Moonshine

Our village has a 'Low Carbon' group, which has been in existence for much longer than this has been a mainstream talking point or political issue. Being one of the first off the blocks, they secured significant government cash to fund green initiatives in the area - things like interest-free loans for home insulation and draught-proofing, installing PV panels on large buildings and initiating a project to build sustainable and affordable homes. They also run a car-share scheme, with 5 vehicles (soon to be 6) for hire. These are now all electric or hybrid and we ourselves hire them sometimes, partly because it means we do some electric miles in place of petrol-powered ones in our own car - easing our conscience - and partly because I just love driving electric cars. The stop-go-steer simplicity of them reminds me of fairground bumper-cars every time I take the wheel, and it restores some of the early joy to what has, after 50+ years of driving, become something of a chore

Before the scheme went all-electric, it ran some diesel cars, and encouraged hirers to fill them from a bio-diesel pump that was also in the village. This was supplied by companies that took used chip fat and other vegetable oil sources, filtered and processed it into something that basic diesel engines would burn. So far, so green, or at least it seemed so at the time. Eventually, though, the supply of bio-diesel became unreliable and expensive as national demand for it grew, while the limited supply of chip fat remained constant

George Eustace, a UKIP politician who found a home in the Conservative party, is pushing the idea of using the same source of to produce something called "hydro-treated vegetable oil" (HVO) that can be used in domestic oil boilers like ours. The reasoning is no different to bio-diesel in cars: its better than fossil fuel. Well, maybe. There are getting on for 2 million oil boilers in UK; that's a lot of chips. My guess is that the initiative assumes we would eventually devote land to growing crops for oil, which is a much more questionable practice than using a waste product

I took a photo of our boiler to accompany these thoughts, but it's very boring (surprise). Instead here is my attempt to plant a union flag on the moon, to make up for the disappointment of the Cornwall launch