief executive of SMMT (The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders Ltd), said recently on the subject of Britain’s version of the scheme, “smaller, lower CO2-emitting cars are taking the lion’s share of registrations, which will have a positive impact in reducing emissions…”

I’m sorry but what a crock. These schemes are designed to boost flagging economies and increase public spending in certain areas, specifically the new car market. Anyone who’s anyone in the world of ‘green’ can tell you that it takes *far* more energy to build one brand new car than it does to run an ‘old banger’ for over 100,000 miles…

So is Mr Brown (and the rest of the world leaders) being ill-advised? Of course he isn’t. It’s simply that his motivations are not, and almost certainly never will be, environmentally motivated. They’re always economic.

Oh wait! I hear cries of slander or misrepresentation. The old bangers cough out choking black smoke, leaving waves of pestilence in their putrid wake and they’re better off on the scrap heap! Again I cry nonsense. The fact is that the people who continue to drive the ghastly heaps which cough and splutter their fuel-sucking way up our neglected estates are simply *not* the people who are about to take advantage of the opportunity.

I’d hazard a guess that it’s the slightly better off, the middle class, the Mr I-can’t-quite-justify-the-expense’s of the world; the fence-sitters, the Librans, the people who have been considering it for a while but just haven’t got around to it, that will take advantage. And these people will almost certainly be driving perfectly serviceable, yet old vehicles. Vehicles with several years of life still left in them and many, many miles. Vehicles which, with continued usage, would probably do far less ecological damage to our environment than the production of a brand new ‘eco’ friendly model.

Don’t believe me? Go to your local participating dealer and ask them what quality of vehicles are actually being traded in and crushed under the Scrappage scheme… Environmentally motivated? No I don’t think so. Maybe they should offer free bicycles and bus passes in return for your older car. Or even better a moped for each family member. Now *that* would make environmental sense

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Environmental Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.