IT S been a fairly gloomy start to the New Year so far for green transport. Locally towards the end of 2006 we had the announcement that bus services across Mid Beds are to be slashed. We then began 2007 with the news that train fares are going up, so pre

IT'S been a fairly gloomy start to the New Year so far for green transport.

Locally towards the end of 2006 we had the announcement that bus services across Mid Beds are to be slashed.

We then began 2007 with the news that train fares are going up, so pretty much anyone trying to use public transport across Comet country, either out of necessity or green conscientiousness, is now going to find it harder and/or more expensive.

I literally feel like banging my head on my desk at the stupidity of it all - it is so skewed and back-to-front it beggars belief.

We should be being provided with even more busses to give us a useful, practical service, not have it reduced.

Train fares should at the very least stay the same, given that they passed extortionate some time ago, and the service we are given for our substantial amounts of cash should be far more reliable and efficient than it currently is.

But really, it's no more than we should expect, given that we live in a country led by a man who has last week demonstrated that he really does not take climate change in the least bit seriously.

Tony Blair has announced that he will not give up his long-haul holiday flights and cautioned against setting people "unrealistic targets" to help climate change.

By unrealistic I presume he means "inconvenient" or "unpopular", because it's actually not unrealistic to expect people to think about the bigger picture and adapt their behaviour accordingly.

It's not nice to think that we can't go jetting across to exotic locations twice a year or take advantage of the many outrageously cheap low-cost airline flights but realistically, we can't keep living like we do.

Tony Blair isn't just refusing to lead by example, he is promoting a selfish attitude which places individual short-term happiness over wider, more pressing concerns.

And I for one am hugely disappointed in him.

Because he feels we can't possibly ask people to make sacrifices, Mr Blair's solution instead is to look towards science to find fuels which burn less energy and produce fewer emissions.

This may well be a good idea for the future but for the here and now it is a pipe dream, and a way of avoiding taking responsibility for current situations by assuming in the future science will fix it.

Greenpeace campaigner Emily Armistead told one news channel that Blair's position wasn't a policy, it was a "delusion".

I couldn't agree more, and it's a sad, selfish, short-sighted delusion at that.