Bumbling into a green future

“We are working with a mighty coalition of motor manufacturers and private sector partners as well as London's boroughs to ensure we create world-class support for electric motoring.”

Sounds impressive, right?

These were the recent words of London Mayor Boris Johnson, a politician with a Cruyff like ability to occasionally wrong foot the public and opponents alike. While there is ample evidence to support his reputation as a “professional bumbler, hurrumpher and fop”, I have to give him his due for putting his neck on the block and throwing his money behind what I think is a winning horse.

On a recent visit to London I snapped this picture of a car getting juiced up. It’s a curious pic but the significance of what is happening is seismic. It shows that a re-design of our cities is coming, the greening of our streets is accelerating and how one man is brilliantly bumbling the creation of a UK-wide charge point network.

The ‘juice point’ is one of 150 new charge points operating under Source London, the capital’s largest charging network. By 2013 the network will total at least 1,300 charge points – that’s more than the number of petrol stations currently in London. Cracking news! Just think, no more getting tempted by chocolate every time you buy petrol.

If I were BP or one of the other forecourt operators I would be going an odd colour of grey round about now. Think about it. On one hand petrol is hitting such a crazy high that people are considering whether they can afford to run a car. On the other, I can lay down £100 quid and charge up as many times as I want. That’s somewhere in the region of paying £1 each year for unlimited music and movie downloads. The petrol boys should be installing charging points in their stations as quick as they can or they may wake up one day and find that local council’s and new private operators have stolen their market.

Could we one day look back and remember that it was a professional bumbler that led the beginning of the end for the petrol profiteers? Quite a thought.


All the best,

Mike