How Many Roads Must a Man Travel Down (Before He gets to Wishaw)

I was watching Panorama the other night; in it, their reporter had been challenged to reduce his 'carbon footprint' by 20%. At one point his wife had to go to hospital because she was about to give birth. Do you know how they got there? They walked. Yes, gentle reader, their hospital was within walking distance of their house. (there has been no word as yet of divorce proceedings from the wife.)

This made me ponder on how we have become more green conscious, but at the same time we are creating a society in which you can only exist if you possess a car. Because hospitals and schools are being centralised and local hospitals and schools are being shut, you can only get to them if you drive, or have a friend that drives. You can't walk there. In an area like mine where car accessibility is only 53%, this represents a real problem. Public transport in Lanarkshire is lamentable; you can only get anywhere quickly, if it's Glasgow you're going to. If you are going to Wishaw by the bus, you can get there, but you would be advised to take a sleeping bag, a thermos flask and a copy of War and Peace.

Of course, if we're all on the roads travelling to schools or hospitals, it's going to get more congested. And if it's more congested, it's more difficult for emergencies to get through. NHS Lanarkshire compiled a report on how long it took to travel to each hospital in Lanarkshire, from each town. There was just one wee snag. They left out the rush hours. They estimated that you could travel from Monklands to Wishaw in 22 minutes. I can tell you that you could only get from Monklands to Wishaw in 22 minutes if it was 2 in the morning and you were Michael Schumacher.

Centralisation of this type can also cause problems when there are major emergencies. When the 7/7 bombings happened in London, they had problems getting emergency personnel to the scene, because they lived so far away from the centre of London. Similarly, our hospitals are going to have problems if their staff has to travel several miles to get to it in a major incident. Look at the stretch of the M8 from Easterhouse to Edinburgh. If Monklands A&E shuts and if St John's A&E in Livingston shuts, then that means that in the event of a major incident, ambulances are either going to have to drive to the centre of Glasgow to the Royal Infirmary, or the centre of Edinburgh to the ERI. Add the rush hour to that and you have problems. Not to mention all the nasty pollution.

But hey, let's be cheerful. All we have to do is to make sure that we don't have accidents at the rush hour. We can all manage that, can't we?