Iain Maclennan - Parliamentary Candidate for Portsmouth North
Two weeks ago I had to attend a meeting of the Strategic Co-ordinating Group for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. This is a multiagency group tasked with co-ordinating the local response to the swine flu pandemic, and I represent public health for Hampshire. These meetings are held in Victoria House, part of the Police training establishment in Netley. It’s a beautiful, Victorian building, which was originally part of the huge Royal Victoria military hospital on that site, before it was mostly demolished in the 1960’s. My late father was a patient here once. Access to the site is via a narrow lane, which has a curious ramp running across it just after it turns off the main road. The reason for this unexpected hump in the road is due to tarmac that has been crudely laid on top of what was once a railway level crossing. The railway in question still runs from the main line at Hamble Station down to the BP fuel terminal at Hamble-le-Rice. Sadly no trains have graced this permanent way since 1985 and nature is progressively reclaiming most of its course.
The question in my mind is: Why do we need to have scores of petrol tanker lorries hurtling up and down Hamble Lane every day, when there is (OK… with a bit of attention from a few chain saws and brush cutters) a perfectly serviceable railway line, which the tankers actually have to cross twice. Maybe they take fuel from the depot direct to the forecourt, in which case I can understand how loading it onto a train would be rather futile, as the cargo would still have to travel by road for at least the final part of its journey. But if it is simply destined for a refinery, then the argument for not transporting it by rail must rest on simple economics. Oil is so unrealistically cheap that any alternative to road haulage would, I suspect, inevitably cut into BP shareholders’ haul. I will write to BP to find out. Don’t worry… I won’t forget – my home literally quakes around 50 times a day whenever one of these monsters thunders past!
The desperate reality is that the price of oil nowhere near reflects the true cost to mankind and the environment. Every pound saved on delivering fuel to the consumer at the forecourt, or on all the other products which utilise oil in their manufacture, comes at a cost to someone, whether directly through erosion of people’s quality of life through noise, vibration, reduced air quality, traffic congestion or road accidents, or indirectly through the more remote deleterious effects of climate change on poor communities of the developing world eking out their precarious existence just above sea level. The evidence linking greenhouse gases to consumerism is unequivocal and here today in our midst. Observe how the relative austerity consequent on the recession and a rise in fuel prices has changed people’s behaviour; CO2 emissions in the UK have actually dipped significantly this year. It shows how small, painless sacrifices in lifestyles, if undertaken at a population level, can cumulatively make a real difference to some of the most important determinants of climate change.
If rising prices at the pump have hitherto depressed you, perhaps now you can see a cause to rejoice about it. At the risk of seeming naive perhaps I can leave you with an optimistic, somewhat Utopian closing image. Could that be the rumble of the humble Hamble railway, once again trembling under the wheels of a train hauling components of wind turbines produced in a reopened Vestas factory on the Isle of Wight? Swine flew more likely!
