"How you say? You can stick Logan."

Renault makes a cheap car called the Logan. It’s made in the old Dacia plant in Romania and you wouldn’t want one, especially if you can recall the truly dreadful Dacia Duster.

The Logan is not intended for Europe: it’s a car made for ‘emerging markets’ where anything with four wheels is preferable to a camel or a donkey. And it’s selling like hot cakes, particularly in Iran, where 89,000 punters have already paid to take delivery even though the local factory – it can hardly be called a plant - that assembles the Logan from crates of bits shipped from Romania can’t cope with the rush of orders.

And there is an interesting sub-plot to add to Renault’s woes. The French government is preparing for possible sanctions against Iran and will expect Renault and others to back its stance, by restricting business with the country until it shelves its nuclear programme. I believe the word is dichotomy. Whom to upset: Nicolas Sarkozy or Mahmud Ahmadinejad?

According to Reuters, Renault’s strategy chief Patrick Pelata is reported to have said (in connection with pressure from the French government): “Together we have to find a solution, we cannot let the clients down. They have written out a cheque and they need to get a car or get their money back,” adding that the latter “…would not be good for Renault’s reputation”.

If the Iranian situation gets out of hand, I imagine that being a supplier to a Middle East aggressor “…would not be good for Renault’s reputation,” either. What was that word again?

What part of Road Closed do you not understand?

I live on a private estate, alongside one of the access roads, which has just been re-surfaced. The road was closed during the re-surfacing work, creating a short cul-de-sac that terminated a few yards beyond my house. Two large road signs were prominently placed at the entrance to the road in order to warn people of its closure. The wording on each was clear enough: ‘ROAD AHEAD CLOSED – ACCESS ONLY’. Just past my house, and no more than fifty yards from the signs, was a bright orange barrier. It stretched the whole width of the road, and was clearly visible to anyone approaching the warning signs.

My office window overlooks the road, and time after time I saw inattentive motorists drive right past the warning signs and right up to the barrier before realising there was an obstruction. This happened three or four times an hour, every hour, throughout the week during which the road was closed.

These drivers were then faced with the problem of extricating themselves from a situation of their own making, at which point they revealed that their reversing skills were as inadequate as their observational skills.

But it is the latter that bothers me most. Even the most rudimentary driving skills demand rapid progression through five crucial steps: Look, See, Assimilate, Decide, Commit. How frequently these steps are repeated, and how quickly, determine the difference between a poor or average driver and a skilled one. What I find really disturbing is that the drivers in question didn’t even pass first base, yet they, and others like them, are at liberty to populate our roads, to drive on our motorways, and to place at risk anyone unfortunate enough to be driving in their vicinity.

Of the cars I observed, most were small, and the majority of those were silver, so some rule of thumb can be applied: the drivers of small, silver cars are a menace. Indeed, I now regard this as an immutable fact.

Drivers who rely on satellite navigation more often than not arrive at their destination without knowing how they got there. It therefore follows that for the most part they are lost. I think it ironic that equipment costing many hundreds of pounds has this shortcoming whereas a £4.95 atlas does not.

It's the left wing that fell off...

I was at Donington Park at the weekend, for the VSCC’s SeeRed historic race meeting.

Fabulous meeting, but what’s happened to the full-size, glassfibre Spitfire which sits high up on the Donington infield? With one wing hanging off and a broken tail, it’s a national embarrassment. 

In fact, it’s more than an embarrassment. If someone like me, who was born more than 20 years after WWII ended, can be offended by the sight of those broken remnants hanging on a pole, how must it seem to veterans? Poignantly, Saturday was Battle of Britain Day – hence a real Spitfire (with both wings still stuck on) flew over the circuit.

Why doesn’t the new management, which recently took over the circuit on a 150-year lease, repair the glassfibre Spitfire? Or if they really can’t be bothered, will they please show some mercy and take down the broken, uncared-for, dismembered remains and give them a decent burial.

On a more cheerful note, I heard one competitor mutter, “Thank goodness the circuit’s on a 150-year lease. I’ve just seen my lap-times…”

Here’s a question to use as a tie-breaker in a pub quiz. There are now fewer petrol stations in the United Kingdom than in which year?

I’ll give you a few clues: Captain Oates uttered those fateful words “I am just going outside and may be some time”; the Royal Flying Corps was established; and Piltdown man was ‘discovered’ in East Sussex. Oh, and Titanic sank. The year was 1912.

Fuel sales are not declining, but inceases in fuel duty - with another two pence per litre due this autimn - in many cases create circumstances in which retailers are forced to sell up, or like the Titanic, go under. The heavy duties are squeezing the retailers’ margins to such an extent that only those petrol stations with a high turnover can make a living. As far as the rest are concerened, the land on which they stand will earn more when sold for development than a dozen years of acting as largely unpaid revenue agents.

For example, five years ago Kingston Hill and Kingston Vale had between them about half-a-dozen petrol stations: now there are just two; the rest have become apartment blocks. And this story is repeated around the country.

How many petrol stations has your town lost in the last five years? Post your answer here and let’s start counting.

The end of EU cabbages?

Among the endless debates on the size of cabbages – so far generating a report of some 65,000 words, compared with 300 for the entire American Constitution – and debates on whether Caribbean banana growers are wilfully growing curved fruit, the European Parliament may occasionally be given credit for some original thinking.

For example, during a recent debate on CO2 emissions, a suggestion was made that freight could be diverted from road to rail, as a means of ‘reducing environmental impact’.

All we would need to achieve this laudable solution are some railway lines. Maybe we could create a network of lines that criss-cross the country, serving thousands of towns and villages, with goods yards attached to every station from which small vans could make local deliveries.

I should like to go one stage further, and suggest that these trains (for want of a better word) of goods wagons be hauled by revolutionary ‘locomotives’ from which the only emission would be vaporised water, which I would call ‘steam’. I am sure some bright spark could invent such a thing.

Thus you would have a widespread network of local distribution centres, served daily by ‘trains’ of inert wagons, hauled by ‘steam locomotives’. You could even go one stage further, and attach to these trains what I call ‘carriages’, which could be equipped with seats to carry self-loading cargo, or what might be termed ‘passengers’.

With so many ‘passengers’ travelling on ‘trains’, many roads would become redundant and could perhaps be turned into inland waterways, for pleasure and recreation. Indeed, some far-sighted entrepreneur might even see an advantage in using these inland waterways to transport goods, on vessels hauled by horses, whose emissions might generate sufficient fertiliser for farmers to start growing crops again, instead of having to rely on cream teas and paint-balling to scrape a living.

And such a scheme would also enable us to determine our own size of cabbages. In fact, it is such a good idea that I don’t know why it hasn’t been thought of before.