Cyclepath psychopaths

by Alan Tyers

Everyone should leap for joy and hug their nearest polar bear after the news that large companies are encouraging people to cycle to work.

It’s one of the most firmly held beliefs of your average liberal that cycling is a wonderful thing and we should all do it as much as possible.

Personally, I abhor this Cycle To Work scheme, and not just because it’s endorsed by the absurd Mayor of London. Perhaps Bonking Boris misunderstood the offer of “a ride with Kelly Brook”.

London cyclists are a plague and a menace to pedestrians and motorists alike. Is there any other group in society so wilfully hypocritical, so certain of their moral superiority?

They frequently ignore traffic lights and zebra crossings, nearly running down pedestrians on a daily basis. They cycle on the pavement when they so choose; this is unforgivable for anyone old enough to have removed their stabilisers.

Cyclists, as a group - and they are a group, with their irritating little group go-slows and militant demos that slow up the traffic on a Friday - need to make up their minds if they’re road users who should be treated like other vehicles, or pavement users with no such rights.

A bike is a fine diversion for a ride in the countryside, or as a plaything for a child. But it should not be promoted as a mode of transport in a large city. These two-wheeled maniacs must be stopped, not encouraged.

Time for a change

by Greg McDonald

If you're feeling gloomy today, you're not alone - for today our dark winter evenings will make half of us too depressed to get our work done on the most unproductive day of Britain’s year.

The murk gathering across Britain today is nothing to do with recession, unemployment, or even Nick Griffin, but the earlier nights resulting from turning the clocks back at the weekend.

But unlike recession and fascism, there's a very simple cure for Britain’s Winter Blues: we should ditch Greenwich Mean Time and switch to European Central Time. And not just for the sake of productivity.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (Rospa) recalls an experiment in the late 1960s where Britain spent two winters leaving work in the safer light of British Summertime.

Rospa’s evidence knocks the GMT argument off its bike: using European Time saw serious accidents fall by 2,500 a year.

And while back then opposition to abandoning GMT came from Scots unhappy to see their winter sun rise as late as 10am, today Lord Tanlaw’s Lighter Evenings Bill rightly proposes granting the Scots the devolved power to make their sun rise whenever they choose.

Moving to the same time zone as the enlightened Spanish and Portuguese would not only bolster the morale of those of us feeling gloomy today - it would boost our safety too. High time for a change.

No denying climate change

by Greg McDonald

The news that the Arctic ice could melt and become open sea by 2020 should shock world leaders at December’s UN Climate Change Conference into radical action to address the man-made crisis which threatens human existence.

British polar explorer Pen Hadow predicts that the Arctic’s summer ice cover will be entirely lost, destroying species, warming the planet, raising sea levels, creating millions of refugees, and threatening human life.

There is no doubt now, among scientists, politicians or the public, about global warming. It’s real, we made it, and its catastrophic threat to continued human existence is imminent.

Yet while the tools to deal with climate change exist, and public support for their use is overwhelming, our leaders are failing us.

The best chance for the planet is the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December, at which scientists will demand radical and immediate action to alter the energy economy and rebuild ecosystems, warning that soft targets and delays will have disastrous consequences.

Hadow’s revelation of the shocking disappearance of the Arctic in our lifetimes must silence the madness of climate change deniers and end the greed of polluters alike, and spur our leaders at Copenhagen to understand that inaction is inexcusable.

Power down

by Alan Tyers

Sensible people have known it for some years – and now the Government agrees. We’re going to run short on electricity…

According to the Government, 2017 could be the year our domestic demand for energy outstrips supply, with the prospect of some good old-fashioned 1970s-style blackouts the only apparent solution.

The headline-friendly sound bite being suggested is that we will be lacking the amount of electricity it takes to power Nottingham for a day.

Surely the people of Notts could take one for the team here and go about their business in the dark for 24 hours? Failing that, Brits will have to get used to having their power off for some controlled periods of time.

