Boris "emperor with no clothes", say experts

"The direction of the mayor's transport policies is becoming depressingly clear", says the latest newsletter of the London group of the Campaign for Better Transport. It is a pdf document which you can download here.

Johnson has adopted a misguided notion of 'mode netrality', abandoning the progressive road user hierarchy, which puts the needs of pedestrians and cyclists first, public transport users in the middle and car traffic last. Now TfL is required to develop plans to pursue Boris's impossible dream of reducing congestion by smoothing traffic flow. Increasing capacity at traffic light and other junctions will increase traffic -- this is road building without building any roads. It can only make congestion worse. Will no-one tell the emperor that he's wearing no clothes?

The report goes on to note that, as well as the cancellation of various tram and DLR schemes, "even Boris the cyclist has started to disappoint", with the halving of funding for the (so far woefully inadequate) cycling network.

In conclusion,

Time after time increasing capacity has been shown not to work as a means of tackling congestion; now it is to be tried yet again. In the last few years London had shaken off its reputation as the laggard among major European cities and had become one of the pioneers. Now it's losing its status as a leader in progressive transport policies.

I feel increasingly vindicated in my decision to spend a lot of time campaigning for Ken Livingstone last spring.

Worth checking out

Some interesting stuff that has caught my eye recently:

Broadcasting guru Richard Rubin has a wise and thoughtful piece about dodgy BBC outsourcing, the Ross/Brand affair (expressing exactly my own thoughts about how this was just a particularly ghastly example of what has become a "nasty, cruel and very regrettable" aspect of British popular culture), and how TV stars can get radio wrong. Also fond memories of meeting Kenny Everett and Keith Skues.

In Ross's case, there can be little doubt that the negative coverage was partly prompted by his outrageous but seemingly sincere belief that his £6,000,000 a year contract with the Corporation was "worth a thousand journalists". It was that remark that prompted me to stop listening to him -- I rarely watched him, in any case -- because the BBC must have, as its irreducible core, robust, well funded and well staffed journalism, and the thought that, at a time when it was cutting journalist posts, such cuts were helping to pay this grossly overcompensated 'star' was offensive, to say the least.

There is a new edition of Joel Crawford's online mag Carfree Times. Among other things, he puts forward An Agenda for President Obama. Nothing less than the fate of the Earth is at stake, he says:

It has become apparent that we simply cannot continue growth in the manner prescribed by the World Bank and the IMF. Unfettered capitalism is the road to vast riches for a very few people, a better standard of living for many, but not all, people, and massive damage to the ecosystems that sustain life on Earth.

The only solution is a completely different approach. We must focus not on material standards of living but on quality of life. (.....) Rising material standards of living have led, in the main, to a falling quality of life. We must focus not on goods, the manufacture of which is nearly always accompanied by damage to the environment, but on services, which can provide a livelihood to enormous numbers of people while improving the quality of life and protecting the environment. One service in desperate need is indeed the repair of damage we have already done to the environment ..... 

He goes on to deal with the transport and energy implications in particular. With the aim of ending dependence on fossil fuels as rapidly as possible, he calls of course for a national system of renewable electricity generation, but also, in the short to medium term, for an urgent large-scale programme to reduce energy consumption in all buildings (labour-intensive work which will provide many jobs), an end to new housing in rural areas and distant suburbs, a new tax on air tickets, a ban on all airport expansion, and heavy public investment in the railway network. The article focuses on the USA but most of what he says applies everywhere, and it is well worth reading in detail.

Progressive London is a new website designed to keep alive the progressive policies of Ken Livingstone. It is cross-party, not a purely Labour affair. It is campaigning on various fronts, including a petition against the latest above-inflation fare increases.

Intriguing revelations from Christian Wolmar, who claims that the Cabinet is deeply split over transport policy:

On transport, it is clear that Geoff Hoon has little truck with the environmental agenda. He is a definite supporter of the third runway at Heathrow, the touchstone issue in this debate. A host of younger Cabinet members, such as the Millibands, more tuned into the Green agenda, are ranged against him. Gordon Brown's instincts are to side with the arguments in favour of economic development and I suspect that means the third runway will get the go ahead in the New Year. 

Bendy buses revisited: following my posts in March and September, London Travelwatch has given its attention to TfL's proposal to abandon bendy buses on, in the first instance, routes 38, 507 and 521. I am happy to say they wholly agree with me that this is a stupid idea:

London TravelWatch believes that there are overwhelming advantages in terms of accessibility, manoeuvrability in limited roadspace, loading and dwell times at stops, and economies of operation to the use of articulated buses on routes with high volumes of passengers. In particular these are very suitable for use on routes which serve main line railway termini where large volumes of passengers often arrive at stops in very short spaces of time from arriving rail services.

Congratulations also to Dave Cole, who has been following this issue as well, and has managed to extract some information from TfL. One commenter on his blog points out that the proposed replacements for the Red Arrow routes (507 and 521) will lead to a net increase in the amount of road space required of 21% and an increase in the number of drivers required of 82%.

And finally, European socialism is back, according to Neil Clark in the Staggers and Naggers:

Across the continent, there is a definite trend in which long-established parties of the centre left that bought in to globalisation and neoliberalism are seeing their electoral dominance challenged by unequivocally socialist parties which have not.

Eight bits of good news

Not everything is gloom and panic. Here are eight pieces of good news on the transport front.

1. The US government is suddenly spending money on 15 projects to boost intercity rail passenger capacity. Amtrak carried more passengers in July than in any month since it was set up in 1971.

2.  Road travel in the USA fell by 9.6 billion vehicle-miles in July.

3. The European Parliament has rejected enormous pressure by the motor industry to water down new EU regulations on fuel efficiency and lower CO2 emissions for motorcars.

4. New UK car registrations fell by 21% in September. The BBC report implies that this is assumed to be a "Bad Thing". They are essentially regurgitating a press release by that gang of shameless crooks, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. Obviously, for the rest of us it is a Good Thing.

5. Aviation worldwide will lose more than £5bn over 2008 and 2009, with scores of airlines expected to go bankrupt, according to the IATA. This is excellent news. (But do not travel on airlines you've never heard of, and do not buy shares in any airline.) The unsustainable nonsense of "cheap flights" must surely now be almost at an end.

6. October's Modern Railways reports (text not on line) that building work has started on Edinburgh's new tram system. The first line will link the airport to Leith via Haymarket station and Princes Street. No thanks to the SNP minority government in Scotland, who tried to junk the scheme when they came into office.

7.  As a by-product of the Thameslink programme, Catford Loop trains from Sevenoaks that currently terminate at Blackfriars will, from next March, be extended through to Kentish Town, Monday-Friday. This appears to mean a 50% increase in frequency, from four trains an hour to six, between Elephant and St Pancras. Unlike Crossrail, the Thameslink scheme is now, at last, visibly going ahead and will cost far less while bringing improvements of a similar order, once it is all finished in 2015.

8. The new Rail Minister is Lord Adonis, who is a railway enthusiast. Christian Wolmar has the background.

Back from Cyprus

We have just spent a week in Cyprus, thus becoming briefly part of that singularly unprepossessing group, The British On Holiday Abroad.

Not too guilty about my carbon footprint, as this was the first time I've set foot on an aeroplane for almost two years. My policy is to fly only if surface transport is completely impractical. Getting to Cyprus by rail and boat would take about a week in each direction. 

In any case, I wouldn't want to get on a plane unless I absolutely had to. Air travel is tremendously stressful, wearying and uncomfortable. It must be the most uncivilised form of transport ever devised. It is also extraordinarily unreliable: we arrived seven hours late on the way there, and two hours late on the way back.

Purpose of visit: The boyf spent his childhood in Limassol, and wanted to show me where he grew up. Much has changed out of all recognition, but he managed to find still standing the house in which he lived up to 1958.

Limassol has been largely spoiled by tourist overdevelopment. Nicosia is more interesting: oddly, the tragic fact of its political division since 1974 has been a blessing in disguise, in one respect -- it has clearly enabled the historic centre to remain unspoiled.

It is very encouraging that political tensions have recently relaxed to the point where visitors can now cross easily into the Northern (Turkish) sector.  The two communities in Cyprus now have leaders who appear genuinely to want to make progress towards what has in theory long been the agreed solution, a bizonal, bicommunal federation. This is the obvious compromise between the single unitary state that the Greeks originally wanted, and two completely separate states, as once hoped for by the Turks.

But there are an awful lot of thorny and sensitive details to settle, and talking to people on the ground it is far from obvious that the optimism expressed in this Guardian piece by Mary Honeyball is really justified. Let us hope it is.

Meanwhile, good news and bad news on the environmental front.

The bad news is the complete dominance of the motorcar and the car-culture mentality. Everybody is assumed to possess one. Visitors have to hire one, or take taxis. Public transport is dreadful. (I think Cyprus might be the first country I have ever visited that has absolutely no railways at all.) Bus services range from sporadic to non-existent. Provision for pedestrians in Limassol is lamentable, except along the seafront. Where there are pavements, you usually find them completely blocked by parked cars.

The good news is that practically every house, in the south at least, has solar panels on the roof. It is a very sunny country, and they take advantage of this to heat their water.

Boris and transport: latest balance sheet

The latest newsletter of the London local group of the Campaign for Better Transport (CBT) is out. You can download it here (PDF file). 

It reports good news and bad news on the progress or otherwise of the new Mayor - but sadly more of the bad than the good. (Why am I not surprised at that?)

GOOD NEWS:

- Isobel Dedring is the Mayor's new Environment Adviser. As former head of TfL's policy unit she entrenched the policy that car traffic must be restrained. This seems to presage a clash with the new Transport Adviser, Kulveer Ranger, who, as I noted a week ago, has delivered himself of the absurd view that all transport modes are equally valid.

- The Mayor says he wants to develop a scheme to protect local shops in the suburbs. If he means it, this will involve being much less accommodating to the big supermarkets (and their associated carparks) than any local politician hitherto.

- So far, the cycling and public transport investment programmes have been maintained in the budget.

BAD NEWS:

- Fares are going up by 6%.

- Ken Livingstone's "100 Spaces Programme" has been dropped. This "would have reversed decades of traffic domination in many strategic locations".

- CBT fears that Boris not only is set to abolish the Western Extension to the Congestion Charge, but might be "softening us up" to scrap the charge altogether. (I slightly doubt whether he could get away with that, myself.)

- The planned pedestrianisation of Parliament Square has been scrapped. So this highly symbolic space in front of Britain's most iconic landmark, supposedly the cockpit of the nation, will remain a mad, roaring jumble of people-hostile traffic.

- As threatened in his election campaign, the £25 congestion charge for gas-guzzlers will not go ahead.

- The Mayor appears to be backtracking on his earlier opposition to the Thames Gateway Bridge (one of TfL's few major errors in Ken's term of office), an environmentally unsound proposal which, if built, would generate much extra private car traffic.

- He has also backtracked on his opposition to expanding London City Airport. As CBT notes, it looks as if he has been "got at" by big business. (What did we expect? He is a Tory after all.)

- It is expected that traffic lights will be rephased in favour of cars and at the expense of pedestrians, starting almost immediately.

- No sign at all, apparently, of any long-term thinking at TfL on the financial and environmental unsustainability of running a fleet of 8,000 diesel buses. Boris seems to have junked Ken's small experiment with hybrids, no doubt because at present they are fiendishly expensive - but this could turn out to be a false economy in the long run.
(UPDATE: It turns out I was wrong about the hybrids. The hybrids trial is being expanded.)

- The Mayor seems to be blowing ominously cool towards the already much-delayed cross-river tram project. Residents, borough councils and businesses potentially affected are overwhelmingly in favour of it. It would be a catalyst for regeneration in deprived areas like Peckham. Its benefit-to-cost ratio is good. But Boris is apparently listening instead to the idiot Tory MLA Brian Coleman, whose distinctive platform is an irrational vendetta against all tram schemes, in the face of evidence (Manchester, Croydon, Sheffield, Nantes, Grenoble, Montpellier, Nice, Bordeaux, Zurich, Melbourne) that well-planned tram schemes bring huge transport, environmental and social benefits.

- Eight major new developments under way in London, such as the huge new shopping centre shortly to open at Shepherd's Bush, have an average of 8,000 parking spaces each as currently planned. This, of course, isn't Boris Johnson's fault, but as CBT notes, if he is serious about tackling congestion "he will need to ensure that parking provision is substantially reduced during the planning process". It is not sufficiently appreciated how much new parking provision acts as a magnet to traffic growth from many miles around. That, naturally, is what the developers want. In the long run, such developments accentuate the vicious circle of an increasingly car-dependent society, a process which happily has, up to now, gone less far in London than most other places, especially in inner and central London. In part this is precisely because of the relative lack and/or expensiveness of parking. This is not just an "outer suburbs" problem. The proposed new Stratford City in inner London, adjacent to the Olympic Site, is planned to have over 11,000 parking spaces. This nonsense must be stopped.

London congestion charge

For readers in London: You have only a couple of weeks left to respond to TfL's consultation on possible changes to the Western Extension to the congestion charge zone. The Tories on the London Assembly say they want to abolish the Western Extension altogether. Boris Johnson's own current view is less clear. For more background on this, see The Tory Troll.

Give your views via this on-line questionnaire. It only takes a minute.

Boris Johnson, the motorcar and the destruction of civilisation

Neil Harding has a brief post entitled What A Time To Be Pro-Motorist in which he points out that, bit by bit, Boris Johnson is moving away from the previous policy of seeking to reduce the role of private motoring in London and to increase that of public transport, cycling and walking.

The previous policy, known as "road user hierarchy", was enthusiastically embraced by Ken Livingstone, but actually introduced in the first place by the Tory Steve Norris when he was a junior Transport Minister in the 1990s. As Transport Times writes in its July issue:

The policy was introduced not because of any hatred for the car. Cars are the most inefficient form of transport when it comes to moving people on scarce road space. Based on average occupancy figures, a bus is six times more efficient in the number of people it can move for every yard of infrastructure than the private car.

The objective in any crowded city where space is at a premium must be to move people as efficiently as possible.

In stark contrast, continues Transport Times, Johnson's transport adviser Kulveer Ranger told the London Assembly: "No mode should be seen above any other. There's no hierarchy here. Those people who need to travel by car get a fair crack of the whip, as do cyclists, bus users and Underground users."

As Green Party MLA Jenny Jones commented: "The implications for me are that they don't know what they're talking about. They've promised to speed up traffic and reduce congestion and to make things better for cyclists and pedestrians – but it's impossible to do both."

For some more of what Johnson is up to on transport, see this piece by Simon Fletcher (a former Ken Livingstone staffer) on the Guardian blog: bus fares going up, kids' tube fares increased, the extra congestion charge for gas-guzzling vehicles abolished.

From the comments on Neil's blog item, it is evident that some people still haven't grasped that cities are for people and not motorcars, and that private cars are to be tolerated only "on sufferance", if at all, in city centres. This means that pedestrians, cyclists and buses should always have priority over cars, and if the cars get stuck in jams as a result, that's tough. That congestion will in itself help to dissuade idle and selfish motorists from careering around unnecessarily in their tin boxes on wheels.

Those of us who subscribe to Carbusters Magazine have long been familiar with these ideas. For those who are not, there was an excellent letter in the Guardian Weekly the other day from a reader in Tasmania, Annie March. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be on their website, so here are extracts:

Cars are a lie. The real costs of the mobility, freedom, comfort and power that they promise include environmental and cultural mayhem in oil-producing regions like the Niger delta; the Iraq war; the 1.2 million people who die every year at the hands of the motoring Moloch; ecological disasters caused by oil spills; and the fouling of earth, air and water during all phases of the life-cycle from the extraction of raw materials to the eventual disposal of the corpses.

As much as 35% of urban land is colonised by cars -- by noise, toxic fumes and acts of violence waiting to happen. This appalling monoculture has turned our cities into wastelands (.....) Car-based mobility has trumped not just community but common sense; divide the time spend driving, paying for, servicing and grooming a car by the distance travelled and the answer is walking speed.

Our addiction to cars is holding the future hostage and driving a planet to death.

What I like about this letter is that it stands back and gives the bigger picture -- it is not only in the environmental sense that the motorcar is destroying our civilisation, but also in the distortion, in all kinds of ways, of urban life to accommodate it, and its deleterious effect on human relations and society generally. Even if a completely non-polluting car were invented, cars would still be bad for us. The problems go much wider than just pollution and congestion.

UPDATE: Christian Wolmar is also on the case.

Why Not a High-Speed Line?

Earlier this year I wrote, in my contribution to the consultation on Heathrow airport expansion, that there would be no need for it if, instead, a new high-speed rail line were built, from London St Pancras (connecting with the Eurostar line to the continent) via Heathrow to the Midlands, North and Scotland, an idea put forward some time ago by Greengauge 21.

Shortly after that, The Guardian ran an editorial, saying the same thing.

More surprisingly, the Tory transport spokeswoman then appeared to be backing the idea, tentatively at least.

An article in this month's Rail Professional magazine is entitled Third Runway? Why Not a High-Speed Line? (pdf). It notes that opposition to expansion at Heathrow now embraces not only the Tory front bench and the Liberal Democrats but also Boris Johnson, most London MPs of all parties, the National Trust and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The author, Chris Randall, goes on to note:

Since it was opened last November, High Speed 1 has cut 20 minutes off journey times from London to Paris and Brussels, leading to record numbers of passengers travelling by Eurostar. Indeed, the rail link is now so popular that airlines have virtually given up competing with Eurostar on both routes. It ought to be enough to persuade the Government that rail, not air, is the future.

A second high-speed line could see a 40-minute journey time from Heathrow to Birmingham and 1hr 15mins to Manchester. Sadly, ministers continue to pay lip service to developing a sustainable transport policy, based on low carbon emissions, but when push comes to shove, they roll over and cave in to the monopolistic BAA and the big airlines. It's time the railway lobby got its act together and gave aviation a run for its money.

Then, a fortnight ago, The Times produced a leader column headed Railways: A British Bullet Train:

The long-term case for British bullet trains is irresistible. The country's existing intercity network is overcrowded, unreliable and growing much slower than demand. (....)

New high-speed lines linking London with Glasgow via Birmingham and Manchester and Edinburgh via the North East would solve this looming capacity crunch. (.....)

The environmental case for high-speed rail is scarcely less compelling. The per-passenger-mile carbon cost of trains travelling at 186 mph is higher than for most current British intercity services, but barely a tenth as high as for the short-haul flights with which these trains compete. And the European experience, including that of Eurostar, is that given this choice passengers overwhelmingly take the train.

The Times leader ended up by calling for government to move ahead fast on this project. However, it noted that rail minister Tom Harris had repeatedly poured cold water on the idea, suggesting there was no hope for any progress under the present regime.

So it is very pleasing to learn today that Network Rail is looking as if it is going to push government hard on this. According to the Telegraph, it is to go ahead with drawing up serious plans for several new lines:

Network Rail chiefs say the case for expanding the railways has been bolstered by the need to cut dependency on oil and environmental demands to reduce domestic air travel. (.....)

The likeliest candidates for high-speed track are two lines running through the spine of the country, one from London to Glasgow and the other along the east coast to Edinburgh. (.....)

Mr Coucher said the need is partly because existing infrastructure is incapable of handling rising demand. "Trains are becoming fuller," he said. "We have been able to put more on the network, going up from 17,000 to 22,000 a day.

"Then trains could be lengthened from eight to 10 to 12 carriages. But after that you reach the point where other steps are needed."

I'm glad this last point is being made. I have always suspected that capacity, rather than speed per se, would be the most convincing reason for new rail infrastructure. Indeed, the first fast line in France, from Paris to Lyon, which came into service in 1981, was originally based on the fact that the existing main lines were saturated. But then if you are going to build new lines anyway, you might as well make them high-speed ones, the better to compete with other modes, notably air.

Sadly, unlike in France, everything in this country takes an eternity to happen. If any of these schemes go ahead, says the Telegraph, it will be about ten years before any actual building starts.

How green are the Tories?

The Torygraph reports this morning that David Cameron is insisting that he is not backing away from environmental concerns. Green policies, he says, "will be at the heart of everything a future Conservative government does".

I would love to believe that this is so. Unfortunately, things that parties say in opposition sometimes get forgotten in the heat of government, or even turn out to have been downright lies, as I noted yesterday in relation to Blair's promises in the 1990s about railways.

Many of us will be looking for some firm and specific commitments from the Tories:

- Will they firm up their opposition to the expansion of Heathrow airport?
- Will they definitely come out in favour of a new north-south railway line via Heathrow instead?
- Will they back the proposed road charging scheme in Manchester?
- How exactly do they propose to tackle the coming energy crisis?

The New Labour regime has proved extremely disappointing on these and similar issues, to put it mildly. If the Tories can really convince us that they will move forward boldly on these questions, even where it necessitates specific policies that are unpopular with the gutter press, then I shall view their accession to government with a good deal less despair than would otherwise be the case.

We're Driving Toward Disaster

A Washington Post piece by James Howard Kunstler, though primarily about America, is of wider interest.

It's not that we are running out of oil, he notes, but that we are running out of cheap fuel of any sort, and this has much wider implications than people have so far realised. It will require some major changes in behaviour, quite irrespective of the arguments about climate change:

No combination of solar, wind and nuclear power, ethanol, biodiesel, tar sands and used French-fry oil will allow us to power Wal-Mart, Disney World and the interstate highway system — or even a fraction of these things — in the future. We have to make other arrangements.

It is, Kunstler suggests, going to be much more than just a question of trying to make slightly fewer car journeys, or producing cars that use a bit less fuel. The "everyday activities of American life" will have to be dramatically reorganised, he says, involving major changes in the structure of agriculture and retailing, the restoration of local economic networks, and big changes in attitudes to land-use planning and urban design.

He has some interesting comments about rail transport:

Fixing the U.S. passenger railroad system is probably the one project we could undertake right away that would have the greatest impact on the country's oil consumption. The fact that we’re not talking about it — especially in the presidential campaign — shows how confused we are. The airline industry is disintegrating under the enormous pressure of fuel costs. (.....) At least five small airlines have filed for bankruptcy protection in the past two months. If we don't get the passenger trains running again, Americans will be going nowhere five years from now.

Here in Europe we are lucky that our far higher population density prevented us from being able to adopt quite the same lunatic dependency on the motorcar in the past 40 years as the USA.

Nevertheless, the lessons apply here too: apart from anything else, an "Is your journey really necessary?" frame of mind seems more and more indicated, something which as a "light green" I had always hoped we could avoid.

14 things Gordon Brown should do now

Were I to find myself in Gordon Brown's shoes -- "which thank the Lord I'm not, Sir" -- I should now proceed as follows:

(1) Admit that Labour thoroughly deserved to lose the Crewe by-election, and sack whomever was responsible for the pathetic campaign. Add that as long as I am leader of the party there will be no more dirty tricks and negative campaigning on personalities.

(2) Take the people at the bottom of the income range out of tax altogether, explaining that we are a social-democratic party or we are nothing. The new overriding theme of the government will be: TOWARDS A FAIRER SOCIETY.

(3) Cancel the entirely pointless Trident missile programme, thus saving £76 billion at a stroke. This will pay for the above tax concessions and also for a new north-south railway line, work on planning which will start immediately.

(4) Bring all the troops home from Iraq as soon as possible, and admit that the whole exercise was a dreadful mistake.

(5) Take lessons in how to appear relaxed and conversational and non-evasive on television, just as Mrs Thatcher had to do. It is perfectly possible to learn these things.

(6) Signal to Barack Obama and John McCain that Britain will always be ready to help out in genuinely good causes around the world, within the limits of our resources, but will no longer be automatically beholden to US foreign policy.

(7) Cancel all airport expansion plans and explain that with the new high-speed north-south rail line from London via Heathrow to the Midlands and North, there will be no need to increase airport capacity. This will help us attain the long-term targets for CO2 emission reductions.

(8) Make Alan Johnson the main public voice of the government, since he is one of the few present members of the cabinet who seems like a human being and actually answers the questions put to him. Sack Caroline Flint, Harriet Harman, Hazel Blears, Tessa Jowell, and Margaret Hodge, all of whom are completely useless. The public is sick and tired of seeing these nannying nags endlessly on the TV. Make clear that future ministerial promotions will be on the basis of ability alone, irrespective of sex. If this means there are not many women in government, tough.

(9) Also sack John Hutton, who is plainly in the wrong party, and cancel his ridiculous scheme for a new coal-fired power station in Kent. Repudiate his extraordinary suggestion that nothing can be done for agency and temporary workers, the very people who most need employment protection.

(10) Initiate urgent discussions with David Cameron and Nick Clegg to seek cross-party consensus on constitutional reforms, including electoral systems and the House of Lords. The constitution cannot be a party matter if there is to be long-term stability.

(11) Organise a quick all-party/non-party debate, without preconditions, on whether we can really do any good in Afghanistan. This will involve military and foreign-policy experts as well as politicians. If a wide consensus can be reached that the game is worth the candle, send in more troops and helicopters forthwith, and initiate an information campaign to explain to the public exactly what are the aims and purpose of the operation. (There will be some spare troops for this as a result of withdrawing from Iraq, see item 4 above.) If not, pull out altogether. If it is worth doing at all, it is worth doing it properly, but at the moment the public is confused and uncertain about why we are sacrificing British soldiers' lives there.

(12) Call in Jon Cruddas and make him a job offer he cannot refuse. If he still refuses anyway, at least ask him what to do, and then do it.

(13) Abandon plans to extend detention without trial, and plans for ID cards linked to an all-knowing database. (It is the database that is the problem, not the physical plastic cards as such.) This may mean moving Jacqui Smith to another job to save her face as far as possible.

(14) Announce that Labour is not a tax-cutting party, and put in hand a major public information campaign to explain why taxes are necessary to help bring about a fairer and greener society. Tell Gisela Stuart, Sally Keeble, Dennis McShane and co. that unless they stop talking about tax cuts you will publicly repudiate them. Announce that the tax burden on motoring will be shifted to mileage rather than mere possession of a vehicle, so as to discourage unnecessary journeys, but the changes will be revenue-neutral, so the overall tax take will not increase. Cancel all plans for further roadbuilding and motorway widening.

It seems rather likely that the Tories will win the next general election whatever happens now. But there is nothing to be lost by getting back on to the moral high ground and restoring some purpose to the Labour Party. As things stand, it is not clear that there is any point in having a Labour Party.

"The car has become the new political frontline"

35 years ago, in his seminal essay The Social Ideology of the Motorcar, André Gorz pointed out that motorcars worked fine as long as most people didn't possess one:

The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don't have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratised. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it.

Martin Jacques -- not somebody I always find myself in agreement with -- comes back to this theme in an interesting Grauniad piece today. He suggests that the motorcar in today's society is not so much an occasionally useful piece of machinery as a fashion item, a piece of showing-off bling, and a political weapon:

The streets around here are crawling with SUVs, usually driven by women, often with a mobile glued to their ear, whose attitude towards other roadusers can best be described as f*ck you. The size, high centre of gravity, and frontal attachments of their SUVs represent a serious threat to cars, cyclists and pedestrians alike. That is why they are popular. They represent a new kind of middle-class aggression, a form of urban warfare in an era when the rich have become unashamedly richer and desperately anxious to flaunt the fact.

Echoing André Gorz, he goes on to note:

Where once cars were a symbol of mobility and freedom, now they are – except in the surreal world of car advertising – a passport to traffic jams and congestion. When cars were for the minority, they could enjoy the freedom of the roads, but when they became the mode of transport for a large majority, there was simply not enough road space to go around and they increasingly became a form of confinement.

The heyday of the private motorcar, then, has passed; all the more so as its fuel becomes increasingly scarce and expensive. Getting people to acknowledge this fact may take a little longer, especially as long as so much media exposure is given to reactionary nincompoops like Jeremy Clarkson, whom Jacques describes as "the embodiment not just of what is wrong with the car but also of what is wrong with so much in society".

Gridlock and Road Rage

This is the title of a TV programme at 21.00 tonight on Channel 4. Apparently it's all about people spending half their lives stuck in traffic jams, and "the absurdity of our small island and its 33 million vehicles".

The Radio Times has this interesting quote:

One expert hits the nail on the head when he observes that, given a blank sheet of paper, you'd never come up with the car as a rational solution to personal transport -- "an individually owned, very expensive box, easily damaged, kills people, pollutes the environment, and they crash into each other".

Hear hear to that. I hope the programme will make it clear that there are practical public-transport alternatives to quite a lot of car journeys -- to a greater degree than many motorists realise, in my experience.

How to run your car on water

http://www.runyourcarwithwater.com/

Ha ha ha! If it was this easy, wouldn't we have heard a lot more about it before now?

Time to prepare for transport without oil

A bit heavygoing, and not very sexy, but important: Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil is a new book by two Canadian academics. They note that we (i.e. the world) are going to have to find new ways of getting around as the oil runs out.

The only practicable answer is electricity, they say. Electric vehicles function independently from how their fuel is produced, which can be from numerous different sources, so electric traction fits well with the need to make the transition to renewable energy.

We have to get on with this urgently. The authors say that, with sufficient advance planning, there can be a "soft landing" into oil depletion. Without it, there could be a "hard landing" provoking economic and social disruption.

Here in the UK, I hope this book is being read by the retards at the DfT and the Treasury, who keep refusing to countenance further electrification of the railways (see e.g. this Modern Railways article last year by Roger Ford).

Unfortunately the book costs £45, but you can read the preface and the first three pages of each chapter here.