Redwood dampens Christmas spirit

Just when the Conservatives are cockahoop with poll after poll showing them outshining Labour, along comes 'Vulcan' John Redwood to quell the excitement. The former Tory cabinet minister who famously challenged John Major for the the leadership of the party (and failed) turned on the Christmas lights in his Wokingham constituency at the weekend - the day after using his blog to call for a total ban on Christmas lights.

"Many shops, offices, homes, trees and streets are being adorned with numerous lights. Do they realise these lights are going to be kept on for all of December? ... Wouldn't it be a modest proposal to ban them as unnecessary planet wreckers?"

Before anyone gets the wrong idea that Redwood has become the greenest man in Wokingham, if not Britain, it appears the purpose of his un-seasonal greeting is not so much to save the planet as to protect his right to drive his S-type Jag.

"All those ultra greens," he writes, "who are busy telling my constituents they should not take the car to get to work or to bring the weekly shopping home might like to campaign against an easier target to cut our carbon emissions..." Roughly translated: hands off my motor; turn off the Christmas lights.