Letter to EKM (another five minutes of my finite time upon the planet wasted
)
Sir.
Cllr Eddy (EKM letters 6/01) flags up DDC's abysmal record on electric vehicles but only tells the half of it.
1. ALDI indeed agreed to provide 10 electric charging points at their Deal store but apparently once planning permission was granted found the local electricity supply was not sufficient to power them.
It WAS obviously up to powering banks of fridge freezers, fridges, lighting, tills (an upright commercial freezer uses c12kw, the fastest DC car chargers c20kW).
DDC believed them (!) which is why we now have one charge point, often with a non electric car parked on it.
2. Meanwhile NONE of the main housing developers despoiling our district with unnecessary housing development (approx 200 more people die in the District each year than are born) are building with charging points as a standard fitting in spite of the fact that they would only add a minimal amount to the cost of a new property.
The Dept of Transport has written to me stating that they have consulted on requirements to make every new home have a charge point and will publish response 'in due course'. Far too little, far too late. Charging points should be a requirement of ALL planning permission granted.
3. Cllr Eddy alludes to the Fastrack bus service planned for Dover which is about to blow £16 million on a bridge over the A2 solely for buses,horse,cyclists and walkers (paid for out of a Government Housing fund !), to give access from a private housing development to Dover, and a couple of hundred yards from a bridge which is perfectly adequate for bus use..
Meanwhile DDC has NOT applied to access one penny of the £20million offered by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles to provide 75% of the cost of providing on street charging from such as putting charging points on lamp posts which is being rolled out in the rest of the country.
As ever UK plc lags behind the rest of the world as it has since the aftermath of the Second World War when instead of investing in technology, engineering, research and development, infrastructure etc we blew it all on dentures and NHS glasses for people who are now long dead.
The future is with us - it's just badly distributed.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
