Holy Transports

Ruth Kelly, whose stint as Sectarian of State for Communities was an eloquent testament to the Blair ministry's immunity to embarrassment, looks set to continue this useful function in her new Brownite role as Secretary for Traffic Jams and Airport Expansion. Since the Government has just announced plans for using motorway hard shoulders as extra lanes, and is backtracking on its environmental commitments faster than an Opus Dei member rear-ending a choirboy, the Department of Transport has decided to give us a bit of comic relief by letting Kelly's mouth off the leash once more. Sure enough, she's come up with a corker: rather than offering a rational public transport system, the Government will offer "free transport advice clinics to encourage more people to walk, cycle or take a bus instead of use their cars". Households and "other organisations" will be offered home visits by Actual Experts who will analyse their journeys and draw up "personal travel plans" showing how some car journeys might be made by other means. "I have spent much time listening to cost-benefit ratios," Kelly burbled. "These policies are relatively cheap and incredibly effective." Call me a crusty old cynic if you will; but at a time when policies to reduce carbon emissions from road traffic are already being watered down "to get manufacturers to agree", it is a little hard to share Kelly's transports of enthusiasm.

Kelly also mentioned plans to "use air traffic control to reduce wasteful emissions caused by delays in landing and indirect routes". Translated, of course, this means that we must build more airports so that all those extra aircraft can land all the more quickly. Then we can build more aircraft, slightly greener ones, which will make the new airports even more eco-efficient, and then we'll be able to build even more airports without missing our emissions targets by more than a few dozen percentage points. It sounds sorta paradoxical, but no doubt it can be done. After all, New Labour is the party of enterprise and social justice, the party that does food for Africa and has dinner with Rupert Murdoch, the party that saved Iraq and destroyed it, the party that battles evil and connives with kidnappers and torturers, the party that protects our way of life by removing our rights. "What I reject is the notion that we have to choose whether we back aviation expansion or unilateral curbing of aviation in order to be green," Kelly blathered, just before they stuck the gag back in.