Britain's Bonfire night: an annual display of pyrotechnical correctness

Fireworks! How about watching virtual pyrotechnics on a laptop in your bedroom with the curtains drawn, listening to recorded bangs on your iPod with the volume down and enjoying an organic hot dog labelled "This Dog May Be Hot"?

Far-fetched, perhaps. But so are reports that a Devon rugby club is showing a video projection of a bonfire at its fireworks party to avoid the costs of meeting health and safety regulations. Our local school has cancelled its display, because of a shortage of "trained firework lighters" (how long is that course?) and new guidelines on how far fireworks should be from people. We are a long way from the common sense advice on the old family fireworks box to "Light the blue touchpaper and retire immediately".

The annual explosion of pyrotechnical correctness about safety and "noise pollution" around firework night follows on from the Hallowe'en panic. There have been calls to ban children trick-or-treating as begging with menaces. Our local police sent out extra patrols on Hallowe'en, a spokesman explained, "because it is dark". Church figures gave warning about children falling prey to Darkness of another sort. Our young daughters dressed up as witches, went out with the neighbours and had a great time in the dark. Pity that so few would open their door.

What many people seem most anxious about today is not loud bangs, but noisy young people who they fear might explode at the drop of a witch's hat or a sparkler. Kids have always let off steam around Guy Fawkes night. I grew up with boys who enjoyed such traditional pastimes as throwing bangers (now banned) at cats, and firing rockets at bedroom windows. In those pre-trick-or-treat days, we sat in the street with a raggedy Guy asking strangers for money (which some gave us) without getting arrested.

Now youthful fooling around is equated with crime. One police spokesman told the BBC that his force would be "cracking down hard" on Hallowe'en antisocial behaviour, such as "knocking and running away from doors". In my day that was called Knock Down Ginger. The cowardly version was Knock Down Rosebud, in which you threw something at the door. The worst you would get was a rocket from the neighbours, or a "banger" round the ear from your dad. Today Ginger and Rosebud might expect ASBOs.

One MP told a youth justice conference this week: "The police are being called too often to tackle behaviour that only a few years ago would have been handled by teachers and parents." It would have been a good point had it not been made by Tony Blair, whose Government has encouraged us all to send up distress signals to the ASBO-happy authorities.

We also used to sing a song about building a bonfire, with "The teachers on the top/Put the prefects in the middle and burn the bloody lot." I hope that has been banned as incendiary hate-speech, if not for failing to comply with health and safety guidelines.

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The incorrectness of travel in wacky Britain

New Labour’s deep-seated hostility to popular mobility is holding back advances on roads, railways and in the air

Is the New Labour government concreting over the countryside, as greens suggest, so as to appease the all-powerful road lobby? Does it also pander to what one green columnist has referred to as `anti-social bastards who believe they should be allowed to do what they want, whenever they want, regardless of the consequences', to the `extreme libertarianism now beginning to take hold here', to an individualism that `begins on the road'?

Well: between 1997, when New Labour came to power, and 2004, the latest year for which figures are available, Britain opened 284 miles of new major roads and motorways. That's a grand total of 40 miles a year. Not too impressive, for the world's fifth largest economy.

Don't expect chancellor Gordon Brown's November pre-Budget report, or Sir Rod Eddington's late-running transport review, to bring about the swift, massive, nationwide renovation of short- and long-distance transport infrastructure most people want. Brown has already hinted that Eddington, ex-CEO of British Airways, will favour new transport within cities more than between them. That would anyway fit with general government policy, which is to confine new housing, and the working class, within cities, on brownfield sites.

In practice, the Eddington report will probably boil down to more bus lanes in cities and more cycleways, too; as well as more road tolls, pay-as-you-drive road pricing, urban congestion charges, urban parking charges, and general gas-guzzler charges. Already environment secretary David Miliband has sent Gordon Brown a letter recommending higher vehicle excise duty for fuel-inefficient cars - along with a rise in air passenger duty and the extension of VAT to flights.

Don't expect Department for Transport (DfT) secretary Douglas Alexander to dissent from this mania for new pricing schemes in road transport, rather than capacity expansion or technological progress. On 26 May, Alexander told Tony Blair he would be `seeking innovation and opportunities across all transport modes'. But by 27 June, he announced that only a tiny part, if any, of his Transport Innovation Fund would even improve major roads, let alone build new ones.

TIF money will rise slowly, from about 275 million pounds in 2008-9 to 2.75 billion by 2015. Initially, at least, most of it will go not on new roads, but on tinkering with traffic management, road pricing schemes, and the enhancement of gauges on those railway lines that carry freight. And like Crossrail, the `schemes' that Alexander says will now be `taken forward' will be taken forward for.`business case development and appraisal'. In the same spirit, Gordon Brown says that the Eddington report will `feed into' his own spending review `from 2008-11'

Well, let's not be too hasty! For the Department Against Transport (DAT), innovation means cutting car journeys, taxing them, and subjecting them to state surveillance through IT. Road congestion and the pollution that attends it are to be solved not through building more roads, for it is thought that selfish motorists will want to drive on them. Instead, New Labour innovation in road transport is now about cramming motorway drivers on to the hard shoulder.

The government has a deep-seated hostility to popular mobility. Of course, it justifies its coercive campaign to change motorists' behaviour in terms of the CO2 issuing from use of conventional petrol. But what does it propose to do about petrol use in terms of new technologies? In March, Brown's Budget ordered transport fuel suppliers to make five per cent of their product available as carbon-friendly biofuels by 2010/11. But the Department Against Transport has since found a new, more important worry. It frets about the `serious risk' that biofuels could themselves be developed `from highly unsustainable sources'. Yes, though biofuels take just 0.25 per cent of the UK transport fuels market at present, the government sees their further development as dangerous. And genetically-modified super-cellulose as the best possible substrate for biofuels? New Labour will never support it.

