Steven Nolan: Five Live Debate on Mcr Transport Greening

Quite an odd thing this was.

First, it was time-shifted, to avoid congestion charging presumably, to way past 00:30 today instead of 23:00 yesterday.

Second, R5L lined up a curmudgeon MP plus a curmudgeon congestion licker plus just one transport progressive from Clean Air Now, possibly a Friends of the Earth spin off.

All these people seem to have at least some trouble with numbers. Particularly the curmudgeon MP and the curmudgeon congestion licker.

The final exchange saw Sean of the Dead Cocker, the congested road licker, claiming that life expectancies in London had been increased by just 14 minutes. Enough perhaps to finish that last symphony? Or for a cure for the common cold before that last cough? CAN man suggested that ... perhaps it was 14 days?

As with all figures it does depend on the working. The real difference inside the Congestion Charging zone with either 370,000 or 200,000 residents - with both sources reviewing the same science - is between one fifth and one ninth of a week or 33.6 to 15.27 hours.

The 14 minutes is commutable by taking the whole population of Greater London most of whom have seen only very marginal changes and who were not in any case coughing their guts up in the fumes. And perhaps 14 days is for that war hero Brain Haw who of course lives on a traffic island at the heart of the CCZ.