'How can you go shopping on an ELECTRIC BIKE?' Green Party mocked for diesel ban response
TALK RADIO host Julia Hartley-Brewer lambasted Green Party member for sharing “factual errors” on her programme and mocked a proposal to swap diesel cars for electric bikes.
Hartley-Brewer berates Baroness Jones over 'incorrect' death figures
Lady Jenny Jones was speaking on TalkRadio about the recent Government’s decision to ban diesel vehicles in favour of more environmentally friendly options.
The Baroness welcomed the announcement as a step forward to resolve an “NHS crisis” that she claimed led to a staggering 40,000 pollution-related deaths a year.
However, Hartley-Brewer quickly interrupted the Baroness and called her out on her attempts to share what she said were incorrect stats that misrepresented the real situation.
She said: “That’s a complete misreading of those figures. There is an equivalent of 29,000. Equivalent deaths from air pollution.”
“40,000 people are not dying in this country every year as a result of air pollution. That is simply a factual error.”
Baroness Jones explained that the figures had to be analysed alongside the registered effects pollution has on young people and that the Government’s decision is still “not good enough” to fully address the problem.
“Children are going to suffer from respiratory diseases, smaller under-developed lungs and that is going to give us huge problems in the future.”
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“What the Government has to take seriously is a better investment in public transport so people can give up their cars.”
She then suggested car manufacturers should begin to research electric bikes as they could be “a winner, especially in our polluted cities” but was rebuked by Hartley-Brewer who was sceptical about the functionality of biking.
The presenter said: “I’d be intrigued to see how one might get around with a full load of shopping and maybe two toddlers on an electric bike. That might be a little hard for some of us.”
Baroness Jones said many UK cities are moving more towards bicycle transport and parents are even putting “little trolleys in front of their bikes with their children”, a decision the radio host branded as “insane".