We can’t afford to go green all alone
TWO football stars swapped cheers for tears last week. England star Jack Grealish admitted he “teared up a little” when he bade farewell to his fellow players and staff atastonvilla – the team he has supported since he was in short trousers – as he made his way to Manchester City.
Meanwhile, arguably the world’s greatest footballer, Lionel Messi (inset), cried openly as he left Barcelona, the team he’s been with since a teenager, on his way to Paris SaintGermain. He said he had no option.
In Grealish’s case, the fact he is now Britain’s first £100million footballer with commensurate salary has eased the pain.
As for Messi, although strict new wage rules meant Barcelona had to cut his pay, with £291 million in the bank, he surely could have explored a way round this. But perhaps the £48million salary helped stem the tears.
Welcome to the true face of football, where loyalty can sometimes be as genuine as a chairman’s vote of confidence in the manager.
IF IT wasn’t quite Apocalypse Now, it was certainly “Apocalypse Pretty Damned Soon”. The picture painted by the United Nations panel of experts was as gloomy as the fumes being belched out by a Chinese power station – and the response from the UK Government as predictable as a washed out bank holiday weekend.
If we are to see an end to fires raging across places such as Turkey and Greece, forests in the US and Australia being turned into tons of charred ash, halt devastating flooding across much of Europe and prevent Venice sinking into the sea, all we have to do is to sign up to the Government’s headline-grabbing, greenembracing agenda.
Although when I say “all” in reality it’s the most radical changes imaginable. And they also come at quite a price. The list of rules is all-encompassing.
We can’t heat our homes above 19C; we’ve got to get into our lofts and ensure they’re fully insulated; we can only fit LED lightbulbs. We must only use peat-free compost; we must be prepared to leave our gardens, plants and flowers unwatered. We should limit ourselves to as few flights as possible; our next car has to be electric and – probably the most bizarre of the lot – we should “share” power tools.
The spectre of feuds between neighbours and friends as to whether the garden strimmer was working perfectly before it was loaned out, or whether the lawnmower has lost power, seems ominous before this doomed practice even begins.
But already the (electric) wheels are starting to come off the Government’s absurdly over-the-top response.
The lunatic notion that the installation of new gas boilers will be banned from 2035 is already quietly being rolled back, and when you look at the cost it’s hardly surprising. They want to bin gas boilers in favour of either heat pumps or hydrogenpowered boilers. However, while a gas one will set you back around £3,000 to £4,000, a heat pump for a similarly-sized property could be as much as £12,000.
Also, anything other than gas or electricity is very difficult to fit to flats and highrise accommodation. Clearly this had not been thought through by these ecoobsessed politicians. The mutter from the gutter in Whitehall is this will now be labelled as “an ambition”.
Well, I might have the “ambition” to be a multi-million-selling author living on his own island in the Caribbean, but regrettably we must also allow for reality.
Similarly, the drive for electric vehicles is also riddled with ridiculously lofty ambi
tions. The cost of electric cars and vans is considerably higher than for petrol or diesel models and for many, electric just won’t hack it. Think of the plumber or builder with all their kit, trying to get up a hill in a van with all the power of a Scalextric car. Or the lift engineer called out in the middle of the night because people are trapped 20 floors up in a tower block, but his or her van is not fully charged. This is all because these politicians and chattering class cli
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mate campaigners might be green, but their bank balances are never in the red.
They have houses, often with driveways. They’re not 17 storeys up in a tower block having to hang a power cable down to charge their treasured Tesla or BMW.
Already the blue army of Conservative MPS who captured Labour’s red wall are warning Boris Johnson these policies are about as popular with voters as a front room filled with sewage after a flash flood.
Trust the canny folk north of Watford Gap to see this will cost at least £400 a year for the average household.
Of course we need to address climate change. But it must be alongside companies and countries – by far the greatest polluters – doing their bit too.
Last year China opened three times more coal power stations than were built elsewhere on the planet. When Beijing bites the bullet, we’ll bin our boilers.