Is the UK Government pricing us onto the Web as part of its Green Strategy?

Radio 4's Today programme commissioned a report that showed the UK's public transport is the highest priced in the world - by some considerable margin apparently. This is despite the avowed Governmental desire to move people away from un - Green cars and aircraft and onto said public transport.

(Short aside - the young and idealistic may have thought that in order to get people out of cars and planes and onto public transport, you would price those higher and make public transport cheaper and better. This is of course touchingly naive, as that approach means the Government subsidises the taxpaying public, rather than vice versa. Far, far better to ensure maximum car ownership and aircraft usage, tax that and then charge the poor buggers a fortune to use crumbling public transport too. Watch what Government Ministers *do*, rather than say, if you want to know what they think is really good for them - like here, here or here for example . It is well known that the only way to really change cr*ppy things in any structure is to make the Beloved Leaders use them.)

Notwithstanding official DoubleSpeak, the real issue is having to manage infrastructure for the capacity spikes - by ensuring that the bulk of the UK wetware is at its desk (or more usually these days, a randomly inconvenient "hot desk" - now there's a radical improvement for you) under the boss's nose by 9am, there is an enormous jump in the usage of transport infrastructure in "rush hour" (so called of course because nothing moves). Simply staggering working hours so that there is less of a spike would have a major impact, but that has proven too hard for governments globally to enact to date.

As yet there is no movement called Save the Planet by Getting Up late..........

However, whether by subtle design, or the Law of Unintentended Consequences, this all seems to me to have the effect of pricing people onto the Web. The UK now has one of the highest rates of Broadband penetration in the world and leads the planet in Internet advertising, according to Terry Semel.

The Web is in many ways a marvellously Green thing, not just because it reduces journeys needed by allowing people to work from home or local coffee shop. It allows far higher efficiency of order and choice collation, which in theory means less wasted materials and energy in manufacturing and storing wasted products. It also is good for the distribution side, allowing better co-ordination of deliveries by suppliers. And you can stay at home all day to wait for them too.

It is even a good way to keep tabs on your own Member of Parliament - after all they do work for you in theory

For Geeks of course the Web allows socialisation without all that expensive travel for face to face meetings, though the UK government will clearly have to watch this as potentially this will reduce alcohol consumption (and thus booze tax).

However, it is probably a good idea to keep this all quiet, as on past record the minute they realise this is a public benefit they will want to tax it - when I see a WiFi usage tax, and 10% duty on latte coffees I will know the Web has truly arrived.