Ken's cant

This week Ken Livingstone has been busy justifying the new increased congestion charge for drivers of cars in emission band G or above - which will be up at £25 per day with no rebates for residents.

Ken says that if people want to drive polluting vehicles, they should have to pay for the privilege.

This is a fine sentiment, but bears little scrutiny, when you examine his scheme.

• All cars pollute to some extent. The scheme is favourable to small cars, and neutral for cars just within band F.
• There is no charge for driving outside of the operation hours of the scheme - but what difference to London's air quality and climate change is there if big cars are driven at night or at the weekends?
• The zone covers a completely arbitrary part of London - why are band G car drivers in South, North and East London all exempt?
• The scheme makes no allowance for the number of people in a car. Two band F cars each emitting CO2 at the rate of 224 g/km and each carrying one person is far more polluting than one band G car emmitting 230g/km, but carrying two or more people.
• There is no allowance for the amount of CO2 actually emitted by a car on a particular day: a smaller car might be driven around all day - free of charge - whereas the large car may just take one short journey but be subject to a £25 charge. This is mad, when the smaller car has pumped out more CO2 over the course of the day.

And finally, not all the cars in the scheme are 4x4 giants of the road. Try getting more than three children and two adults in anything smaller than a people carrier (with compliant child car seats). Sure, there are people carriers which are not in band G, but many of them are.

The sad truth is that Ken Livingstone is a bitter little man who wants to do what he can to make the lives of people he hates as difficult as possible. He has no genuine interest in the environment - if he had he would be thinking hard about some of the points above.

Yes, I do drive a car in band G - it is an estate car. Just about the only time I drive it on my own is to move it onto residents' parking in the morning and usually when I am in it, it is full. If the scheme goes ahead, I will have to get a new car as we live 15 feet within the zone and I could not even move my car a few yards into a resident's bay without being caught on camera - although this means I will change my car sooner than I would otherwise and thereby cause even more carbon to be emitted.

So our only hope is Boris.

Offset your infidelity

My friend Tom over at the Wobbling World blog (the link to which in my blogroll, I have just repaired) has recently highlighted an amusing little site - Cheat Neutral. This site allows anyone who is considering adding to the general misery of the world by cheating on their partner, to offset their cheating by making a donation to keep a faithful partnership together.

The site is a joke, obviously, but makes the serious point that carbon offsetting is also a joke. Although I am no expert in this area, it did strike me sometime ago, that if a person is concerned about the size of his carbon footprint, then the sensible thing would be to try to reduce that footprint before spending money on schemes which purport to reduce carbon dioxide on the other side of the planet.

Cheap flights are not the problem

Another week, another trip. This time to the British Virgin Islands (see idyllic photo, left). I have been here (on business) no less than six times in the past three years, although January is probably the best time to come, given the pleasant climate, so no complaints on that front. Only problem is that the flights are all so full we were waitlisted on our preferred route to come out and are waitlisted on the way back, so it looks like we'll be taking the longer route home via New York. Heavens knows what this will do to my carbon footprint, which is already Yeti sized, given that this is my fifth long haul trip in as many months? But it does highlight that it is not just the Ryanheirs and Easyjetsetters of this world who are causing the icecaps to melt. Even the BA first class lounge at Gatwick was packed to the gunwales.

Still, hope is at hand. If the world can warm up just enough so that places nearer home are warm in January, then maybe the travelling masses can go to the South of France by train or something eco-friendly, leaving plenty of space on the flights to the Caribbean for people like myself (who would actually prefer to stay at home).

On the travelling theme, I was also highly miffed to lose my can of extra strong OFF (mosquito repellent) at security at Gatwick as it contained (or could have contained) more than 100ml of liquid. Stupid of me not to pack it in my big suitcase, but I thought I would have got away with it, given I had managed to get a large can of Gillette shaving foam in my hand luggage through security at JFK in December. I wonder what the magic of 100ml is anyway? More to the point, since I had run out of room in the little plastic bag, I had left some freebie tubes of shampoo and conditioner in my sponge bag and this was not picked up by the x-ray machine. Nice to know that our new anti-terrorist procedures are operating pretty much on the honour system.

But on the plus side, I have only picked up one mosquito bite so far, so the OFF was probably unnecessary in any case.