Cafe Lumiere gets electric transport

As you will be aware, Café Lumiere takes environmental concerns very seriously and does a reasonable amount to publicise new initiatives to save fuel. It should come as little surprise, therefore, that the café has recently invested in its own electric transport – yes its an electric scooter.

This rather funky little moped can do up to 30 miles and has a range of 20 miles. As a result, it has just enough range to get me to work. I hope to use it regularly both at uni and at home in Sussex. Here are a couple of pictures of this illustrious vehicle. I bought it on ebay and I am pleased to say I got it for a very good price! As it has a free tax disc and costs around 5 p to fill up, it should be economical as well.

In the mean time though, I need to book up something called CBT (compulsory Basic Training) which will enable me to go and ride it on the road; watch this space.

NB the model pictured is the same colour and model as the one I have purchased.

Getting fashionable with French

My younger sister recently produced these wonderful posters as part of her French home work for the holidays. I think they are wonderful and will make an excellent posts. They seek to link French vocabulary with my younger sister's passion for cows.


I find the summer collection and winter pages the most amusing. I especially like the sun specs attached to the rather fashionable cow on the lower left page. The quasi viking cow also merits a closer inspection.

For those of you with an eye to the future, observe the cow in the bottom right of the lower right page. She is wearing scarf, but around her nose, why is this? My sister felt that, cows would wear scarfs on their noses because, this area is mostly likely to get chilly especially after drinking water, or dipping their nose in some snow. Remember, you saw it here first!

Slavery vs petrol

When working today the thought occurred to me that there are obvious parallels between the abolition of the slave trade and the end of the petrol driven car. People in the 18th century recognised that slavery was an awful way to treat fellow human beings, but the important issues which took years to settle was ‘who would pay for an end to the supply of money slavery produced?’ The same question faces humanity today. Companies such as BP and Shell employ thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. Who will foot the bill if the large petrol companies are wound up? What would governments do if those people enter the labour market over the next ten years?
Even more pressingly for governments, what will they do without the fuel duty? In the UK around 70-80% of the cost of fuel is tax. Just imagine if all UK drivers started using battery cars tomorrow – where would be the money in that? And what if they used solar panels to recharge them? Governments would not even be able to levy a tax on electricity if that happened.
Perhaps the potential lack of revenue from fuel is the reason why the Uk government was so keen to set up a pay as you go system a few months ago. That way, you could still charge people for using roads, even if they drove green cars. What is the answer the average road user?
As a believer in helping the environment, it has to be to go for electric cars as soon as possible as they represent the greenest of the car options available.
Concerning the money, I think other uses for the existing infrastructure as well as changes in our behaviour as a nation could off set the cost. As regards the treasury, perhaps we could have a few less wars, that would go a long way to off setting the reduction in petrol duty – and as for BP – there are two possibilities. Firstly, get them to work in the new solar panel industries and car support roles and also use their infrastructure for retail and office spaces. Think of the number of BP petrol stations there are across the country. Secondly, use BP as a chemical laboratory – where new materials are conceived and tested daily.