This, really, ought to be a shocking (as it were) wake-up call: we’re simply way too greedy with electricity in our daily lives. And targets to have 40% of power provided by sustainable means by 2020 look, at today’s rate of progress, to be wildly optimistic.

The problem, though, might lay in one of Britain’s greatest strengths: making the best of a crisis.

No doubt the Blitz spirit will come through and we’ll all bond and have a laugh playing with candles for a bit, and people will look back fondly on the blackouts of 2017 as being great days. I’m sure we’ll all get through it unscathed.

But the harsh reality is we’re using way too much power – and that situation simply cannot continue for ever. Can we wean ourselves off it a bit?

Space travel begins at home

by Greg McDonald

As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landings, the crew of Apollo 11 are right that we earthlings must not lose the urge to explore ever further – and right that we must find the will to save our own planet from ourselves.

Some questioned the moral justification for the space race between the USA and the USSR which, though it ultimately led to Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins’ “giant leap for mankind”, cost billions of dollars and many lives.

But Armstrong is right today to say that the race “allowed both sides to take the high road with the objectives of science and learning and exploration”.

Yet, marking the ruby anniversary of their achievement with a reunion and a series of addresses, the three not only dared to dream of reaching Mars by 2035, but rightly reminded us of more pressing challenges back on terra firma.

Michael Collins’ calls for better treatment of the Earth, and particularly for improved environmental controls, is a reminder that the Moon landings ultimately taught us just as much about the value of our fragile planet as they did about outer space.

While the first Moon landing remains perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most iconic, moment in human history, the Apollo 11 crew are right that we must now set our sights on equally challenging goals – finishing on Mars, but beginning with the Earth.

Winds of change

by Greg McDonald

Across the misty fields beyond London the beast looms, a ghostly monolith feared by the local children, its face expressionless and strange, a darkling phantom against the darkening sky.

No, it’s not Peter Mandelson, but one of the thousands of 300ft-high wind turbines the Government is bringing to Britain.

Critics of wind farms, who claim they disfigure our countryside, need to wake up and smell the manure – if we fail to act now on climate change, there won’t be a countryside to preserve.

The Government, it seems, has finally woken up and smelled just what world leaders have spread over green issues, with meaningless targets set at long after they’re all dead.

And so today’s green energy revolution – which aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 34% within 11 years, create four environmentally friendly eco-towns across England, allow the Government takeover of electricity grid connections, and create 1.2 million new green jobs – is fantastic news.

Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, is right to tell rural Britain’s Nimbys that the wind turbines at the heart of the plan “have to go somewhere”.

And if Ed wants to build one in my back yard, he can send the builders round any time he likes. Wind turbines don’t only represent the promise of a future for our children, they will power 15 million homes in the next 11 years, and we should welcome these haunting additions to our landscape with giant open arms.

Hot Hot Hot!!!

by Greg McDonald

Phew! As sweating bookies slash the odds against the UK experiencing its highest ever temperatures, this week’s heatwave is surely a vision of Britain’s future, in which our tanned grandchildren buzz like noisy mosquitoes around the barbecue while we finish the Monday lunchtime siesta under a Yorkshire olive grove.

Of course we’ll bore them with stories about how there was once green grass in Hyde Park and nobody slept in the day, but they won’t really believe us.

For with global warming changing the face of the country irrevocably, these may be the last British summers as we’ve known them, the warm breeze blowing in a more European lifestyle of long summer evenings at pavement cafes, and changes to a historically reserved national character very much a creation of our climate.

A diverse bunch we may be these days, but while sun-kissed Roman Romeos have long wept to see Juliets depart, the British male has rarely fallen sobbing to his knees at Paddington station.

Indeed, Britain’s climate is changing so much that the Met Office has today delivered the first "heat health" warning, telling the more fragile of us to avoid doing anything too strenuous, take a break from outdoor work around midday and drink lots.

Lots of water, that is – in Britain’s burnt new world, such dehydrating Olde Worlde dangers as a pint of ale or an honest cuppa are off limits. Bring back the rain!

