Pollution

The T-charge – short for Toxicity Charge – comes into force in central London today. It’s part of the London mayor, Sadiq Khan’s, plan to improve air quality in the capital, and it mainly applies to vehicles registered before 2006. Rather than banning ‘high polluting vehicles’, he hopes that the charges will discourage people from driving into central London. The Green Party’s Jenny Jones today urged the London mayor Sadiq Khan to make sure that the revenues from the T-charge are used to improve public transport, and encourage people to opt for the bus or tube instead of their cars. But in reality, that’s not going to happen. Why? Khan confirmed today that far from making money, the scheme will cost the taxpayer £7 million per year.

Who’s afraid of the dark? Who now fears shadows and bumps in the night? Where do you even find any dark to be afraid of when your phone is only a pocket away? One swipe and the screen lights up blue-white like the old explorer’s match in a cave. If I wake in the night I don’t bother with the bedside lamp. A bar of light comes under the blinds. Lights from the flats opposite. Fire-escape lights from the hotel next door. The jaundice glow of London light pollution. Even staying with my parents, on the edge of a village, there’s no real darkness. There are lights from the lane, lights from the next farm, lights from the main road on the hill. Intruder lights come on each time a muntjac makes for Mum’s vegetable garden in the small hours. Click. Click. Click.

In 1978, Adam Nicolson received three Hebridean islands as a 21st birthday present from his father, Nigel. The Shiants, each about a mile long, were uninhabited, with just one rat-infested bothy: not everyone’s idea of paradise. But, precisely because human beings had neglected them, wild life flourished — the islands were ‘thick with the swirl of existence’, thrumming with life and death, suffering and triumph, ferocity and conquest. Sea Room (2002) is Nicolson’s rousing love lilt to the Shiants, for him the most beautiful place on earth.

Who do you think was responsible for Europe’s biggest environmental disaster of the past three decades; one that caused more widespread damage and killed more people than even the nuclear accident at Chernobyl? Was it a) greedy and selfish capitalists, probably linked to Big Oil, riding roughshod over the stringent health and safety regulations our wise, caring politicians have designed to protect us and our natural environment? Or b) an alliance of fluffy green activists, campaigning journalists and virtue-signalling politicians, united on a noble mission to save the planet from the greatest environmental threat it has ever known? If you guessed b) then you may appreciate why we climate sceptics are experiencing such schadenfreude right now.

Did you know that if you use the f-word while talking to a BT representative, they hang up on you? Here’s how our conversation went when I finally got through after several abortive attempts and ‘holding’ for at least 15 minutes. Me: ‘I’m ringing because the engineer who was supposed to come between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. has not turned up. I’ve been waiting for over five hours. My name is xxx, my reference number is xxx.’ BT man: ‘Could you give me your date of birth and the first line of your address?’ Me: ‘My date of birth is xxx, my address is xxx. This is the third time I’ve been asked.