It was the Danish atomic physicist, Niels Bohr, who once casually remarked that “making predictions is very difficult, especially about the future”.
Jeff Hopkins, a retired American TV producer, ought to have taken Bohr’s words to heart. As you’re probably aware, the end of the world was scheduled for last Saturday and, to publicise the fact, Jeff spent several months driving to and fro between Long Island and New York City, twice a day, with a lighted doomsday sign on top of his car.
He also spent quite a chunk of his retirement savings, as each 100-mile round trip at 30 miles per gallon reportedly cost him $15 in petrol.
And all for nothing, I think we can now safely say.
I guess the right conclusion to draw from his experience is always to go for a low-CO2 car – however well or badly you think the future will turn out.
Anyway, getting back to the subject of predictions, who’d have guessed three years ago, when I handed the reins of this blog to Mark Sinclair, that I would be returning now to take my place among BusinessCar’s illustrious cadre of commentators?
Not me, for sure. But now that Alphabet’s continuing international growth has taken Mark away from both the UK and these pages, it’s a real pleasure for me to take his place – this time wearing my new hat as CEO of Alphabet’s newly-independent and enlarged UK operation. Which begs the question, what is the job of a blogger?
I suppose it’s to keep an eye on current events and developing trends in and around the fleet industry. And to come to some conclusions about where our world is heading.
For example, when I first started writing here, the ban on smoking in the workplace was about to come into force. I remember noting the distinctly Orwellian overtones of the legislation and wondered how long it would be before our legal guardians launched mobile smoke patrols to root out cases of blatant in-car cigarette consumption.
Not all that long, as it turned out. Last month, Tendring District Council in Essex teamed up with the local police to check the ashtrays of passing vans and trucks, although the council said it simply wanted to offer drivers advice and ensure they were aware of the smoking law.
And why would a council need to do that? Could it be because in England (unlike in Wales and Scotland) the official website offering advice and help on the smoke-free law no longer exists?
If you Google “workplace smoking England” or follow the relevant link from the HSE’s web site, you will find yourself at europearchive.org. There, among a vast collection of digital cultural artefacts, you will find the disabled content of the original NHS smokefree England web site.
Although its pages still carry a Crown Copyright notice, the only link to an active site takes visitors to a separate, commercial web site offering no ownership details or postal address. This non-official site, which is littered with spelling mistakes, is apparently funded through sponsored links to dental clinics, lawyers and steam cleaning companies, which are presumably hoping to profit by assisting people with the negative effects of their addiction.
Such is the state of the smoking ban in England: roadside nicotine patrols and a tawdry Internet connection. It almost looks as though the Government wanted to bring its law into disrepute through sheer neglect.
Our leaders need to make their minds up and either get behind the ban in England or get rid of it.
They might not have much time to do so, however. According to the leader of Jeff Hopkins’ religious sect, the new date for the end of the world is absolutely, completely, definitely on 21 October.
That is his prediction, of course, not mine.
Follow BusinessCar on TWITTER
