Johnnie Kerr

The problem with going green, I’m told, is that it often means spending a great deal of money on lots of equipment that could at any moment be rendered obsolete. When it comes to renewable energy, scepticism abounds. But the outcome of this cynicism is that our efforts to be greener have been incremental at best, and symbolic at worst. Just before I left school seven years ago we were told that all bedrooms were to be fitted with low-energy light bulbs. The school would reduce its carbon footprint a trifle, while also saving a bit of money (or vice versa). I remember thinking at the time that this was less an initiative than a gesture — a head-fake towards social responsibility to soothe their conscience.

I have spent a week of every winter of my life with my family in Zürs, a small village in Arlberg, Austria. It isn’t at all the most famous resort in the region — with fewer slopes than Lech and a quieter nightlife than St. Anton — nevertheless, it possesses a quality that brings most who go there back, season after season. Part of the place’s attraction must be that it couldn’t exist at all without skiing, from which it derives practically its entire economy, and consequently great pride. Except for a few cattle it is entirely uninhabited during the non-season (rather like that hotel in The Shining), which effectively makes it one of the most wholesome ski resorts imaginable.

When I was just starting out on the slopes, a slip of a boy with nothing but training skis and a dream, there were a number of issues I wish someone had warned me about: 1. Don’t let your mother kit you out The piste is really just a massive catwalk. I look all right these days, but I had to learn the hard way: skiing on a hot day in a puffy bright yellow onesy, goggles and a crash helmet is apt to cause scoffing from overhead chairlifts. 2. Know your limits Stick to the blue runs (the equivalent of a 20mph zone near a driving school) and try to restrain yourself from jumping. If you remember nothing else, remember this: never under any circumstances attempt a black run (the equivalent of the A9 between Inverness and Pitlochry), unless you’re sure you’re ready.

Walking through Parliament Square this afternoon, you’d be forgiven for wondering whether some kind of bomb threat had been made on Westminster Palace. The fleets of police vans and hoards of fluorescent-jacketed officers seemed absurdly disproportionate to the motley pickets of public sector strikers gathered serenely outside parliament’s gates. ‘Actually, I shouldn’t be working today,’ one officer told me, chuckling. ‘It’s my day off. That’s ironic, isn’t it?’ As Pete remarked this morning, there wasn’t a huge amount to see along the Westminster picket lines, apart from the policemen.

‘I don’t know why I became a cartoonist,’ says Michael Heath. ‘I had no education during the war, so when I was twelve and war ended, I couldn’t read or write like children now. I suppose I sort of expressed myself by drawing.’ He is sitting in the conference room at The Spectator, surrounded by shelves of leather bound back volumes, almost sixty years worth of which are filled with his drawings. I’m shocked to learn he was born in 1935 — he doesn’t look anywhere near a man in his seventies. He still treks miles to work every day on foot.  Cartoons today, he tells me, aren’t at all what they were.

It may be a week old, but last Monday's episode of Panorama really is worth putting half-an-hour aside for, if you haven't seen it already. Its subject was energy prices, and it raised some very urgent concerns about the government's policies in that area. You can watch it on the BBC site, but here's a brief summary in the meantime. All in all, switching our dependence away from coal and oil is going to be enormously expensive. Some £200 billion of taxpayers’ money is to be spent on increasing renewable energy output from seven to thirty percent by 2020. And, because sources like offshore wind costs almost £100 an hour more than traditional generators, this policy’s most immediate effect will be to raise energy bills sky high.