Let's all go Green with envy

The green revolution in the UK tumbles on with the launch last Friday of Boris Johnson’s bikes all over the capital. It is an exact copy of Montreal and a smaller version of the French Velíb system that is three times as big and has become one of the dominant features in the last couple of years across Paris. Although not quite rivalling L’Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame or the river Seine in iconic status quite yet. However, with the vast expense and drama of installing close to 5,700 bicycles in 350 docking stations across London to make us more green and eco-friendly in our daily commute, some people are campaigning for the money to have been put to effect in other areas.

Around 200 hundred stickers adorned the new bikes on Friday morning complaining that this was just another PR stunt from the Mayor’s office, just as obvious as Boris and his brother Jo out campaigning with their foppish blonde hair together on the streets of Orpington a week or so ago. There are suggestions that this is just another sign that the Con-Lib coalition is more concerned with public relations than they are with the running of the country.

However, having spent a good week researching the new cycle hire scheme, helpfully sponsored by Barclays to a tune of £50m, recouping a third of the cash splashed by Boris and his buddies at TFL, it should work. Increasingly people will stop using black cabs, buses and the tube for small journeys in and around the centre of London and alleviate the pressure on the system that with the ever-expanding population of the capital is bursting at the seams. More and more people are minding the gap than ever before and London needs to adapt to the population swell. Bikes are the way forward. Go Green.

But...

As a nation we are now cycling to work, our rubbish is separated into recyclables and non-recyclables and that little fair-trade sticker is in the corner of many a chocolate bar or box of tea bags, staring at us as consumers, almost giving us a little pat on the back as we fork out over the odds for our household necessities. That blue and green sticker is the equivalent of a tea grower in Assam thanking us for all our hard work.

Yet, how much of that additional cost gets back to the grower or source? After the supermarket takes their cut (which is substantial), packaging , transport, taxation in and out of the UK and finally fluctuating rates in the prices of cocoa and tea, I bet that grower in Assam still doesn’t enjoy much of the profits.

As he works on his fields, toiling away for our common place amenities with large Indian businesses transporting their goods in massive diesel trucks churning out fumes into the atmosphere, I doubt that little sticker is going to make that much of a difference. The USA, China and Russia all with geographical areas that eclipse our tiny island must laugh at the UK’s overwhelming misconception and delusion at our own importance on the world stage.

Boris – Londoners taking to bikes on their commutes into town everyday is a good thing don’t get me wrong but for us all to genuinely believe that as a city we are making a significant dent in the war against global warming, it’s a farce.
They are sponsored by Barclays bank though to the tune of £50 million. If they halved their profit margins in all countries and successfully lobbied governments to actually change legislation regarding climate change, the use of power plants, fossil fuels etc... Then we might actually be getting somewhere.

Isn’t nice to cycle around London for a change and doesn’t Boris look silly on the front page struggling with his helmet!