How Capitalism Works, part 348

Once there were a lot of British car manufacturers. They made nice-looking, affordable and popular vehicles. Like this one.

But the companies were run very badly indeed. The owners wouldn't invest or innovate. Nor would they pay their workers properly. Eventually, the government - when the UK had governments interested in industrial policy and full employment - nationalised them all as Austin Rover. But the government didn't have the political or technical skills to invest in new design or technology and the cars were absolutely rubbish. Like this one.

or this one, which my grandfather drove:

When sales declined as drivers bought reliable foreign cars, the owners blamed the unions and the unions pushed back, only to find themselves demonised by a Thatcher government which hated state intervention in the market and hate the workers even more.

So the shrivelled remains of Austin Rover were flogged off for £10 (yes, ten pounds) to a particularly disgusting band of financial speculators who just happened to be prominent donors to the Conservative Party. They reduced production and wages, then bailed out.

The 5 Phoenix speculators removed £42 million from the corpse of Rover Group through financial trickery - critical reports have come and gone, they've been banned from holding directorships, but nobody's ever going to prison and they're still active in the City. They flogged the remaining patents and land to a Chinese state car manufacturer (ironic: we've got nationalised car-making again, only owned by a foreign government) who use the site to assemble Chinese-built vehicles. Today, after seven years of negotiations, the redundant workers have been offered £3 in redundancy payments. £3 each, mind!

So there we have it. Mass employment - gone. Balance of trade - wrecked. Entire cities' industries - devastated. A group of Tory speculators: further enriched. Workers - dumped on the scrapheap alongside the terrible cars they were forced to build by greedy, uncaring management. Just one example of the way financial speculation has replaced industry in the hearts of government and the City - and its consequences.

Did I mention that today is local elections day? Keep it in mind.

Solving pollution through visual shame

Can't remember if I've mentioned this idea before. Apologies if I have.

Most of our most disgusting, polluting and selfish behaviour doesn't look that damaging at first glance. It's easy to ignore. This is certainly the case with motor vehicles. The roads are packed with unnecessarily massive vehicles powered by inefficient, oversized engines designed solely to make inadequate men and women feel important. They pump out huge amounts of poisonous fumes and lead directly to illness and early deaths.

But of course the driver thinks that he or she is unaffected. The air conditioning is on, and there's no obvious sign of the fumes. My first solution to this would probably be impractical: route just enough of the exhaust back into the vehicle's cabin so that the driver and passengers are left with impaired breathing and skin that permanently reeks of burning fuel.

As a poor second choice, how's this? Add a harmless coloured and fragranced dye to the exhaust outlet. A 4x4 would pump out thick clouds of black smoke, stinking of toxic substances. Or perhaps dog shit. A mid-efficiency car would produce greyer, slightly less voluminous clouds flavoured with brussels sprouts, chip fat, kippers or something equally unpleasant. Highly efficient cars would produce gentle blue or pink clouds fragranced with pine or apple scent. Emissions-free cars would merely exude an air of smugness. And perhaps recorded applause.

This way, drivers would be forced to see the consequences of their behaviour in an immediate fashion, and we'd all know which people and vehicles to avoid. It would work because most of the beautiful cars are also the most poisonous - Rolls, Ferrari, Range Rover, Porsche, Aston Martin. If we add smoke and stench, the drivers are forced to confront the hypocrisy of cocooning themselves in luxury while making others suffer.

(Another road-safety plan I have is to make anyone with points on their licences display large stickers of small children in crosshairs, like fighter pilot aces had tallies on their planes. One for each point as a public service warning). And Jeremy Clarkson should just have a photo of him on the bonnet so we all know he's around.

Serendipity

No sooner do I post about the illusory link between cars and freedom than I open a book parcel from America. It's wrapped in the State Journal-Register of Springfield, Illinois (birthplace of Abraham Lincoln).

And look at this car dealership ad:

Perfect. Freedom, vehicles AND 'American values' all wrapped up in one parcel for the purpose of selling antisocial death dealers.

Dans les voitures…

Here's Manny's sorry Bill Bailey's French cover of Numan's 'Cars', complete with horns and a theremin. It's totally stuck in my head now. Apologies for the advert at the start.



And if you like Bailey AND the comic genius of Kevin Eldon (who also appeared in Black Books with Bailey), you'll love their Kraftwerk-style version of the Okey-Cokey. Also with added theremin:

Requiem for a city

I hate car culture: it's turned our cities into machines for crushing communities. But this kinetic sculpture makes all that movement beautiful. Though perhaps that's the secret: movement is pretty rare for urban drivers. Cars promise independence, individuality, escape and self-expression. What you get is isolation, selfishness and confinement. Mike Davies's wonderful history of LA, City of Quartz charts that metropolis's descent into vehicle hell, including the disgusting story of how a cartel of car and tyre maker successfully bought the local railway system solely to close it down - and were fined $1 for their crimes.

I don't drive, though if I had cash and space, I'd have a row of cars as sculpture: 1940s/50s Citröens, a Morris Minor convertible, big curvy American 1940s gangsters' cars.



The Mayor of Vilnius (Lithuania), one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, has a simple way to deal with selfish drivers:

Environment saved

I was keeping this for Radio 4's Genius program, but the need is too urgent to wait for a new series.

I think that most of the drivers I know don't care about the damage they're doing to the environment and to the lungs of pedestrians because they're insulated from the immediate effects. Likewise, the exhaust fumes disperse and we don't really notice it any more.

So the way to shame people into driving less or driving cleaner cars is to increase the immediate effect of the pollution. I have the answer. Add harmless black dye to the exhaust so that each vehicle pumps out a foul black cloud proportionate to the pollution produced, so that everybody can see whose cars are poisoning them, and gains a visual index of the degree to which our air is polluted. Link it to another pump which exudes a revolting but harmless gas into the vehicle's cabin - I suggest the eggy deliciousness of human flatulence - in proportion to the engine output (for SUVs, I'd prefer to link the exhaust pipe to the air conditioning, but apparently that counts as murder).

Before long, the selfish bastards in urban SUVs will be rushing to buy Prius's as their clothes stink of bottom and passing pedestrians lob bricks at the filth factory speeding past. It won't cost drivers any more, it doesn't penalise people who have to drive for work, it simply emphasises the costs of how we run our society.