Good afternoon 59-60. As you will know I have no time for Labour, and certainly not for the one-eyed Scottish lunatic, but your attempt to blame Labour generally, and Brown in particular, for the diesel shambles is disingenuous to put it as mildly and as politely as I can.

The whole 'dash for diesel' was inspired, led and encouraged by the environmental lobby, the Greens, who had convinced, not just our Labour government, but the entire EU and much of the rest of the world as well, that CO2 emissions were causing global warming/climate change and had to be reduced as a matter of urgency. We signed up to Kyoto in 1997, and in an attempt to reduce CO2 emissions as promised in that agreement, the Labour government decided to actively encourage the sale of diesel cars which emitted much less CO2. Of course it was known that they caused air pollution, but it wasn't known at the time how damaging that pollution was, and it was very much the accepted view of environmentalists and scientists that CO2 reduction was by far the greater priority.

To blame Brown and Labour, as that BBC piece is doing is ludicrous, they did what they had been convinced was the right thing for the environment, the BBC was behind it, so was Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth etc, the Lib Dems, the Tories, the entire EU. Gordon has a lot to answer for but you can't hang this one on him. Those responsible for the thousands dead because of air pollution are the environmentalists with their obsession with CO2 reduction, they got it wrong, they were blind to the air pollution dangers, they killed those people, not the politicians who were gullible enough to listen to them and believe them. The politicians have to go along with the Green orthodoxy or they're toast, that's the way it is today, and never mind how many the Greens kill along the way, we have to save the planet.