Rallying point

My resolution this year is to make huge sums of money, buy a vast country estate, surround it with a moat and spend the rest of my life hunting, driving fast cars round my private race track and generally trying to maximise my carbon footprint. At Christmas, I shall invite the poor people on to my land to admire my spectacular Christmas light display which will be much brighter and less carbon neutral than the one at Sandringham or even the famous ‘loights’ in Wollaston, nr Stourbridge. And if my vicar objects on environmental grounds, I shall have him sacked because of course his living will be in my gift, and my family will have a special pew in the medieval church and everything.

I seem to remember my resolution last year being pretty similar, but that time I was being tongue-in-cheek whereas this time I really mean it. Not since the second world war, I don’t think, has our country been in quite such grave danger of losing all the things that make it worth living in. And I’m not talking about Islamist terror or immigration or the economy here, worrying though they are. I’m talking about the tremendous destruction that is about to be wrought, and is already being wrought, on our landscape, our liberty and our livelihoods as a result of inadequately challenged green cant.

The thing that reminded me of this — not that I ever need much reminding — was The Best of Top Gear (BBC2, Sunday). Sometimes I’ve made the mistake of not watching Top Gear on the grounds that it’s a car review programme and I can’t afford any new cars. But when I do watch it, I never fail to be gripped, amused, heartened and uplifted.