Electric cars to run on dirty electricity. Wow.

There’s no point running clean electric cars on dirty electricity.

This ‘initiative’ isn’t clean or green. Not if New Labour insists on running these cars on electricity produced by coal, oil or gas.

They will then insist on rewarding US and French muiltinationals in producing incredibly expensive nuclear electricity, rather than much more effective wind turbines.

One final point: what about people without cars?
Why not first make public transport go electric and then increase buses and trains to make them regular/timely AND make them cheap enough?

Electric cars on their own makes no change to reducing carbon emissions and says nothing about how the inequality between rich and the majority is reduced.

Farid Bakht

Labour shows its true colours over Heathrow

Before the credit crunch, Labour quickly donned a green suit. Now, they are giving up the pretence and going back to grey.

Of course,  they are vainly putting a green gloss over the inexcusable decision to allow a third runway. By diverting us on the pledge for a high speed hub around Heathrow, they are only fooling themselves.

This, after BAA embarassingly admitted that passenger numbers are 1.4% down as the recession (and sterling’s collapse) bites.

Even the Conservatives are against the third runway, though they spoil it by looking for increases in other airports (which shows flexible Cameron is an opportunist green and sees this as helpful to soften the harsher edges of an unreconstructed right wing party).

From a local perspective, there is more than enough runway capacity for the residents of Tower Hamlets to fly to Sylhet, in case you wondered. That’s not the point.

It’s short haul flights to Spain and the other tourist destinations that’s the critical problem.

Rather than wasting billions on a third runway, the Labour government should have used that money to invest in a publicly owned railway network – modern, cheaper and lower in carbon emissions.

Look at Europe to see how high speed travel can be in government hands and still be modern, punctual and cheap.

They used to say Labour was beholden to the Unions. New Labour is beholden to the lobbies of Big Business.

Incidently, by running roughshod over local residents, New Labour will ensure that some of its brighter, more honest MPs such as John McDonnell, lose their seats.

As for some of the Unions, comments made about exaggerated numbers of jobs and how ‘vital’ it is for the busiest airport in Europe to become even more of a monster, reveal that some Trade Union leaders see their function as cheerleaders of ‘their’ government.

Farid Bakht

Rail chaos and privatisation

Liverpool Street opened late as engineering works overran. Passengers in the North West suffered a worse fate. New Labour apparently wants to double rail travel by 2030 – a timescale so far, anyone could promise the earth.

The privatisation of the railways (and the tube) have been catastrophic failures. A generation of passenger-commuters became ‘customers’, with choice. They could choose to pay higher fares for shoddy service or could jump into a car and tail-back their way to work.

People who want to get from A to B are not asking for very much, except:

• a reliable, punctual service
• fair fares – cheap
• easy-to-buy & easy-to-understand tickets – not the lottery of website deals and complex ‘deals’
• safe journeys with conductors and guards so that families can get back on the trains at all times

They only have to look at France, Germany and Spain. The models are there.

Oh, one more point. If governments want to do something about climate change, they should transfer subsidies away from road onto rail to pay for investment. They should encourage containers to get off lorries and onto trains.

None of this is going to happen in private hands. Railtrack and Metronet went belly up. Now we need to nationalise rail. Oops. The ‘N’ word. Well, with Northern Wreck already nationalised in all but name, the world has moved.

The P word has been unspoken for some time. Shame that most politicians have been too meek to offer a solution.

Farid Bakht

PS This is one of many ways the Greens can link action on climate change with what people would call the ‘real economy’. The climate change argument needs to have a ‘benefit’ for voters and ordinary people. So far, we have been burdening them with ‘costs’ – don’t fly, don’t have a bath (have a shower), don’t drive, don’t buy stuff etc.. While all laudable, that’s hardly the best way to win their ‘political support’. …..