Missing a trick here.

The BBC have apparently ditched an idea to screen one of those eco-nutter enviromental save-the-planet type programmes after the dross that was Live Earth back in July.




Judging by the working title of "Planet Relief", it would have been similar to those telethon type shows like Children in Need and Comic Relief where all night the viewing public are subjected to hour after hour of dancing BBC news-readers, signing Eastenders stars and hour after hour of Graham Norton.

The show, which would have been presented by Ricky Gervais, wouldn't have been asking us to phone up and pledge money, the BBC aren't doing that at the minute, but instead they would have insisted on a "big switch-off".

The Beeb's decision has angered the eco-nutters no end but I'm very pleased that the BBC have decided not to jump on the global warming band-wagon.

The last thing we need is another programme pandering to the cries of the environmental lobby and trying to persuade me that by taking my TV off stand-by and unplugging my mobile phone charger, I will bring the polar bears back from extinction and save a jungle tribe in Papua New Guinea from the apocalypse.

Let's face it, any good work that we do will be more than undone by the world's growing economies. 'Going-green' clearly isn't encouraged by public transport policies and it's very clear that our elected leaders are using the global warming bandwagon as an excuse to hide additional forms of taxation.

But this big switch-off thing, that could have been a success. Usually the first sight of these telethon shows, or anything with Ricky Gervais is enough to make me turn the TV off.

Are enviromentalists really that mental?

I'm not the world's biggest supporter of environmentalists. I'd rather we did save the whale and stop cutting down the Amazon, but I also like my car and enjoy outdoor lighting. It's fair to say I'm more from Jeremy Clarkson's school of eco-issues than Al Gore's.




There are some great minds that are thinking up great ideas for us to 'go green' and help us save whatever obscure Pacific creature is in the news that week. The hybrid car, LPG, ethanol batteries, wind-up radios and so on.

It's those people we should probably be listening to.

Unfortunately, most people listen to half-wit politicians and celebrities looking to jump on the latest bandwagon than passes by.

Sheryl Crowe seems to think that the key to saving the environment is to cut back on the bog roll.
Like all used pieces of Andrex, I think we all know where this idea should be consigned to.

Let's have a debate

Transport Minister Douglas Alexander has today decided that we need a 'debate' on the proposed idea of road charging.




The idea is simple: Every car in the UK will have a tracking device. It will know what roads you drive on, when you drive on them and, it will know how fast you are going.
You are then sent a bill every month based on the mileage you do in that month. The 'clever' bit though is that you will pay more per mile for using congested roads at congested times. Drive down a country lane a 2:00am on Sunday morning and you'll pay about 4 pence a mile. Drive on the M621 at 8:30am on Monday morning and you'll pay £1.40 for sitting in traffic.

OK it's not a simple idea at all, it's a stupidly complicated idea and most of the revenue will be lost in administration costs, but our glorious leaders think that it will cut congestion and fix the hole in the o-zone layer.

Now quite what Douglas Alexander thinks he'll achieve by having this 'debate' I'm not entirely sure. Call me naive, I'd say that having more than one million signatures on a Downing Street petition against the idea is probably enough to gauge public opinion.

You could argue that the whole idea is a non-issue anyway. I mean with 14m motorists in the UK, no political party in their right mind would alienate about 50% of the electorate. That assumes our political party leaders are in a fit state of mind however.

Road charging isn't that uncommon already. Most major river crossings are now toll roads, the imaginatively named M6Toll is one as is all of Central London. We've got two in Yorkshire, the well-known Humber Bridge, which costs £2.60 to use, and the not very well known Aldwark Bridge, which costs bugger all because nobody knows where Aldwark is.

The most likely way of charging motorists to use the roads will eventually be congestion charges like those in London and Leeds has got that covered as well, or at least, we used to.

As part of the "Supertram deal", Leeds put itself forward to pilot the trial for congestion charges. As a result cameras and detecting equipment was erected on all major routes in South Leeds, tracking every number plate that entered the city with volunteer vehicles also having RFID sensors fitted in them.
Whilst it was merely a trail, HM tax collector could easily start sending out bills to West Yorkshire's motorists, just with the flick of a switch.
Anyway, when the Supertram idea was chucked in the waste paper bin and when the council realised that about £45m had been wasted, the cameras came down in a defiant two-fingered salute back to Westminster.

Of course, I could all go on about how road charging wouldn't be so bad if we all had an alternative to driving but I don't want to be responsible for blocking the blogger server.

And the 'Hypocrites of the Week' award goes to....

ITV News - and in spectacular fashion.








With nothing better to do, ITV News have decided to sent their intrepid band of "reporters" to the ends of the earth to lecture us all on global warming.

One of them is in Antarctica telling us that all the ice caps are melting, that the polar bears are getting warm and that the sea is rising. Something he continued to tell us about for a good 10 minutes.

Then they cut to a bloke in some remote coastal village in Papua New Guinea. He tried to convince us that the villagers here would be the first "environmental refugees" (no, I don't know what that's supposed to mean either).