Sick child Of Europe

by Alan Tyers

Britain’s kids are among the unhappiest in the continent. Across a bundle of factors including health, ability to talk to parents and low chances of being in education or training, the UK came 24th out of 29 in a new survey.

Only the unappealing prospects of a young life in Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia and Lithuania were worse, as was Malta, which always seems quite a nice place, but there you have it.

What does this all mean? Is it linked to our triumphant position in the binge-drinking, drug-taking and teenage pregnancy tables, where Britain is enjoying a period of continental dominance that would put our three Champions League semi-finalists to shame? Is it our pandering schools system, where teachers dare not discipline a child for fear of reprisal? Is it our celebration of yobbishness and ignorance? Is it family breakdown? Is it the PS3? Is it knives? Is it Blu WKD?

One person who most certainly does not know is Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes.

“The fact that we created a new Government department to focus solely on children, schools and families shows the increased importance being given to children in this country,” says the Minister.

If you want an example of why this Government is spending so much and achieving so little, look no further. She’s saying: “Don’t worry that the evidence suggests we are failing badly, we’ve set up a department.” The solution to any problem? More talking, more public money, more initiatives, no change.

“Our Children’s Plan is our long-term vision and it puts children and families at the centre of everything Government does,” says Hughes.

This is just an empty… I was going to say “soundbite”, but that implies some sort of rhetorical punch. It is literally meaningless. Are children and families at the forefront of policy in Afghanistan? Or pensions? Really? Hopeless.

Looks like our kids will have to sort it out for themselves.

Autumn leaves me smiling

By Greg McDonald

Today, as the first September storms deluge the South West, the richest clubs already top (and spoil) this winter’s Premier League season, and it gets dark during the long wait on Platform 2 after work, forgive me but I can’t help myself: in spite of the rains and delayed trains, I love England’s cold, damp autumns, and I don’t envy precipitation-fearing jetsetters like Man Utd star Nemanja Vidic all the sun-traps in Spain.

Southern Europe’s hot alright, but in a straight-out beauty contest our autumn takes gold. It’s just that, in the madness of our 24/7 lives, we don’t pause to notice it.

Which is why fair-weather Old Trafford star Vidic only had it half right last week when he lamented the English style of living, saying: “People work so hard they don’t have the time to feel the joy of life.”

Right on, Nemanja. But amid the fear-mongering in the media, the time pressures of modern life, and some old fashioned British whingeing, if we pause to appreciate what’s best about it, Britain - especially at this time of year - can really be not a bad place to live.

Maybe, like the decaying leaves beginning to line London’s streets, I’m just getting old and soft, but the jetsetters can keep the Costa del Sol - I’ll take autumn in England any (rainy) day.

Toll of motoring

By Greg McDonald

With nine million motorists set to see bills rise, fighting against green taxes shows all the foresight of a driver arguing about whose turn it is to pay a bridge toll while careering into the river.

To listen to cynics crying, “Stealth tax!” you’d think our taxes were a sort of pickpocketing that ends up directly in ministers’ bank accounts. Of course, none of us enjoy paying tax – and £245 is no small change for most of us drivers – but we all enjoy the hospitals, schools, police and armed forces which make Britain all it is.

But while it’s only fair that those who cost our society and environment most should pay more, fuel bills are hitting the poorest too hard – and the Government must also find less regressive ways to get the worst cars off the roads.

Offering drivers cash incentives to scrap ageing gas guzzlers is an excellent manoeuvre. By contrast, in the face of the world’s oncoming collision with oblivion, London mayor Boris Johnson’s reversal of Ken Livingstone’s congestion charge for Chelsea Tractors shows all the judgment of a drunk at the wheel.

The Government must introduce subsidies and tax break incentives on green vehicles, and invest more in both green public transport and green motoring solutions. But if we want to lessen the coming crash, in reality all of us have to accept there’s a toll that needs paying.