ThatBritGuy:
[Car ownership]'s not an unreasonable assumption out here. Buying a jalopy for a thousand pounds or so is cheaper than trying to get around on public transport. The point isn't whether or not public transport is available, but how much it costs. Public transport in London isn't that much more affordable - if at all - than a car is here.
The point isn't whether or not public transport is available, but how much it costs.
Public transport in London isn't that much more affordable - if at all - than a car is here.
Note £400 a week is £20,800 a year. I don't know whether the calculation that assigns that much in housing benefit to a household assumes a larger family than the 2 asults and one child that supposedly need at least £29,200 a year... By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan
having a car is not seen as necessary in the U.K.
London is not the U.K.
Either you live in a large, dense, metropolitan area or a car is a necessity.
For instance (from my experience) the periphery of Nottingham requires a car because even in parts served by the local authority's buses they don't run often. According to Wikipedia
Whilst the City of Nottingham has a historically tightly drawn boundary which accounts for its relatively small population of 288,700, the wider Nottingham Urban Area has a population of 667,000 and is the seventh-largest urban area in the United Kingdom, ranking between those of Liverpool and Sheffield.