Reported in the Daily Mail this week that in 2011 new European rules will hit British motorists. Well, why not? Everyone else thinks motorists are fair game, so why not the EU as well?
The directive will make it compulsory for all new cars to have daytime running lights, so we can all be as smug as Volvo owners - "look at me, I'm driving frightfully safely with my lights on". This isn't going down too well with motoring, motorcycle and environmental groups, and in fact our own government opposed it, unsuccessfully.
Motorists will suffer because a car with its lights on uses 5% more fuel. According to AA figures, for the average family-sized car driving the average 8,770 miles a year, this will increase fuel costs by £68 a year at today's prices.
Environmental campaigners point to the increased pollution from vehicles using 5% more fuel.
Britain opposed the directive but was unable to prevent European transport ministers approving it, because transport measures do not require unanimous backing by EU member states. Daytime-running lights were made compulsory in Scandinavian countries in the late 1970s - which is why Swedish-built Volvos always have their lights on. In 2006, Austria, Croatia and the Czech Republic became the first countries outside northern Europe to follow suit. Daytime lights are now used in 14 states. From 2011 the directive will apply to all EU countries whether they like it or not, from Lapland in the north to Cyprus in the south.
Dutch researchers claim that daytime lights could save 5,500 deaths and 155,000 injuries across Europe, but the truth is more likely to be that they will kill more than they save. Motorcyclists use their headlights to make them stand out from the background and from other traffic. When they lose this distinction we'll be mowing them down by the dozen.
In the Sunday Times motoring magazine this week, our hero Jeremy Clarkson told it like it is about another piece of motoring madness …
Recently, a mother of three appeared in court charged with "knowingly causing the deposit of controlled waste on land which did not have a waste management licence".
So what do you suppose she'd done? Emptied a sack of polonium into a school playground? Urinated in Alistair Darling's finger bowl? Secreted 6,000 burning tyres in Bourton-on-the-Water? Nope. The "controlled waste" was an apple core that she had allegedly tossed out of her car window.
Shortly afterwards, two young men appeared in another court, accused of "interfering with a dolphin". It turns out they'd been hitching a ride on it, in much the same way that tourists do on exotic holidays throughout the world. Then, the following day, the government announced that from now on Gordon Brown would be listening to every single telephone call you make.
Small wonder the Archbishop of Canterbury announced, just 24 hours later, that he wants sharia law in Britain. He was mocked, of course, but come on: Muslimism lets you throw apple cores onto the grass verge and swim with the dolphins and make telephone calls without having a Scottish man grunting and moaning in the background. Plus, we'd have the added benefit of being able to dismember shoplifters.
Also, though I have only a scant acquaintance with the Koran, I'm fairly certain it contains no call for motorists to be fleeced, hounded, mocked and, worst of all, held up on purpose by a swarm of power-crazed traffic wombles.
No one seems to have noticed this sinister new development. But think. In the olden days, when policemen had to have two O-levels, a moustache and a burning desire to join the freemasons, you never really heard of a motorway being closed.
Then, however, the state introduced a new breed of Diet One-Cal policeman called highway officers. We were told they'd race to the scene of an incident and clear up the mess as quickly as possible, thus allowing the real police to concentrate on more important things, like filling in forms and arresting people for interfering with dolphins.
Not a proper policeman …
It sounded a brilliant idea but, sadly, these new highwaymen have plainly been told that the most important thing, when attending the scene of a crash, is their own safety. Which means that their first reaction, always, no matter how trivial the accident, is to close the road.
Just listen to the Radio 2 traffic reports. One day last week the M40, the M5, the A34 and the M4 were all shut. Single-handedly, these mollycoddled imbeciles were bringing the whole country to a standstill.
That night, it got worse. A small hatchback had broken down in the middle lane of the A40, going into London. Now, in the not too distant past, other motorists would have got out of their cars and pushed the blockage to the side of the road. Not any more. Now, the traffic wombles come and cone off two lanes. And then they sit in their big 4x4, eating Mars bars, until the government-approved, safety-qualified removal-truck driver arrives.
When my wife crawled past at 6.30, they were just sitting there. When I drove past an hour later, having been stuck in a five-mile queue, they were still sitting there, and I'm afraid that, for the first time in 12 years, I lost my temper. They say a Dutch bargee can swear for two minutes without repetition or hesitation. I beat that easily.
I'd had enough. I'd had enough of people being charged for throwing apples out of their car windows, and speed cameras, and bus lanes, and those villages that have plant pots in the middle of the road. I'd had enough of bendy buses and the congestion charge, and sanctimonious beardies in Toyota Priuses getting away with it. I'd had enough of petrol at £1 a litre, and idiots saying that if we build more roads, people will only end up using them. I'd had enough of exhaust emission tables, and Al Gore and being asked to let the bus go first. I'd had enough of mobile CCTV cameras and Gordon Brown's smile and photographs of polar bears on icebergs. And I took it all out on those fat, power-crazed wombles who'd shut two lanes of one of the busiest roads in the world because they were too obsessed with health and safety to get off their fat arses and push a broken-down hatchback out of the way.
The GOS says: Dear man. We couldn't have put it better.
Of course, they do these things better in America …
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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