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Hello. This is my submission for the Al Jazeera YouTube World View interview with British PM David Cameron.
If you’re not David Cameron, then...
...watch my video anyway, and if you like it enough and you want to hear Mr Cameron answer my question,
go to www.youtube.com/worldview, look for my video and vote for it.
If you are Mr Cameron...
...hello, and thank you for taking the time to listen to me.
I apologise if this is going to be a little bit long,
but I can assure you it’s worth it, so let’s get started.
So, Mr Cameron — or may I call you Dave?
Looking at the other submissions, a lot are about budget cuts,
which is hardly surprising because we both know you can’t make budget cuts without making people angry,
so all I’m going to say about that is: I really hope you know what you’re doing.
So, on the basis that all the questions that can be asked about that have already been asked,
I’m going to ask a different question about more long-term policies.
First, a little background. Hello, I’m Andrew, I am British as you can probably hear,
but I’m an ex-pat: I live in Germany.
Specifically, I live in the north-west of Bavaria,
in a beautiful, rural valley sprinkled with lots of small villages.
The amazing thing about this valley is that we have a decent public transport system,
as there is everywhere in Germany.
We’ve got a train that runs almost the whole length of the valley,
and gives us an hourly service to the big cities;
also a dense network of bus services to serve all the other bits that can’t be reached by rail.
So, to give you an example of how well it can work, I can walk from here down to the station,
take a train into the city of Hanau, from there take an S-Bahn train right into the centre of Frankfurt,
and spend the whole day in Frankfurt travelling on underground, buses and trams,
and do the return journey, on one ticket that costs a little under €15.
Here’s the thing: When I go back to Britain, it seems like a complete nightmare just travelling around.
I originally come from Glastonbury, a town of about 8,000 people or so,
right next to a town called Street with a similar population,
and not far is Wells, just slightly bigger.
Now, you would think that these three communities with a combined population of something like 30,000
ought to have at least one railway station.
But no. Basically, when I go back to Britain, I have to find my way to Bristol,
and spend an hour and a half on the 376 bus to travel a total distance of about 20 miles.
I really would prefer to be able to do that journey by rail,
especially when I am accompanied by my wife, who’s German
and doesn’t spend a lot of time in countries where you drive on the left,
and as a result screams in terror whenever we come to a roundabout
and grabs my arm so tight, the blood flow to the fingers is cut off;
and, Dave, there’s only so much punishment my arms can take.
To be fair, my wife was a little rattled at the time, because...
...well, landing at Bristol, the pilot had misjudged the elevation of the runway by about six inches,
and I know you’ve been on enough flights, David, to know what that’s like.
I don’t hold you responsible for the present state of the transport infrastructure in Britain:
as far as I can see, the rot set in back in the day
when they decided to close the branch lines because they were losing money.
This meant that entire communities like Glastonbury were suddenly bereft of a rail service,
and had to travel by bus to the nearest station which was quite a distance,
and as we know, buses are slow, they’re uncomfortable, there’s no space for luggage,
and of course they’re a lot less efficient at carrying people than trains are.
It’s not surprising that at this point, lots of Brits decided:
“Stuff it!” and went by car.
So, my analysis of the situation is that more and more people are travelling by car,
because nobody wants to travel long distances by bus — a few miles at most —
and the main line railways, because they’re not fed by all the old branch lines,
are being starved of customers and therefore starved of resources, and that’s one reason we’re in the mess we’re in now.
It’s affecting the whole transport infrastructure:
not just public transport, but also private transport,
because as fast as you can build roads, they’re filling up with cars: more and more all the time.
Thanks to the power of the internet, I’m able to listen to Radio 4,
so I’ve picked up on some of the things the government’s saying about improving safety on the railways
and trying to get something in place in time for the Olympics so that people can actually get places,
which is very nice, but... what next?
It seems to me that what’s needed is a complete overhaul of the entire infrastructure,
or some kind of revolutionary idea simply to stop the country grinding to a halt.
So my question is: What are the long-term goals of the government regarding the transport infrastructure?
What are you going to do to ensure Britain is still operating in, say, 50 years’ time?
That’s it, that’s my question. Thank you for listening, and...
...well, I’ll be interested to hear the answer. Goodbye.