Government shows a similar disdain for innovation in Britain's major rail links. Germany can hope to put its recent accident with magnetic-levitation trains behind it. China can hope to spread its own version of maglev westwards, to Tibet. But Britain is different. As the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, the country's only new major rail line for many years, finally nears completion, the government has allowed Eurostar to strip Ashford, near the Thames Gateway mass housing development, of high-speed trains to Brussels - the political capital of Europe.

Still, in London, there appears to be a positive development. The government has decided to grant legal powers and planning consents to Network Rail in respect of its `Thameslink 2000 rail enhancement scheme' - better north-south railways for the nation's capital. But take a closer look. As DAT minister Stephen Ladyman stressed to parliament, `It is important to note that these decisions do not amount to a final go-ahead for the projects'.

If it is ever finished properly, Thameslink will be improved less around innovation, and more around tunnels that were built back in 1866. The whole atmosphere surrounding rail is steeped in lethargy. For proof, take Transport for London (TfL), the Ken Livingstone bauble that has just found 363million for Balfour Beatty and Carillion to extend the East London line by.2.25 miles. by 2010. Never bashful, TfL continues to protest that `concerns' about Thameslink raised by London Transport back in June 2000 `are still valid': the link's `strong emphasis on outer suburban services' means that it has few benefits for Londoners. For broadminded TfL, Thameslink is therefore of little value.

With air travel, too, New Labour runs a campaign to denigrate technological innovation. Earlier this month, Douglas Alexander told flying enthusiasts in Washington, DC: `We need to develop a coherent strategy encouraging and promoting technical improvements and operational gains - not just in aircraft design and fuel technologies, but also in areas such as air traffic control, which can have a significant impact on emissions.'

With its 787 Dreamliner, a long-haul, mid-sized plane to be flown for the first time next year, Boeing is struggling with composites and engines that, it hopes, will make a machine 20 per cent more fuel-efficient, per passenger, than previous models. Virgin's Sir Richard Branson has said he will invest 1.6 billion to try to put biofuel, not kerosene, into his jets. Some complain that these technological developments are all too little, too late. But what did Douglas Alexander add in the next sentence of his speech? `Relying on technology alone is not enough.'

Maybe so. But relying on new technologies would make a refreshing change from New Labour's ceaseless, tech-lite, authoritarian attempts to wean us stupid, selfish babies from our alleged `addiction' to the car and plane. It would make a change from promises of innovation in rail that amount only to recycling the underground tunnels of properly ambitious but physically diminutive Victorians. It would mean funding more and better international research into higher fuel efficiencies on the road and in the air, not hating motorists and plane users enough to want to tax - or ration - their every movement. Technology alone is not enough. But state controls on personal transport behaviour are always too much. To make people feel guilty every time they drive or fly will be the final triumph for British parochialism.

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Multiculturalism 'a dirty word' in Australia

The Howard Government is looking to scrap the word "multiculturalism" as part of a major revamp of ethnic policy. In a move seen as a shift in emphasis away from fostering diversity and towards increasing integration and responsibility among migrants, the Government is canvassing alternative words to describe how ethnic communities harmoniously integrate into Australian society. The de facto minister for multiculturalism, parliamentary secretary Andrew Robb, yesterday confirmed to The Weekend Australian that he had told a meeting of the government-appointed Council of Multicultural Australia that he wanted to scrap the word from a redrafted multiculturalism policy. The committee members did not have their membership renewed when their terms expired at the end of June.

Mr Robb said he had not decided yet whether the CMA would be reconvened. "I'm keen to see a body but what its composition is and what its role is (are yet to be determined), I've got all the Muslim issues as well so I just haven't finalised it yet," he said. Mr Robb, parliamentary secretary for Multicultural Affairs, said a discussion was held at the meeting about the term "and the fact that it means all things to all men and all women and that there are a lot of other ways that what is being mentioned can clearly be expressed".

"I expressed my frustration that the term is not often helpful because different people listen to it and give different meanings to it and a lot of the others expressed similar frustrations," Mr Robb said. The current policy expires at the end of this year and is now being reviewed by policy-makers. The new approach comes less than 12 months before the next election and follows the Cronulla riots and the comments of Australian mufti Taj Din al-Hilaly that women who did not wear veils provoked men to rape them.

Versions of the policy have received bipartisan support since the Office of Multicultural Affairs was established in 1987. Former members of the CMA yesterday told The Weekend Australian they were concerned about Mr Robb's plans. Former CMA member Yasser Soliman, a Victorian multiculturalism commissioner, said he had raised his concerns about the lack of consultation and doubts about the future of the council. Mr Soliman said he had attended with Mr Robb the discussion about alternatives to the term "multiculturalism". "Our understanding was there was a lot of effort to find an alternative name to the multiculturalism policy because it carried negative connotations," he said. "I suggested 'multiculturalism II' because it implies that it was evolving." Another suggestion was the "integration policy".

Fellow former CMA member Tom Stannage said he was concerned about the new policy. "Clearly Andrew Robb and the cabinet are doing a whole lot of reshaping and developing a whole new vocabulary and so forth," Professor Stannage said. CMA members at the dinner had challenged Mr Robb to use the word multiculturalism more frequently because it was government policy, Professor Stannage said. "I've followed some of Mr Robb's public pronouncements - I'm worried about them but I can't do much about them," Professor Stannage said. "I expect references to unity and diversity will be lost from the new policy because of the diversity thing going out."

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