I'm not the world's most enthusiastic traveller. I travel, more than I want. It's part of my job. It's why I am in Athens this morning. I do it because I think it useful: not because I enjoy it. Candidly, the UK has more than enough to keep me amused when it comes to leisure travel for the rest of my life.
But, there is always something to be learned, I admit, when travelling, and not always the expected. I grilled my taxi driver from the airport to hotel last night; they're always a good source of information. We covered the usual stuff I'd be concerned about; the economy, politics, tax, tax evasion, making ends meet, social stresses (poor guy, he must have wondered what hit him).
Then we got to cars. The Mercedes felt oldish. I looked at the clock. 193,000km. I commented. He laughed. "No", he said "that's 1,193,000km".
What? I looked incredulous, I'm sure. He promised me it was true: a 14 year old Merc taxi, one engine, second gear box. 1.2 million kilometres.
Most cars that age in the UK get scrapped with 20% of that mileage.
The secret was, he said, love it. I don't love cars any more than I love travelling (although I do make them last a long time). But it was an interesting point: if only we would better look after much of what we own - and have the chance to do so - not only would we be greener, but we'd be more local too, since that's where the servicing happens, and more skilful too.
Maybe I didn't need to come to Greece to learn that. But it happened that way.
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Hang on Richard, you say here hanging on to cars is a good thing. But in the past you’ve said that Darling’s scrappage thing was a good thing. So which is it?
I’m not sure I ever praised Darling’s scrappage scheme
I never saw the logic of cash for clunkers
You can easily double the mileage you get from cars here by moving them to a climate where they do not get saturated with salt every winter.
The engine/gearbox are rarely the problem, most are scrapped because of corrosion
There are many 4Wd cars around that exceed a half-million miles but few mass-manufactured cars.
It’s isn’t going to get better either, with modern cars featuring massive amounts of plastic to cover the corrosion..
It’s bigger than cars…
Two salutary facts: one is that IKEA design a lot of their cheap flatpack furniture with an expected life of about two years. Joints in MDF and chipboard generally won’t hold much longer. But if you buy expensive and you buy to last, what happens to the retail industry?
Second fact: repairs are a lot easier, and goods are more durable if you have no electronics. I had a 10 year-old hand-me-down washing machine when I moved into a place of my own in 1990: it was still good enough to pass on to someone else when I moved in with my wife 14 years later. My mother, who gave it to me, was spitting feathers – she had a new machine when she moved into her new house. She’s now on her third machine since then. But then, if you go back to machines with a 25-year life, what happens to manufacturing (lots of white goods are still made in UK) and retail?
It’s going to have to change, but I’m not sure how…