That’s it! I’ve done it now! I have got rid of my car. Well, actually, not quite but I have asked the disposal company to come and take it away.
This was a difficult decision, though totally logical. The car, a 1988 BMW 318i, has covered less than 59,000 miles in its 22 years and though in very good condition for its age (at least until the vandals attacked it just over a year ago) it may not pass its May 2010 MoT Test without some expenditure and I think it will be just the start of a series of repairs and replacements which will make the already unjustifiable annual cost even more so.
We do not need a car. Cardiff Bus provide free services to ancient individuals like me, every 7-8 minutes from a stop about 50 yards from our house and these will take us to all the important local destinations. Also, almost every week, my ever-helpful daughter drives Granny Anne to do the weekly shopping – followed by a light lunch here and a good old chat for a couple of hours before my grandsons have to be collected from school. So in the past twenty-one months we have averaged just 60 miles per month in our own car and this has fallen to 20 miles per month in the past five months.
Set against this, after 48 years of accident and claim-free driving my insurance premium is going up annually in leaps and bounds and, for third party, fire and theft, now exceeds the value of the car by a good margin. The governments “road tax” is simple robbery, no other word for it, and not even spent on the roads. Fuel is a ridiculous price (again, mostly tax) and the total motoring costs cannot be justified by our low mileage – on the rare accasion that it might be necessary it would pay us to take a taxi.
After 48 years of motoring (I had hoped to make it 50) it was not an easy decision but actually, I am rather pleased that I will no longer be paying excessive sums of money to parasitic motor insurers and undeserving governments.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Decisions, decisions...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment