Carnage

After driving up the A1 and back this weekend, both times in fog, I can easily understand how crashes like those on the A19 yesterday can happen. On my A1 journey, several times I was overtaken by lunatics flying through the fog while I could barely see 50 metres in front of the car. Some couldn't even be bothered to switch on their fog lights.

Life is so fragile and can be snuffed in an instant, so I really can't understand what motivates people to drive like this.

Speaking of local MPs

As I said in the previous post, there's been little support for Jim Cousin's EDM. Perhaps it will come.

However, whilst others are trying to save Tyne & Wear's public transport, Jarrow MP Stephen Hepburn has been busy sniffing out information for accidents on the A1. It's no secret that Hepburn is one of the cheerleaders for dualling the A1 in Northumberland, and his enquiry through Parliamentary questions over accidents and deaths on the A1 looks like a continuation of his campaign of sucking up to the Journal.

Normally, his Parliamentary questions precede one of his regular Gazette propaganda pieces so don't be surprised if one on A1 dualling turns up soon.

Hepburn dimissed the government's own studies as "multi-modal rubbish", so it looks some like barrel scraping is going on to build a case.

Looking at the figures he's been given, it looks like there's nothing for Hepburn to use to justify dualling the A1 in safety terms, unless he takes a creative view to interpreting them. The figures given broadly support the European Road Assessment Program's (EuroRAP) assessment of the A1 as low to medium risk. The A1 doesn't even appear on the last 2006 report of Britain's most dangerous roads.

Here is a quick picture of the Parliamentary road safety stats:

The long term accident trend is downwards, but what I would find disconcerting is the proportionately higher number of deaths to accidents in Northumberland compared to Tyne & Wear, although this may have something to do with emergency services response times and distances to hospitals in rural areas. If an argument was to be had here it would be for an expansion and public funding of the Great North Air Ambulance Service, instead of it having to rely on charitable donations. That I would support.

But on terms of dualling the A1, nothing much here to see.

Keep Metro public

One of the few Labour MPs with any principles, Jim Cousins, has raised an Early Day Motion, EDM 792, calling for the Tyne & Wear Metro to avoid the greedy clutches of privatisation. The interesting thing about the EDM is the remarkable dearth of North East MPs - only three North East MPs have signed up to the EDM.

The PR bods at Nexus have been desperate to deny there's privatisation afoot, but any effort to move a function of the Metro infrastructure from the public to the private sector is privatisation.

I fail to see any benefit privatisation of the Metro would bring for the people of Tyne & Wear. Given the current economic climate, presumably the financing would have to come from government, either directly or roundabout via bailed-out banks. As the EDM describes, bidders include corporations from Hong Kong, the Netherlands and Germany, which means a key part of our local transport infrastrucure will be in the hands of board room directors in other countries.

Our national rail system is a shambles and the disastrous Metronet farce in London illustrate just how poor privatised rail can be.

Given that public transport systems like Metro also feature heavily in policies aimed at reducing car use and reducing climate changing emissions, it's irresponsible to hand it over to external bodies.

Tesco Vile

Tyne Crossings Alliance honcho Paul Winch has another target in his sights, and it's the supermarket that helps itself to more than a little: Tesco. He has a new site Hebburn:TescoVille?, to chronicle Tesco's bid to add Hebburn to its list of retail fiefdoms and the campaign to stop Hebburn from becoming another carbon copy town where local business makes way for giant retail sheds.

Key in the list of charges is that a developer and retailer were chosen before South Tyneside Council put it to public consultation.

And this is the council that praises itself for consultations?

Green gold

The algal biofuels story sounds too good to be true, so it probably is.

I have an alarm in my head which goes off whenever I hear the phrase "carbon neutral". My right eyebrow involuntarily raises in a Spock-like fashion and I look for the catch. The term itself sits uncomfortably with me, along with 'carbon offset'. Anyhow, the concept goes like this: when the fuel is burned it releases only the amount of CO2 the biological fuel source absorbed during growth. So far so green. The cynical devil on my shoulder argues that under the same rules fossil fuels could be classified as carbon neutral as they only emit the amount of CO2 that was sequestered millions of years ago by dead vegetation.

To be truly carbon neutral, the process of growing, gathering, processing and transportation should not result in a net increase in emissions. That means that before the fuel gets to the tank in your car each step in the process must either be powered by renewable energy and/or more carbon neutral energy sources.

In an economic culture where growth rules, successful carbon neutral fuels would ensure that we become a victim of that success. The algae fuel would be subject to usual market forces (assuming we avoid daft minimum biofuel use rules like the EU is trying to push), so as demand raises, so will production. Whilst the algae sucks up CO2, when it burns it will put it back. There is no growth, but there also is no net reduction in emissions. The most that can be hoped for is that the rate of CO2 emissions growth may be reduced.

Whilst such initiatives may sound impressive, they don't meet the key challenge - we need to reduce our carbon emissions. Even if every car in the world could sustainably run on biofuels, we would still need to make drastic cuts in the carbon budget if we want a hope of staving off runaway climate change.

With this post I'm afraid I'm calling shenanigans somewhat on many greens who see a future in algal biofuels and a way of weaning our economy off fossil fuel. Don't get me wrong, I can see a limited opportunity for such a product, but only one which fits into a diverse energy source model, with the focus on net reductions in CO2 rather than mere neutrality.

So I'm not so cynical that I can't see the investment possibilities, and I'd much prefer to see more investment in such initiatives than drilling for more oil, but a lot of people will get rich on what is essentially a status quo technology, a 'less worse' solution.

To see these biofuels as some great rescue from growing emissions could be dangerous wishful thinking.

Easy now

A 50mph speed limit? Sensible, rational and forward thinking? (well, apart from the biofuels thing that is)

The road fundamentalists will hate it. The libertarians will fume against a reduction in their right to fuck up the planet.

The sooner some brave PM brings lower road speeds here the better.

Poshes for Porsches

Well, BoJo had his chance, but as promised he's indicated who he's really representing as Mayor of London - the toffs.

Okay, it's cheap class shot. But if you want a real indication of where the Tories are over climate change then here you have it. They're all over the place.

I had some hopes for Boris. Despite being a professional buffoon and a Tory, he ticked some green boxes. A cyclist; against Heathrow expansion. It looked quite promising.

Personally, I was in two minds about the CO2 levy. On the one hand it would help London reduce it's transport CO2 emissions by encouraging some people to move over to lower emissions vehicles, whilst at the same time raising money for the authority to adapt to climate change. Those new flood plans will have to be paid from somewhere.

On the other hand though, the congestion charge was about congestion, not emissions, and it seems unfair to target one sector of society (albeit one which is rich enough to afford to run fuel guzzlers) when any initiative to reduce emissions should be equitable.

But the real issue at stake, in which Boris rolled over, is a matter of real principle and democracy: the concept of who decides how London (and by extension our society) should be run. Porsche said they knew what was right for London, and took the Mayor to court. It should be beholden on any mayor to challenge Porche's arrogant presumption of superiority. But once in Ken's office, Boris couldn't wait to let the German toff-mobile makers win and sign them a cheque for £400k. He didn't even negotiate a suitable compromise.

Boris' unconditional surrender to Porsche's legal blitzkrieg couldn't be much clearer - the rights of a luxury car manufacturer and its customers come before action on climate change and the concept of the primacy of the office of the state to run state affairs.

It should keep the CBI happy for a nanosecond though.

How independent is independent?

A great post from punkscience, discussing the sinister use of allegedly 'independent' organisations to propagate the opinions of whoever is paying the cheque. This technique isn't limited to corporate 'think-tanks' or 'independent analysts' - the state isn't afraid to use a bit of the old 'independent' subterfuge to mislead the public too.

It reminded me of how our local education bodies on Tyneside were marshalled to produce a teaching resource website called 'xingthetyne' to promote the second Tyne Tunnel project. The creators of the website, South Tyneside and North Tyneside Education Business Partnerships, (along with the education departments of North and South Tyneside prostituting themselves to the cause) claimed it was to encourage student participation in democracy and citizenship. But all of the information on the website came exclusively from the tunnel sponsors, and naturally represented their views. Despite the objections to the tunnel, none of the opposition viewpoints were represented in the material.

One question was 'Why do we need a second tunnel?', instead of analysing if there was a 'need' for a new tunnel. A clear case of teaching children what to think instead of how to think. I wonder if the genius who wrote this beauty is now spending their time compiling consultation questionnaires for South Tyneside Council.

What was meant to be an independent educational resource was little more than a marketing tool to sell roads to kids and perpetuate the 'car is king' culture, and received some enthusiastic support from Labour leader Councillor Paul Waggott.

The 'xingthetyne' site now seems to have disappeared into the internet ether, apparently no longer needed now the mission to get permission to build the tunnel has been successful.

I'm now expecting the local waste partnership to sponsor a new educational resource "How incinerators are great and getting cancer from the shit they spew out isn't too bad actually."

How many deaths is a flight worth?

Yet again, George Monbiot produces a thought-provoking analysis. Today he discussed the freaky way in which economics is used to justify behaviours we wouldn't, as normally morally concious beings, objectively consider as good.

Economics, as envisaged by it's father Adam Smith, should be used as a tool to make existence better for humanity. But instead of a tool, it's used as a weapon, and in the case of Heathrow cited by Monbiot used to hammer through developments which may not just directly damage a minority, but contribute to the erosion of the general well-being of us all.

The 'economic benefits' argument is often used to justify anything from the second Tyne Tunnel to a new runway at Heathrow. There are similarities. Both projects promise (doubtful) 'economic benefits'. Both projects are driven by a Labour government for the benefit of a minority. But both projects also promise significant environmental degradation, and guide us towards a future we should be carefully edging away from - rather than running for the cliff edge at full tilt.

Projected economic benefits are often wholly subjective and dependant on a wide range of wildly optimistic scenarios and unmeasurable factors. But now the economic benefit argument is being twisted further in a sick accounting - a deadly ledger to tot up the value put upon lives of the poor in other countries.

Some (who sometimes falsely call themselves libertarians) cry that this is our 'right'. We pay for the 'right' to consume with our economic success and superiority, blind or uncaring that it comes at a price that is often paid by others. Those rights are allegedly inalienable - irrespective of the damage done to others. Anything that challenges those perceived rights, like laws, taxes or regulations, are derided as interventionist, dictatorial or that lazy old cliché, 'nanny state'. This is mistaking true human rights for an excuse to do whatever the hell we want; free from society, government and civil responsibility and displacing any kernel of guilt with the excuse that "it's my right".

Like a disease, this behaviour has it's own defence mechanisms - even daring to suggest that these attitudes form a core of the anti-social behaviour which haunts our society attracts contemptuous charges of being sanctimonious.

Decisions based upon economic factors will always have a place; after all, economics is still just a tool. But we should all worry when lives are measured in pounds and dollars and our rights in reckless behaviour.

In an ideal world the true rights of everyone - rich and poor - would be balanced through democracy and expressed with the currency of human rights. The need for this balance is acute and will become more so with the effects of a heating planet. Unfortunately in the feudal corporate/consumer system we currently inhabit the shallow 'rights' enjoyed by the affluent will be paid with the lives of the poor.

Petrol nazis

New fuel protest group Transaction 2007 is planning a series of protests across the country over the price of petrol and diesel fuel. Essentially it's a narrow self interest group which is demanding cheaper fuel, although the Road Hauliers Association has distanced itself from the protest and Transaction 2007.

Whilst the RHA has voiced concerns about protest methods, it still seems an odd position to take when you consider that on the face of it Transaction 2007 and the RHA have some similar objectives.

Although claiming not to be a militant organisation, some of Transaction 2007's vague demands have a slight whiff of the right wing about them, with foreigners coming in for a bit of heat.

The item in the Gazette on Tuesday featured the poster boy of the 2000 and 2005 protests Andrew Spence together with obligatory Union Jack poster, although unusually the Transaction 2007 website doesn't mention the publicity hungry Spence at all. What the Gazette failed to mention (and does so regularly) is that Spence has a past with right-wing groups. He stood in the 2001 general election for UKIP, and for the BNP contested the Leadgate ward in Derwentside in the local elections this year and also was parliamentary candidate in the recent Sedgefield parliamentary by-election.

He left the racist party after a minor fisticulation incident at the party's booze-fest in Derbyshire this summer. Afterwards, Spence stated he parted with the BNP because it's "not the party I thought it was", although he "was proud to be in the party".

The BNP itself has had links to the fuel protests since they began back in 2000. The BNP ran the website fuel-protest.com in support of the 2000 protests and party supporters were encouraged to get involved in both the 2000 and 2005 protests. BNP chums the National Front also got in on the act, intimidating tanker drivers by threatening to set alight bails of hay at blockades.

Why the Gazette fails to mention Spence's former affiliation with the BNP seems odd, as it certainly is newsworthy, especially since he's 'proud' to have been in a party of racists and bigots.

Room for vroom

An old friend from the International Standard of Comparative Measurement has returned to measure volume - the Wembley Stadium.

Researchers at Oxford Brookes University have calculated that enough vehicle scrap will be created over the next 25 years to fill 1,000 Wembleys. Nice to see all that Oxford intellect being used productively. However, the Guardian piece covering this news also remarks that this is the same university that gave professional oaf Jeremy Clarkson an honorary degree.

It's not clear in the article, but I presume that the unit of the Wembley has been re-assessed to take account of the size of the new stadium. Given that some folk are still stewing over metrication, I'm not sure how society will adjust to the new standard.

Flying in the ointment

A couple of days ago the media praised Gordon Brown for his vision for a low carbon economy. He warned of hard choices and the need to achieve severe reductions in CO2 emissions. So if Gordon is so worried about climate change, why did it take him four months to mention it?

Yet on the ground and in the air - it's business as usual. Brown wants to build more roads and runways, effectively encouraging growth in CO2 emissions in the transport sector, and today his low carbon vision crashed further with Ruth Kelly's backing of the expansion of Heathrow airport. In one undemocratic swoop, Kelly has prejudged the outcome of any public inquiry, as at the end of it all it will be her final decision that counts. Like the nuclear consultation, it seems to be in the bag, no doubt helped along by the fact that airport's owner, BAA, will be effectively managing the data going into the consultation.

They will ignore the environment, the climate change, the thousands of people slowly losing their sanity and health due to aircraft noise. The excuse, as ever, is that "it's the economy, stupid." To counter the environmental argument that the plans should be shelved, Kelly said:

"All it will do is shift capacity over the Channel. It will make us feel pure, but with no benefit to the rest of the planet."

This is a piss poor excuse as well as a morally corrupt argument - it's the same argument crack dealers and arms sellers use - if we don't do it, someone else will.

We need to replace the "it's the economy, stupid" with something like "if we don't sort climate change we're all fucked, stupid." I know, it's not as snappy as Clinton's quote, but you get my drift.

Anyway, so instead of trying to engineer mechanisms to start to limit flying, something we need to do to reduce our CO2 emissions, the government is actively encouraging the growth in aviation and increasing the likelihood of disaster. Carbon offsetting, trading or any other fairyland gimmick they can think of to try and avoid actually reducing emissions will not work. There's no magic technological solution around the corner. Reductions must be the aim.

The British Government - the environmental equivalent of crack dealers.

Darling's new northern bail out

In tonight's BBC Look North item on the Tyne Tunnel we witnessed the BBC becoming PR company to the second the Tyne road tunnel. Even the lead-in had a 'dynamic' soundtrack like some crappy company presentation. In this Tunnel-friendly puff piece, brought to us by reporter Damien Lewis, the BBC painted the tunnel as the only possible solution to crossing the Tyne and failed to mention anything about the opposition to the tunnel, the noise and particulate pollution and extra CO2 emissions.

So much for journalistic balance at the BBC.

There was however a startling revelation - that 50% of the money will come from government borrowing. The last press release from the Tunnel chiefs said that the 50 per cent borne by the PTA would be through so-called "Prudential Borrowing", which is a nice way of giving plain and simple borrowing a somehow less offensive appearance. If the new funding arrangement announced by the BBC is true, and not a journalistic error (what's the chances?), this means that the Tunnel may become another beneficiary of Alistair Darling's largesse, and in more ways than one.

When Alistair Darling was Secretary of State for Transport, he gave the go ahead for the tunnel, and in his justification he commented:

"...the Secretary of State is satisfied that the NTC scheme is reasonably capable of attracting the funds necessary to secure its implementation by means of the concession agreement proposed by the TWPTA."

No doubt based upon what the Inspector said in his final report:

"There is an active market for road and crossing PPPs [public private partnerships]. On this basis, and assuming that market conditions remain favourable for this type of project and that contractual negotiations proceed successfully, then the NTC is reasonably capable of attracting the necessary funding."

So the Inspector and Darling both agreed, even falling for the PTA's line that the tunnel would even make so much moolah that the Tunnel could also fund public transport initiatives elsewhere. So now we get to a sticky situation where things are not as rosy - a concessionaire which won't take the full bill, as first presented to the Inspector, and now a chill in the lending markets. Darling gave the go ahead for the tunnel, and if the report is right, he's going to be writing (at least) a £130m cheque for it too.

Driving the ABD mad

Loony driving lobby group the Association of British Drivers has got twisty knickers again, over a report suggesting an across the board reduction in urban road speeds to a maximum of twenty miles an hour.

The group, which also worships climate change denial, claims that drivers will kill ten times more people because the reduced speed limits will force drivers to glue their eyes to their speedometers. Yup, I know it seems too stoopid to be true. But read it for yourself.

ABD blow hard Nigel Humphries said:

"All you achieve by making people drive down the road looking at their speedometer is 10 times as many deaths and that's before you cause more accidents because people aren't looking where they're going."

Okay, I know Mr Humphries' sentence doesn't make much sense, and I'm sure there's nothing in the Highway Code or the proposals that makes "people drive down the road looking at their speedometer" forsaking all other considerations. Bjorn Lomborg would be jealous at Humphries' ability to pluck something as eye-catching as "10 times as many deaths" out of the air without providing any evidence to back it up.

By the way, sack the lazy BBC journalist who couldn't be bothered to ask. I suspect that if Humphries had claimed that speed cameras were an EU/alien conspiracy to force us to buy cheese-flavoured petrol it would have been accepted with equal reverence.

Back to the research. Our Transport Research Laboratory survey said:

"20mph zones across the UK and in other European countries found child road accidents fell by 67%, cyclist accidents by 29% and traffic flow by 27%."

Hmmm. So no sign of a tenfold increase in deaths. And remember that's "before you cause more accidents because people aren't looking where they're going" - so that's a tenfold increase, plus whatever other number Humphries can come up with.

Did Nigel Humphries make the tenfold increase up, or can he substantiate his claim?

Tunnel doesn't add up

The BBC yesterday reported on the Tyne Tunnel toll increases to help line fat cat's pockets, er, I mean pay for the second Tyne road tunnel. A close inspection of the article makes me wonder at the professionalism of journalists these days when a key part of the article is so wrong.

The article says that the rise "is to help pay for a second tunnel, costing £185m". Oops. Did the BBC journo actually fail to read the PTA's press release from 21st September which put the bill at £260m? I suppose a benefit of the doubt could be due - perhaps the tunnel's PR monkeys forgot to tell the BBC the new price - however we don't know yet because there's nothing on any of the Tyne & Wear PTA websites.

At least the Shields Gazette got the numbers right.

It's bad enough that many journalists just reproduce press releases without scrutiny. I know the BBC's journalistic standards are dropping, but an inability to research a story properly is pretty shit, and makes you wonder what else they're getting wrong.

Jesus saves... on bus fares

What do you get when you cross bureaucracy and religion? Idiocy.

The news that 11-year-old Elliott Stewart from Brasside in Durham has been refused a free bus pass to get to school, just because he hasn't been baptised, would be worthy of the sitcom Father Ted, if it wasn't true.

Durham Councillor Clive Robson said (presumably not realising how stupid it sounds):

"Although a child does not have to be a Roman catholic to attend a Roman Catholic school, he or she and at least one parent has to be baptised Roman Catholic to be considered for free travel to it."

So, it seems a ritual splash of water is all that is stopping Elliott from enjoying free bus travel to school.

In an attempt to make it appear that faith schools have become more open in their admissions rules, policies have been changed to allow children not baptised in the Roman Catholic religion to enrol in a Roman Catholic school. But the mechanism that would allow Elliott to have the same opportunity of access to school as his schoolmates doesn't exist.

But rather than put their hands up and admit it's a silly rule, and that special dispensation will be given for Elliott until the policy is changed, the jobs worth drones at Durham County Council have stuck to the tried and tested 'rules is rules' excuse, with a the 'Ombudsman sez so, so there' for good measure.

How long before Durham becomes known as "The Deep South of the North East"?