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Do we really need ambulances?

By George Monbiot

THEIR screaming sirens, their back-to-front writing and their dirty deisel engines have become a fixture in our modern lives, but does anyone ever stop to think if we actually need them?

Allow me spell it out for you. Ambulances are notoriously inefficient in terms of fuel consumption. They are either screaming along dual carriageways at more than 90mph, on their way to some self-inflicted ’emergency’. Or they are plodding along carefully at 30 because they are carrying some fascist polluter with a fractured spine.

I performed a peer-reviewed calculation on my phone and discovered that British ambulances make up 0.00023% of our annual CO2 emissions. Look at that figure again and tell me you don’t feel an overwhelming sense of shame.

We must re-order Britain as an ambulance-free society. It won’t be easy. De-ambulancification never is. But we must reach down to the very roots of our being and rip up everything that allows the ambulance to prosper.

Why do we need ambulances? Because people hurt themselves. Or get sick. Therefore our first step must be to stop using things.

Hoovers, Magimixes, television sets and angle-poise lamps are not just power-sucking planet-killers, they are death traps. I use none of these things and yet I am still able to go about my day and make a comfortable living writing articles about ambulances. Why can’t you do the same?

More than half of all UK heart attacks are caused by easyJet. Peer-reviewed fact! Every time you fly you are causing a heart attack which requires the dispatch of an ambulance to take the fat polluter to hospital where it is hooked up to electrical machines, only to recover and go on yet another holiday to one of easyJet’s 74 European destinations. And so your filthy, gassy circle keeps turning.

Those of you who have ever been so complacent, so self-absorbed, so willfully ignorant as to allow yourself to be carried in an ambulance should ask yourselves this question: Am I really good enough to go on living among people like George Monbiot and some of his friends from university?

 

Brown Still Sending Blair Abusive Emails

GORDON Brown is in regular contact with his predecessor Tony Blair through a relentless stream of angry, foul-mouthed emails.

The Prime Minister's spokesman said Mr Blair's 10 years in power meant Mr Brown would always look to him as a source of raw hatred.

One email from July 14 reads: "Saw you on the telly today. You look like a twat. Correct that –  you look like twat who's gained weight.

"Where did you leave the spare ink cartridges, you total arse?"

A week later Brown writes: "As you may or may not have noticed the country is under water. I blame you and your ghastly wife for this.

"I wouldn't be surprised if she summoned up some kind of voodoo rain curse to try and make me look stupid. Well, it hasn't worked and everyone thinks I'm great, so shove it up your bumshaft."

Brown also wrote to Blair earlier this week after his first summit with President Bush: "George said he liked me more than you. Thought you were a bit 'churchy', even for him.

"I said you were like some weirdo Jehova's Witness who wouldn't take the hint and we laughed and laughed. Shit off."

Professor Bill McKay, of Glasgow Clyde University, said: "Gordon Brown's poll ratings are not only a boost for the Labour Party but will allow him to taunt Tony Blair with unbridled enthusiasm."

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