Now it’s true that Fox News is rather piling on in glee here over Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and her non-use of the public transport which the Green New Deal insists is perfect for the proles. But then the pretensions of those who would tell us how we must live are always ripe for a little exploration.
One of the things that used to very much surprise visitors to communist Russia was the Zil lane. The Zil being the vast car (actually, I think, the 1957 Chrysler Imperial, the Soviet Union having bought the stamping plates for the bodywork) that was the perk of the senior apparatchiki. Because, you know, they work for all, in government and party, directing the affairs of the nation. These are highly skilled people whose time is valuable. Thus there must be a special series of lanes in the road so that they are not held up in their travels by the activities of the mere proletarians. The Zil Lane.
This is also why their food was centrally delivered – for such august personages did not have the wait in food lines and rationed shops. They should have the nice apartments in central Moscow so as to be near their important work. Dachas must be worthwhile, so that they are able to relax before another week of directing the revolution.
Hmm:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made her getaway from a St. Patrick’s Day parade in a for-hire minivan on Sunday — despite being just blocks from a Queens subway station. The leading advocate for the proposed “Green New Deal” hopped into a white Chrysler Town and County with livery plates around 1:20 p.m. after marching just part of the way in the 20th annual “St. Pat’s for All” parade through Sunnyside and Woodside. The 2016 model of the vehicle gets an average of just 17 mpg in the city on regular gas, according to the US Department of Energy. [/perfectpullquote]There’s so much to do to save the world d’ye see? AOC’s time is important, much more so than your or mine….no emissions is something just for us proles.
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I have no idea whether the Zil was a copy of a Chrysler but I was told by a normally-reliable source that it did had armour plating (is that normal for Chryslers?)
Secondly dachas varied from the Russian variety of a stately home to the equivalent of an up-market garden shed on an allotment - I once visited one that comprised a really small sauna with space outdoors to cool down or grow beetroot in the summer [either Siberian women don't do saunas like Finnish women or they have a special day for visiting the allotments].
The special treatment of the nomenklatura was beyond western comprehension: inequality in Gorbachev's Russia was greater than in Thatcher's Britain - even using official statistics. Most of the Oligarchs in Yeltsin's Russia were former leaders of Komsomol (ordinary proles didn't have any money with which to buy companies)
I know much of this - I lived and worked in Moscow from before the end of the Soviet Union through to 1997....
Sorry, I had forgotten that - although you had mentioned it in the past. It would help if you explained that although "dacha" means a holiday cottage (and for the middle classes it could be a hut on an allotment such as I mentioned) the nomenklatura used the word to disguise the country mansions of Stalin and his cronies.
"dacha" is closer to "but 'n' ben" than "holiday cottage".
Fair comment - I was quoting the "Oxford Russian Dictionary" lest I indulge in personal opinion
When I was a city councillor, I saw the bus pass was one of the most valuable bits of the remuneration, so I could travel anywhere in the city along with all the other plebs. And it wasn't free, it had to be declared on my tax return as payment in kind.
Do we still have the Heathrow to Central London ZIL lane on the M4? Much used by Labour ministers, if I recall....
;¬)