At 12:29 PM 11/1/2002 -0800, Parker, Richard wrote:
>Hmmm. Never occurred to me to wonder why there were no listers from China.
>Haven't noticed any from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Belize, Guatamala, Chile,
>or Myanmar either, now that I think about it. Sonuvagun.
And this shows the fallacies to the original reason on why there are no
listers or MGs in China. I believe we do have listers from places like
Greece, Bolivia, Israel, South Africa, and a few other places who perhaps
could add their opinion on this. Although I live in the United States, I
have lived in two other countries and I don't recall ever seeing LBCs of
any kind in either country (Turkey & Colombia). Unlike China, both these
countries are democracies. Plus even if China had more freedoms or was a
democracy with a more active Internet presence, it is likely we still would
not have any listers from there.
Why do I say this? First, to have listers, we must have MG owners. I would
suspect MGs and LBCs in general are either non-existent or rare in lots of
places like the Middle East and Southeast Asia. This is for several
reasons, economic and cultural. For one thing, the availability of service
and parts are very scarce. If parts have to be imported, it could be weeks
or longer to get them. Road conditions in many of these places put low
clearance vehicles at a serious disadvantage. There is more prestige in
owning larger vehicles with more carrying capacity. And in many of these
countries, they have less driving regulations than the US (in that sense,
they have more "freedoms" than we do). In Turkey in particular, since there
are less driving rules (at least when I lived there), the number one rule
of the road is that the bigger vehicle "takes" the right of way. This
aggressive driving puts smaller cars at a serious disadvantage, making them
much less appealing to own.
At least this is my impression. In the past on some of these political
discussions, some listers have been quick to point out that we are an
international list, not a USA list (I don't use the term "American" because
technically anyone from North or South America is from the Americas and
thus an American as the Colombians pointed out to me, USA/Canada/Mexico are
"North Americans").
I for one like to hear more from the international community - particular
those listers in some of the countries I mentioned above who are probably
our lone LBC representatives in their communities. How do they see things
and how do others take to their cars?
[On a OT note - I know we have a lister in Tel Aviv, Rob I think. If
someone has his email address, I could possibly use his help as I have a
Windows/Hebrew character programming issue I will be researching in the
next day or two.]
David Councill
67 BGT
72 B
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