Mayor's lip service to tackling health threatening bus pollution

Also interesting about Livingstone's recent press release announcing the complete transformation of the London congestion charge into an emissions charge scheme, and its £25 daily top rate for many ordinary family cars, is the self-conscious mention in the last paragraph of London's buses.

Diesels may well emit less CO2 than petrol vehicles and this is what blinkered adherents to the global warming theory obsess about at any other cost.

But they are far worse for ground-level pollution, emitting greater quantities of substances like nitrogen oxide and far more particulates that have a direct negative effect on human health, particularly on those already ill or suffering respiratory problems.

Is the global warming theory, or even the human influence on climate change, well proven enough to justify this harmful trade-off? We'd better be sure, as it's undoubtedly costing lives.

In London, buses are the worst culprit of all for such pollution. Now numbering 8,000 - many more since Livingstone became mayor - they travel tens of thousands more miles a year each than any private car, they frequently stop and start, and often stand stationary for extended periods in densely populated places.

They are also a singly managed pollution source - proprietor, one Ken Livingstone.

So what's he doing about his rapidly growing 'fleet' of heavy-use polluters before lecturing families about their cars and hitting them with absurdly high charges for daring to use them?

In the press release he grandly announces that "We are already cleaning up London's fleet of public vehicles through measures like the introduction of Hybrid buses". Really? So how many of London's 8,000 buses are currently hybrids? Well, according to an earlier press release, a grand total of six.

Sorry, but such paltry efforts are no excuse for continuing to hammer car users as the big culprits for harmful emissions. Far greater progress must be made to tackle the massive source of visible ground-level pollution under Livingstone's control that is these 8,000 buses, before ramping up the costs for ordinary family car users to extraordinary levels like £25 a day can possibly be justified on 'green' grounds.

Has Livingstone now become so obsessed with meddling in other people's lives to get the responsibilities of his own job in order? The evidence is certainly mounting.