Scrapping over future of cars

Ford say they want to take your car away in return for up to £7,000 off a new motor.

Why are they doing this? Well apparently their heart is bleeding for the environment. Just as I’m sure Volkswagen, Skoda and Audi were before all those little emission problems came to light. For those of you saying this reeks of more money in the bank and bigger profits, well rinse your mouth out with Wash n’ Wax !

Here you see me in 1979 at 18 years of age with my first car, a Fiat 124 or, as I termed it, a fate worse than death!

At £450, it cost me a lot of nights working in the pub. Notice though, as you look at our council house street in Belfast, that there was about one car to every three homes.

Today in the same street there are now three cars to every house.

Helping the environment won’t VROOM Eamonn and his first car

happen by selling more petrol or diesel cars. It may happen by selling electric ones but the real issue as demonstrated in my picture is that there are simply too many of them.

Ford, Volvo and the like may be doing great car scrappage schemes but the last thing they want to do is not to sell even more of the things.

We need a joined-up scheme and that should be led by the Government, but will we want to follow? We love our cars, so what is going to entice us to move away from them?

What about amazing public transport, better train links, bus routes, cycle paths, more money spent on roads in general?

I just ask the question... you know the answer and that’s why scrappage schemes are looking more attractive by the day. A huge 2.69 million new vehicles were registered in the UK last year…. and I thought our street in Belfast was crowded!