The Mail and others are doing a retrospective on the Great Smog of London, which descended upon us in sixty years ago this week. In typical Mail style, a good selection of pictures are included, and the loss-making Guardian also posts a gallery of pics illustrating the event. The BBC offers a narrative.

However, I can attest that none of these pictures really do justice to how bad it was. One hears the phrase "you couldn't see your hand in front of your face" and in this case it really was no exaggeration. At the tender age of four and a bit, I remember being taken to school by my father, and experiencing the eerie sensation of walking along the pavement, not being able to see my own feet. And I was only little then.

We were living in Stamford Hill, in north London, at the time. At the crossroads on the main street, there was a vast expanse of pavement in front of what was then the Odeon Cinema. So thick was the smog that we lost sight of any reference point, groping though the murk, trying to work out the direction. We could see nothing but these rolling clouds of filth.

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This is a bandwagon the EU is jumping on with alacrity. With catalytic converters on petrol engined cars, particulate filters on diesels, and much reduced traffic in London, courtesy of the congestion charge and the rapid spread of Controlled Parking Zones meaning there is nowhere to park, the air quality in London has almost certainly never been better since pre-industrial times. Despite this, with the aid of the scourge of mankind, Epidemiology, it has been "proved" that several thousand Londoners are dying prematurely each year, and the EU are about to levy huge fines if arbitrary air quality standards aren't met. Expect more draconian enlargement of the Low Emission Zone, that will price the poor off the roads. This is happening all over Europe, with Paris being the latest city to fall, with for example, all pre 2004 motorcycles being banned from their equivalent of the area bounded by the M25 from 2014. Just another small line in Europe's suicide note.

I suspect that the point of the law is to fine, rather than to change things, and the point of the fine is to punish rather than to raise money. Our masters are driven by a need to punish; bullying pure and simple. As always with bullies, they seem unaware that eventually the victim invariably fights back and the Euronazis will be lucky to escape with a bloody nose.

Oh yes, I remember those thick yellow smogs. We lived in Cheshire, south of Manchester and we used to get them there as well as in the city. Mr. M. drove buses for a time and the conductors (they used to exist then) used to walk in front of a convoy of buses just to lead the way. Don't know how they weren't run over. He once managed to drive a double-decker through the gates into a park without ever seeing them, everyone, passengers and crew, left the bus and walked back. When they came to recover the bus the next day they couldn't extract it without taking down one of the gateposts, God knows how he managed to get it in!
The last ones I remember were around the beginning of the '60's I think.

A couple of bits of trivia about todays London.

I walk from Paddington to Marylebone every day on my way to work. The Marylebone road is supposedly the most polluted in Europe. Well clearly the instruments are not calibrated correctly because the worst odour to assault the nostrils come from those smoking. No longer do you go home with grime in your hair and smelly clothes as was the case in the 80's

Another analogy to help understand the not inconsiderable technical advances that have helped achieve this level of clean air. A heavy truck in 1993 when the first Euro1 emission regs came in had an emissions footprint about the size of a football field. Euro 5 level emission vehicles (todays current std) have a footprint the size of a postage stamp. And by the way these heavy engines don't always need particulate filter. Euro 6 becomes mandatory next year further reducing this footprint. US EPA10 regs are tougher still and have been in place since 1/1/10 (Europe has always lagged behind despite the propaganda from the EU and greens)

All this technical advance eventually makes its way into cars, where the restrictions are not so draconian. You could almost say with an EPA10 diesel engine that it is Zero emissions with just water and carbon dioxide coming out the exhaust. Do we hear about these amazing advances, no we get someone trying to kid us all that particulates are killing thousands which is just bull. More particulates enter the atmosphere from tires than from the exhausts.

Now the though I have had, and I worked in the industry for 25 years is, if we reduce emissions further, at considerable cost, and the footprint reduces from a postage stamp to 3/4 of a postage stamp, can we now measure and quantify the benefit to health and the environment. I think not. Have we reached the point of diminishing returns, and would we not be better off using the carrot to encourage the not inconsiderable knowledge bank in pushing for a really significant reduction in fuel consumption, and leave emissions where they are for 10 years. Remember every time we reduce emissions it increases fuel consumption which has to be offset by technological advances. Just a thought.

Edited by user 06 December 2012 23:27:41(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified