Millennialemmings
The Grim Reaper
No. 26 in a never-ending series. Winter 1999
It has come to my attention that certain festivities are being planned to celebrate the second coming of the third way. Amongst these is the spending of a billion pounds in Greenwich on the creation of a huge toxic waste disposal problem when the so called 'millennium boil' is lanced at the end of its natural life in 25 years' time.
The boil is creatively divided into various zones such as 'the Blair Zone',
'the Tesco Zone' and 'the Journey Zone' which are each sponsored by various
large commercial outfits which we have grown to love such as Macdonalds and
British Airways. The Journey Zone invites visitors to see how their
desire to stay on the move can be made easier. faster and cleaner
and
it is entirely appropriate that it should be sponsored by my dear friends
at Ford. The Reaper had presumed that the exhibit would comprise of a pair
of trainers and a bicycle, but in a shock exclusive I can reveal that the
centrepiece of the Journey Zone will be a giant tombstone engraved with the
words, in memoriam to Mr H.H. Bliss the first recorded death by an
automobile, on September 23rd 1899, and to the 30 million people
slaughtered since then by motor vehicles around the world. No cost too
great, no profit too small.
As the first automotive century draws to a close it is an appropriate time to reflect on the other great achievements of motor manufacturers. Notable amongst these is climate change which had brought the Mediterranean to Minehead and temperatures this decade that are the warmest since records began 340 years ago. The benefits of climate change are many and include a rising sea level, which will shortly bring a beach close to you, lower central heating bills, more opportunity for birdspotting as swallows arrive one week earlier, and bigger acorns as oak trees come into leaf three weeks earlier than 50 years ago. Lymes disease, which is spread by heat loving tics and causes paralysis and death has doubled in just ten years. Fantastic news for tics.
All these benefits are likely to be magnified over the next century as the latest research from the Hadley Centre for climate change reveals an even more extreme warming in world climate than previously predicted. Europe is expected to heat up by 8 degrees centigrade, instead of the last best estimate of 5.5 degrees. Great news for the ice cream trade.
Climate aside, a century of cars has brought us plumper, more cuddly children as a quarter of them are now overweight by age five. This study, conducted in Bristol, is linked to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle as parents protect their children from the dangers of traffic by, er, driving them everywhere. One million school run journeys are made each day, numbering 20% of cars on the road each rush hour.
Thanks to increasing wealth cars only cost one-third as much as in 1960 relative to wages, which means we can all afford more cars and use them more often. Traffic has increased by 10% since New Labour seized power. Thanks to this massive growth in traffic, ozone pollution is actually reducing in our cities. Birmingham recorded the cleanest air of any city last year, and Bristol also registered a drop in ozone due to a secondary reaction between ozone and nitric oxide from car fumes which removes the ozone from the air, whilst places that still don't have enough cars, such as Northern Scotland, the Peak District, Dartmoor, Snowdonia, and Somerset continued to exceed safe ozone limits on numerous occasions.
Motor vehicles have also led to a huge increase in consumer choice. It is only thanks to dedicated and highly skilled truckers that we can choose between fifteen varieties of plain yoghurt and 48 types of flavoured yoghurt, each carton of which has been responsible for moving a lorry 10 metres. Without lorries bringing biscuits from Scotland to the South of England and from the South of England to Scotland, this country would be a poorer place. 94% of all our freight now goes by lorry and 77% of all particulate traffic pollution is also delivered by lorry.
The Grim Reaper always likes to end on an upbeat note and I am pleased to be able to reassure all those namby-pamby whingers who complain about the summer heat that a century of motoring is likely to bring them the ultimate benefit of natural air conditioning, whilst our French, German and Spanish cousins will rot in hell as continental Europe overheats. Whilst it was previously thought that ice ages began slowly over thousands of years, research of ice samples from the northern latitudes now shows that not to he the case. Previous ice ages began very suddenly over the course of a few months as a result of the gulf stream abruptly stopping. This occurred when the salinity of the sea reduced due to an increase in meltwater caused by natural increases in global temperatures. Scientists believe that glaciers and ice caps are now melting at such a rate that we are fast approaching a critical reduction in water salinity that may turn the gulf stream off some time in the next century.
Where did I leave my car keys?
The Grim Reaper
