Apparently around 20 per cent of voters think that the Government is lying about its contacts with extraterrestrial life. All I can ask is, why so few? It’s not that more people should automatically assume the Government is lying about everything. I deprecate that sort of cynicism. It’s simply that the proof that extraterrestrial life exists, and has started to colonise our planet, is unarguable. And the fact that no one is doing anything about it, let alone admitting there’s a problem, is proof of a wilful deception.

How do I know that aliens are among us? Well, they’re everywhere you look. Their numbers proliferate daily. They appear indestructible. They have taken control of all our major travel routes, cluster around significant meeting points and knots of them are found outside many of our most important buildings, as intimidating as any old-style picket line and as blankly unresponsive to human feeling as a fascist junta’s presidential bodyguard. These aliens seem to have some sort of forcefield that repels human contact, because you can never find anyone, certainly no one mobile and going about their work, within miles of them. With their orange skin and resemblance to a witch’s hat you might be forgiven for thinking these extraterrestrials are what we used to call “traffic cones”. But that is clearly preposterous because traffic cones used to fence off parts of the highway so that useful repair work could be done quickly. And, as I noted, you never see any human being within a mile of these things actually working. Behind their serried tangerine ranks not a single live human can ever be found. And they say Cloverfield is spooky.

The presence of these aliens gives rise to the greatest space oddity of our time. Why is so much space on our roads fenced off for so long, inconveniencing so many with so little work going on to show for it? How are we going to cope? Repeat after me: Ground Control to Mayor Ken — hours spent commuting now come to ten — I need a Prozac pill and have to practise Zen.

I’m sorry to come over a bit Londoncentric in this column, and even sorrier to be, in Ben Elton’s words, a little bit political. But the immense difficulty almost anyone who has to live or work in the capital now has getting around the city has become more than just another metropolitan grumble. It’s a standing disgrace and a source of shame, rendering us pitiable in the eyes of visitors and making the simplest chores and errands arduous and complex circumnavigations of nearimpassable routes that would have exhausted Vasco da Gama.

Everywhere I drive, walk or cycle in and around London, from distant orbital routes in the Surrey hinterlands to the precincts of Westminster, the road lanes are like Keith Richards’s arteries — either utterly closed or so narrowed that it’s a miracle there’s any movement at all. Crawling along these clogged and congested roadways would, in ordinary circumstances, be about as entertaining as a night in with a can of Kaliber and a volume of Geoff Hoon’s memoirs. But what transforms the experience from a process so narcoleptically dull that even a week of Stephen Poliakoff repeats would be preferable, into an experience so enraging that it causes hypertension more quickly and completely than a breakfast of five double espressos and 20 Rothmans, is the arrogant disdain displayed by those who have been so quick to close off the roads — and then so pitifully slow to do anything to them.

On those rare occasions you do see any man-like form working behind the protective cordon of orange extraterrestrials the leisurely pace of their labours makes you think that they can’t be human at all — they too must be aliens from a world of much lower gravity, because the only explanation for the slowness of their movements is they’re unused to Earth conditions. In West London at the moment, one road — Westbourne Grove — is completely closed for eight months. Why? It took the Allies eight months to get from the beaches of Normandy to the heart of Hitler’s Reich, fighting against a fanatical foe pledged to stand to the last man in defence of a totalitarian creed. Now we can’t even get the roadworks done for one half-mile stretch in our capital in the same time. What’s the problem? Are we having to clear the sewers of Notting Hill of dogged Wehrmacht fighters before the real work gets done? Or have we just given up trying to make this city work?

The debate over who should be our mayor (and of course I’m backing Boris) has so far seen the candidates exchange a variety of blows over the congestion charge. Entirely understandable. It was Mayor Livingstone’s first big call, and the right thing to do, even though my party disagreed with him. But the C-Charge is now ancient history — it dates back to the first, innocent, period of the now long, oh-so-long, Livingstone reign. The world has moved on since then — but London hasn’t been moving. Indeed it’s become increasingly immobile. And a debate about the congestion charge now sounds like a debate about the wisdom of the Scots Greys’ cavalry charge at Waterloo when thinking about what to do in Helmand. Yes, it was a brave thing to do at the time. But we’ve got radically different problems now and it’s fresh thinking that is required. Can we see someone made responsible for keeping our roads clear? Can someone be held to account for this sclerosis? Can someone be sacked, fined or reprimanded for turning the city into a 100-acre car park? Indeed, could someone be rewarded, promoted or fêted for actually managing to repair a road in less time than it takes to send a man to Mars? Or is the whole idea of accountability a truly alien concept in modern London?

In the meantime, I’m going to concentrate on escaping the extraterrestrial infestation by going underground. After all, if you’re suddenly going to find your journey inexplicably halted and held up, throwing all your plans into chaos for the day, you might as well go to the experts . . .

Peril of abandoning our moral heritage

It’s officially Day 6 of the Archbishop row and almost everything worth saying has been said. But let me try. For many Christians, there must be real sadness that the Archbishop attracted attention for his views on Islam, homosexuality, Iraq and the Simpsons, but it’s difficult to recall a memorable intervention of his where the central issue was Christian doctrine. At a time when assaults on Christianity are surefire bestsellers, when the law on blasphemy can be ditched almost as an afterthought, when the pews in Anglican churches are becoming slowly depopulated, there’s seldom been a greater need for clear Christian advocacy.

We sometimes forget that our parents’ generation was, like almost every generation before it for a thousand years, brought up in a culture that described itself as Christian. The moral habits of the nation were framed by Christian doctrine, a familiarity with the basic scriptural reference points was widespread and natural, the principle that we were accountable to an authority higher than ourselves was an embedded ethical reflex.

Now a generation is growing up sundered from that inheritance, ignorant of Christian practice, ethics and history. We lament the growth of selfishness and hedonism, of teenage pregnancy and alcohol abuse, absent fathers and professionals on the take, but do we pause at how a utilitarian morality of personal pleasure makes it more and more difficult to restrain such conduct effectively?

And do we pause to think what role conscience, the recognition of external moral authority, respect for natural law and an ethic of service to others might have in making our life together richer? Let us ask ourselves what we can do to repair the moral architecture that once shielded us from the winds.

Irregular verbicide

Many thanks for your own thoughts, after last week’s column, on the words that grate beyond endurance. I shall return to the painful issue of verbicide shortly.

Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath

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