COMMENT
How disappointing — if sadly predictable — that the BBC television news coverage of the government’s consultation on its air quality ‘strategy’ was illustrated with graphics that purported to show rancid exhaust smoke belching copiously from the back of an Envrio400 double-decker.
An image that helps reinforce a perception that buses are part of the air quality problem, rather than a solution capable of taking large numbers of polluting cars off our streets. A perception that shifts the challenge of addressing poor air quality from individuals with a choice of how they behave to the owners of public utilities like buses.
Another tiny example of this was delivered — without apparent irony — on BBC Radio 4 the next morning in a Today programme feature on how children at an east London school are suffering increasingly from breathing difficulties attributed to worsening air quality.
One of the parents interviewed explained that he could see the polluted air every morning as he drove his child to school. Yes, drove.
Perhaps he omitted to say that his car is a zero-emission electric, but assuming that it is not, then he spoke for the millions of car users who experience pollution and traffic congesti…
