Chavs in suits

This morning I was at another dreary business breakfast. Full of grey men in grey suits - supposedly the good and the great of Stoke on Trent. God help us.

It wasn't long before the sprinkling of snow that had brought the nation to a halt turned the conversation to global warming. "They won't do anything about it ho-ho-ho" went the grey coffin dodger on the other side of the table. Resisting the templation to lunge across the table and grab him warmly by the throat I pointed out that we were now committed to a level of climate change that would wipe out around a third of the world's population within about a hundred years. "But we don't know if it's caused by human activity." I thought that there was only one idiot left on the face of the planet who still believed that rubbish. And he's imprisoned in the Whitehouse. "Oh, but we've still got to have growth."

Presumably the enlightened long term outlook of this particular grey gentleman says something about the current predicament of Stoke on Trent. Perhaps he doesn't have any children or grandchildren - either that or he's too dense to see that the things we are talking about are impending during their lifetime. That he is condemning them to live in a world torn by conflict and strife - or that they will pay many times over every time he turns the key in his Jag or whatever it is.

To be blunt I struggle to tell the difference between people who carry on like this in the full knowledge of the impact of their actions and those who open the taps on the gas chamber. The result is the same, just maybe it's a bit easier to pretend that the link doesn't exist.

It would be nice to think that those fortunate enough to live in parts of the world that are likely to get through this are those wise and forward looking. That those destined to have their lands turn into deserts or floods will be the ones we can do without. Maybe we should have passports issued on merit - but somehow I don't think it's going to happen that way.

Many of our biodiesel customers are simple folk. Taxi drivers, van drivers, but concerned enough to see that they can play their part. They recognise that they owe it to their children and they deserve their place in the future of the planet. But many of the great and the good of Stoke on Trent, it seems, are just chavs in suits.