Make way for the Politburo member

I referred in anarticle not too long ago about the way that the political class in this country see themselves as more important than us the electorate. I included this thought "This Labour government is so anti-democratic and full of self importance. Do you remember Tony Blair's convoy using the M4 bus lane soon after it opened, far too important to wait in traffic with the voters. When the Olympics are on it has already been decided that certain lanes on London's main roads will be for Olympic related business only, anyone want to bet that this will include all MPs? Pretty soon after that we will have lanes reserved for politicians and party workers and then Gordon Brown and his apparatchiks will be able to drive around in their nice new Zills just like he always dreamed."

Now news from today's Times confirms my worst fears "The team organising the London Olympics in 2012 is adopting the most aggressive anticar policy ever applied to a major event in an attempt to deliver a permanent shift in people’s travel habits. The eight million spectators will be banned from travelling by car and forced to take public transport, walk or cycle."
I'm not going to the Olympics, I didn't want them in London, I was right royally pissed off when we won the right to stage the 2012 Olympics because I knew it was going to go way over budget, cost every tax paying Londoner for years and be an excuse to change our commuting habits.

"The plan discloses that the Olympic Delivery Authority wants to make the Games a testing ground for a radical shift in transport planning to be extended to all major cultural and sporting events. It is even trying to deter spectators from using cars for part of their journey and has cancelled plans in the original bid for two giant park-and-ride sites on the M25 and M11. "
The ODA was not created as a "testing ground for a radical shift in transport planning", it was created to get the Olympics in on time and on budget. Since they will fail on those two measures why not try and succeed in a third area, not that they will. Will the savings from cancelling the two park and ride sites be taken into account when the ODA's next budget overrun is declared? I think not, it will just help them to keep the overruns down a little.

"Even drivers not travelling to the Olympics will be affected by the plan because, for two months around the Games, one lane on several key routes in London will be reserved for 80,000 members of the “Olympic family” – athletes, officials and media. These routes, dubbed “Zil lanes” after the routes reserved for the Soviet Politburo cavalcades in Moscow, are likely to be policed by dozens of cameras and a team of enforcement officers."
This is just the start of this sort of lane reduction policy. It was trialled with the M4 bus lane, a bigger waste of time and space I have rarely seen, was extended with 24 hour bus lanes all over London and after the Olympics will be extended still further. For two months there will be lanes dedicated to Olympic traffic! So should the rest of us just stop working for those two months? We can't all travel by bus or tube, some of us might carry heavy equipment with us, or travel between areas badly served by public transport or (heaven forbid) choose to travel by car. I am getting very, very pissed off by the way this country is lurching towards nanny totalitarianism.