As someone born nearly 80 years ago, I have always used the adjective green in the old sense and increasingly I feel that the Green Party are, unfortunately for them, becoming aptly named. Caroline Lucas proposes an "emissions allowance" (Letters, May 9), which sounds good but is it practical?

It would have to be established what activities would be covered by the scheme and allowances fixed for each activity from air travel to lazing on a sunlit island.

Would children have allowances? After all a child takes the same space on a plane to get to Disneyland Florida.

Would engineering companies have allowances? If an engineer was sent to Denmark to look at a wind turbine or to France to look at a nuclear reactor how would these essential visits be scored?

How would allowance expenditure be recorded? Imagine the chaos at a Tesco checkout: "Madam you have spent 20 allowances, can I have your family identity number so the allowances can be allocated properly?"

All this would have to be processed which would need thousands of staff to operate the scheme, paid for by the taxpayer. The only beneficiary would be Gordon Brown who could announce a reduction in unemployment of thousands.

The real problem this scheme illustrates is that no matter which party you look at, it is hard to find politicians who have lived in the real world of industry, commerce, manufacturing, engineering, education, medicine or the sciences. They are mostly academics in unrelated subjects, career politicians, ex-political research assistants, in fact "green".

That, I'm afraid, is a cross we have to bear.

  • Brian Beck, Highdown Road, Lewes