Oh Mandy, you made me so angry

Today I heard that Lord Mandelson was willing to pay me £5,000 if I buy an electric car; apparently if I get rid of my gas guzzler and drive a scaletrix to work the planet will be saved - 20 per cent of all CO2 emissions come from travel so this is one of the target areas.

The problem I have with this new policy is it like many others before has been devised by politicians who don’t have the vaguest idea about thermodynamics.

Mr Mandelson, where do you think the electricity comes from?

Despite popular belief that it just comes out of the walls we have to burn stuff, like gas and coal in the UK to produce it.

Only 30 per cent of the energy produced makes it to the meter, the rest is lost as waste heat on the way. Using electricity to power cars only makes sense if you produce the electricity using renewables or nuclear power.

Surely the 5K subsidy would be better served persuading us to drive less distances or to improve the efficiency of our domestic heating systems - a far bigger contributor to CO2 emissions than travel.

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