But it was the way he said it. He was a typical ITN mellow-dramatic, sharp peaks in voice type of reporter who was making sure we know who to blame.
"These people will become the first 'environmental refugees and they know which people to blame - it's YOU!
"Not me on the other hand, who flew 11,000 miles in a 747 just to tell you that and will fly another 11,000 miles back to London where a car will pick me up from the airport, but YOU!"

OK, he didn't say that last bit but I doubt he spotted the irony in what he was saying anyway.

Hopefully we'll have some proper news today. Maybe then ITN will stop acting like a set of complete muppets. I doubt it though.

Planes, Trains and stupid politicians

Airlines are taking a bit of a battering lately in the fight on global warming and yet another politician has thrown in his two-penneth.



Tory MP Tim Yeo is calling for a complete ban on domestic flights. He believes, that by taxing all flights between UK airports and forcing us onto the train, we'll be saving the environment and the hole in the O-Zone layer will be healed.

The only problem however, is he's talking garbage.

Not about the aircraft CO2 thing, on that he's probably right, but he's wrong on the 'take the train' rubbish.

There's a reason why, in Britain, we don't use trains. It's because they're crowded, late, expensive, unreliable, you need to be a MENSA member to understand the fare structure and they don't work in the autumn when leaves fall on the track.

Planes on the other hand are much more comfortable and in fact, they're cheaper. Don't believe me?

Just as a basic experiment, I've got train and plane fares for a one-way trip from London to Manchester, the sort of trip hundreds if not thousands of business people make on a regular basis. As part of this, I'll need to be in Manchester before 9:00am on March 20th (a date picked completely at random). They say you have to book in advance for the decent train fares, so I'm giving them more than a fare (geddit) chance.

Here's how they each got on:
First let see how the eco-friendly public service train did. National Rail offered me a single ticket from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly, leaving the capital at 6:20 and arriving in Manchester 2 and a half hours later at 8:50 via Virgin trains for the princely sum of £42.00.
Now for the airlines. There's actually a choice of three airlines, all vying for my business, so that should keep the prices competitive.
Firstly, British Airways, our national carrier. They'll offer to take me from London Gatwick and get me to Manchester by 8:10 for the fee of £39.10. That's already better than the train but I think we can do better.
Bmi are next up. This time you leave Heathrow, and land in Lancashire at 8:15 but for more than £10 less than BA - £29 to be exact.
But we're not done. This route has a new kid on the block, low-cost carrier Jet2. There London Gatwick to Manchester service comes in at an amazing £3.99, but before you get excited, that excludes taxes. That makes the £3.99 fare a £24.99 fare, still the cheapest of the three and more than £17 cheaper than the 'good for the environment, public service, publicly subsidised' train service.

And that's the crux of the problem. We're deciding to fly because, at the end of the day, we save money. The logical solution therefore in such case would be to lower your prices, improve your service and become more competitive would it not?

Not if your a minister. Improving services would cost money whilst lowering fares would hit the shareholders of the various private enterprises that have their fingers in the National Rail pie.
So instead of lowering the cost of rail travel to encourage the fliers and even motorists onto the trains, what you do is create a new form of taxation to deter people from taking to the sky's or the motorway network.
Except that doesn't work either so then you have to resort to making stupid statements like this one and quite quickly, you're back to square one.

The only saving grace is that we haven't elected this idiot, not yet anyway.

Making Your Mind Up

The world is falling apart, the oceans are getting deeper and we're going to have to learn how to swim by 2014 if we don't do something now.




At the risk of sounding like Jeremy Clarkson, I'm not entirely convinced by this 'go green' campaigning that's been doing the rounds.

My scepticism isn't exactly diluted by our elected band of leaders either who don't seem to be in unanimous agreement over which direction we should be heading in.

Take Gordon Brown's "green taxes" from a few weeks ago. According to him we should all leave our cars at home and stop taking advantage of the 5p flights offered by Ryanair, easyjet and Jet2. Doing such a thing is bad for the environment and for being so evil, we should all be made to pay for our transgresses. Apparently, £10 extra in airport tax is all that it will take for us to repent our sins and avoid an eternity of damnation.

Now all that would be fine if our glorious leaders didn't keep contradicting themselves.
I could happily accept that by driving to work I'm killing the West Vietnamese gumbo tree and that for doing so I should treated with contempt, if I didn't then see the 'Two Jags' Deputy Prime Minister jumping in a limousine to travel less than 250 yards to give a speech on using public transport.

So today's news that the government are pressing ahead with their airport expansion plans which include new runways at Heathrow and Stansted (a major base for low-cost airline Ryanair) doesn't really convince me to join Greenpeace and race to the Toyota Prius dealership.
On one hand Gordon Brown is telling us not to fly because that's naughty but on the other hand, Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander is increasing the supply of air travel and therefore encouraging an increase in demand.

It can't just be me who's confused by the plans to introduce green airport taxes and expand airports to fuel an extra demand in air travel, but I'm sure that there is a perfectly logical explanation.