Recently, Boris Johnson jokingly wondered what had happened to all those Trots
and Bolsheviks from the 1970s. Boris, my dear chap, they never went away.
And now there are many more of them, living among us, posing as normal,
respectable members of the human race. It’s just that they’re not called
Trots and Bolsheviks any more. They’re called environmentalists and health
and safety officers.
Think about it. A single health and safety man can inflict more damage on
business and industry than an army of Red Robboes. And the goals of an
environmentalist far exceed the aspirations of even the most hardbitten
1970s communist.
Back then, your hardline leftwinger wanted to nationalise industry, to
confiscate its power and put its wealth in the hands of the people.
Eco-mentalists want to get rid of it altogether. They don’t want us all to
be rich. They want us all to be poor.
The level of carbon dioxide they want us to produce cannot be achieved with
just a slight lifestyle shift. It will require a total abandonment of
central heating, air-conditioning, supermarkets, transport, global trade,
airlines; everything. Not even Arthur Scargill wanted that.
Now, if you want to build a kitchen extension you must satisfy the local
council that you will not be wasting energy. And don’t think you’ll be able
to get a cheap builder either because he has to spend 103% of everything he
gets on hard hats, ear muffs and hi-vi jackets. Because if he doesn’t and
one of his chippies falls off a ladder he’ll be sued and his insurance
company won’t cough up.
Complain and you’ll be hit with the sledgehammer of morality. “Do you want
people to die for the price of a plastic hat?” Well no, obviously, but nor
do I want to be prevented from doing my job by someone who is trying to
prevent an accident; something which, by its very nature, cannot be
foreseen. And nor do I want to be told to buy a Toyota Prius, or a goat,
because some weird beard at the South Pole has asked a computer to predict a
catastrophe. And it did.
Of course, anyone who dares to argue against the twin-pronged society mashers
of environmentalism and health and safety will be ignored by the
eco-bulldozer that is television news. With a Pravda-like attitude to
impartiality, it never gives credence to those who deny man has anything to
do with global warming, painting them as mad, or George Bush.
Whereas every two-bit research project that enables them to show a drowning
polar bear is given blanket coverage. If a fish gets washed up on a beach
somewhere, a juddery-bottom-lipped reporter is sent to say it’s all our
fault the poor thing died. If a beetle in Indonesia is about to be made
extinct by deforestation, that gets pride of place over, say, a murder or a
200,000 rise in the unemployment figure.
Check it out. News reports always say global warming scientists “have found
that . . .” This makes it a fact. Whereas BP and Shell “claim that . . .”
Which makes it seem like a lie. Subtle, but it works.
David Cameron knows that unless he makes all sorts of furry, purry green
noises he’ll be dismissed by sneering news readers as a lunatic. There are
those who say Tony Blair should go, not because of Iraq but because of
Kyoto. How are these people allowed crayons? How can they think the plight
of a disused frog is more important than the plight of a nation? They do,
though. And later this year the BBC is giving over a chunk of its schedules
to programmes that, in essence, will demand we lay down our cars, shut down
our offices and go back to the Stone Age. And no one in power at the biggest
most respected most powerful broadcasting organisation in the world has
thought to stop it. I love the BBC with all my heart but they’ve gone mad on
this one.
Of course, in this maelstrom of propaganda and politics the car is a casualty.
And that makes me the devil incarnate. I’m criticised by some Scottish chief
constable one day for encouraging people to drive fast and then lambasted by
Welsh assembly members for saying public transport is for poor people. Which
it is. My crime is simple. I like cars.
I like the shape of a good car and the noise it makes when you push its engine
to the limits. I like the tummy tugging g-forces in a corner and I get the
same sort of pleasure from a well held power slide as others do from scoring
a 40-yard goal.
What’s more, the car is perhaps the only machine in our everyday lives that
can dump a ton of dopamine into your arterial route map while performing the
humdrum task of moving you from A to B. A toaster cannot do that.
Things that appeal to your inner animalistic being — good food, sex and drama
— cannot also keep you dry in a rain shower or get your flat-packed
furniture home from the shop. The car appeals on every level. Personal
freedom. Practicality. Excitement. You’d have to be a Darwinian oxbow lake
to not want one.
Yet that’s what the modern day Trots and Bolsheviks want. For you to replace
your BMW with a cow. Even though a cow produces more global warming gases
than a BMW. And also doesn’t have electric windows.
The government, however, is even more idiotic. It wants us to buy the car, pay
the Vat, and the tax, and the tax on the Vat, and the tax on the Vat on the
fuel in the tank. And then it wants us to leave it at home and go to work on
the bus. We are being governed by window-lickers.
Did you know the road tax on your car is not calculated on how big it is, or
how much it costs, but on how much carbon dioxide comes out of the exhaust.
Honestly, I wish I could live long enough to see historians in the 25th
century trying to work out why Gordon Brown did that. I suppose they’ll look
at him in the same way we look at preachers of eugenics in the 1930s.
Misguided by scientists we now know got their sums wrong.
So what’s to be done? Well, you must learn to blank out the eco noise in the
same way people who suffer from tinnitus learn over time to blank out the
whistle. Certainly, when I see a drowning polar bear on the news, followed
by a picture of a car exhaust, I put my fingers in my ears and hum old Thin
Lizzy songs.
Second, you must accept that petrol would be expensive with or without Kyoto.
The government has a vast number of health and safety people to employ and
you must foot the bill.
And third, you must steady yourself for the annoyance of losing your licence
from time to time. With 6,000 speed cameras nestling in every bush and
parked van, they will not stop until they’ve got the accident rate down to
zero. Which will be never.
Once you have accepted all this, you should buy the fastest and most beautiful
car that falls into your grasp. You should drive it whenever and wherever
the mood takes you, paying the fines and the charges and the tolls. You
should use it as a tool and as an extension of your personality. You should
enjoy it. And you should also pray to God I’m right.
Because unlike the eco-mentalists, I’m not sure what the planet will do next.
I do know, however, that there is nothing more dangerous than the illusion
of knowledge.
