IT poisons the air we breathe, it strangulates our towns and streets; like a gleaming projectile it has hidden teeth. Like the swarming of soldier ants, wherever it goes, the environment dies. It decimates and vandalises both town and country. It is the precursor of death - woodlands in its path die, animals flee, birds vanish!
But this toy of grown men is sanctified, and above criticism. The gleaming car is still the ''Holy Grail'' and the bribe to status. Yet notwithstanding - it is obsolete.
If the forward planners dreaming in our city halls were to cover this entire island in concrete; if motorways were 100-lane concepts; if they set loose giant flyovers that buried towns, and hid forever the sun, they would merely extend and not solve the evil that now corrodes the land.
Maybe it is the time to step back, and look again at the horse? Or maybe rickshaws? But the horse has possibilities - hasn't it? I can see disused factories become stables, and a new Hobson offering his choice to the eager clerk. But I also see the ploughs tearing at the motorways, and turfers laying down their grass. The horse - alive and well in Dublin's fair city. What about here in Glasgow?
Maybe we could have a referendum on this? Maybe the auld Ruglen Horse Fair could be brought back from that forgotten Yesterday of shadow and sun.
Matthew Finlay Nicholson,
136 Main Street, Rutherglen.
May 12.
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