Surprisingly, knowing the mindset of co-conspirators, they voted not to give tax relief to farting and shitting, but to not having children.

Guido of course being a good and fertile Catholic is not impressed with the no-children Green tax credit idea, but it does have a certain anti-humanity, Green ideological logic consistency to it. Perhaps Huhne or Zac will take up the idea…

If AntiCitizenOne is not too paranoid to email in with his address, his prize will be sent to him by return.

Just got back from lunch. On the table next to me was a denim clad Carol Thatcher. Obviously Guido listened in to her conversation. She was drinking rosé with a younger Latino, possibly South American guy, bemoaning the tax man. “No the money in Switzerland is in my own name” was the tone of the conversation. Out of respect for her mother and a shared loathing for the Inland Revenue, Guido will leave it at that. She definitely has no luck with men – she split the bill…

Political correspondents can breathe a collective sigh of relief. As we exit the substance desert that was the silly season they can now start writing “party split” stories.

Keith Vaz, a former minister for Europe, is calling for a referendum on the European constitution that Jim Murphy, the current minister for Europe says isn’t a constitution, just a bit of administrative tidying up. The FCO traditionally lies for its country, Murphy is lying for a foreign superstate. Blunkett says a referendum was promised and Miliband says Labour is not split. Super…

Gummer is getting a kicking from John Redwood saying basically that the mad burger-eater will damage the economy with his Green taxes and plans for increasing airport congestion. Cameroonie sources are briefing that they won’t pay much attention to the loopier ideas from Zac and Gummer. Fantastic…

So we have splits, splitters and lots of easy copy ahead of the party conferences. Cynics among you might wonder if the splits haven’t just been teased out by the media to manufacture a storyline, the Sun (Vaz article) and GMTV (Redwood interview) can take the credit for getting it going. The show must go on…

Iain Dale has alerted Guido to the fact that the blog post on Huhne was recycled in the newspaper diaries this morning. Guido doesn’t usually read ‘em, but they clearly read him…Peter McKay’s Ephraim Hardcastle in the Mail even pinched the carbon based life forms crack. Is Guido bitter? He’d like a case of decent Margaux sent over from Associated Press this time. The Evening Standard’s diary has been stealing stories from Guido and Iain for years without ever paying a penny. Guido is still smarting from receiving a mysterious letter from the Evening Standard headed “Dear Londoner’s Diary Contributor”… is someone fiddling the expenses at Associated?

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Everyone seems to think Dave did well on Newsnight last night, in the sense that he was calm and didn’t get rattled. However, Michael Crick is in all honesty no Paxman, the four presenters combined are actually easier to face than Newsnight’s Grande Dame.

To be fair Dave faced a slippery nipple obssessed Paxman in 2005. It takes a bit of political courage to face Paxman. When did Gordon ever face Paxman?

Back in 2004, Lancaster University’s Professor Roger Kemp, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Engineering, produced a report for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, on the environmental impact of high-speed rail versus air and car travel. He used the example of the London to Edinburgh route to illustrate his findings. The conclusions were startling and rather annoying for the car hating Green fundamentalists.

With electricity generated from fossil fuels:

• Travel by conventional rail contributes as much to global warming as travel by car
• Over a 600 km sector, travel by high speed rail is as environmentally unfriendly as air travel
• Cars are more fuel efficient than planes or trains. Cars are greener.

Source : www.engineering.lancs.ac.uk/research/download/Environmental impact.pdf

Trains are heavy, get their energy inefficently down wires where much of the energy is lost and are fundamentally a nineteenth century point-to-point technology belonging to a slower era. Cars are light, fuel efficient, and a liberating, flexible form of transport suited to modern life. Greens hate them so much because they are ideologically opposed to capitalist modes of consumption. So why are the Tories giving headspace to this anti-Car, anti-Air travel nonsense with their penalty tax proposals?

It must be “Green Loon Day“ today – the LibDems have just released (on recycled paper) a 46 page plan for a “Zero Carbon Britain”. Which is a bit scary since we are carbon-based life forms.

Huhne also wants to ban petrol cars within a generation (by 2040). How he has changed from his days as a City slicker when he drove about the Square Mile in a big black petrol guzzling BMW 7 Series, with the self-effacing number plate “H11HNE”. He now drives a greenish poseur politician’s electo-petro Toyota Prius hybrid. The only green vehicle is a bike, like Boris has…