There’s something timeless about narrow boats. In east London, horses may have been replaced on the tow path by an endless succession of 30 year olds clutching newly-purchased house plants and agreeing with one another over Gaza and how drunk they were last night, but the gentle chug of a diesel engine as it cuts through the peaceful canal is at a pace of life largely forgotten in a modern world of pings and tweets. The only tweets here are the squabbling coots and the silent descent of cormorants upon the water. The roses and castles paintwork, and the pots of dying plants and solar panels on boat roofs are part of a silent conversation shared by nomads, travellers and gipsies for centuries. We all preserve traditions of value, often without even knowing it.

On cold days their chimneys smoulder like idling pipes, as the smoke drifts and mingles with the morning mist. It’s a romantic echo of Avalon. Where the boats congregate there’s a sense of snug community, solidarity and even joy (when the sun’s out) ruined only by the occasional sign of ‘Do not double moor next to this boat’, and by some chap called Paul.

You might know a Paul. He’s the sort who buys a flat near a vibrant pub and then complains to the council that people having fun are disturbing his sleep. When he says sleep what he really means is watching re-runs of Bergerac, or playing computer games online with his international mates with names like HeadBantz40 or I’llnevergetlaid690. This particular Paul was the type calling into James O’Brien’s LBC show to alert the London dictator Mr Khan that he disapproves of people living an alternative lifestyle. Khan, who’s knighthood simultaneously exposes his own hypocrisy and the absurdity of the title when his main contribution to London has been to punish working people with high fares, ULEZ, rampant phone theft and of course record levels of stabbings, recognised his own in Pauls’ officious tone. Any excuse to tighten his grip upon how we live is always welcomed. Knights used to swing swords and use people of Kahn’s stature and charm as stools to mount their steeds, now they arrogantly refuse to answer questions in the London Assembly.

Apparently East Londoner Paul, who lives close to the Regents canal, and is probably as cockney as a wheelie bin is an orange, told the radio show that “The smell comes into the house. I’ve run 40 marathons along the canals over the years. I don’t run anymore, because the air is so polluted,” he added. As with most runners it takes less time than a vegan to announce their leading personality trait. If you see a man trying to prove a point by crawling along a tow path in winter, it’s Paul. In his haste to appear as sanctimonious as it’s possible to be in the champion company of James O’Brien and Kahn, he’s forgotten that for most of the year there is no need for log burners and that there are, at last glance, other routes to run in London other than along canals; unlike the boats he’s not actually tied to it.

What’s failed to grasp of course is that stoves are required for heat. So while he’s enjoying central heating pumping out co2 emissions from imported liquid gas, boaters are using age-old wood and coal. Paul is one of these people who look to the State to look after him every step of his life, Having glanced at wikipedia, Khan agreed that narrowboats’ old diesel engines and solid-fuel stoves pose a risk to people’s health, mayor warns, forgetting that it’s the health of the boaters who have no alternative way to heat their lives that is most at risk. He might have missed the fact that far more people die of cold than heat which is why the entire global warming hysteria is focusing on the wrong thing. Typically of the left wing welfarist mind, he forgets that canal strolls are a matter of personal choice.

And after all, life itself poses a risk to people’s health, such as crossing the street, eating junk food, not exercising (not something we can accuse Paul of), hang gliding, swimming and loneliness, not to mention myocarditis and turbo cancers caused by experimental mRNA jabs. In his usual entitled and sinister tone, the mayor insisted to Paul he was “taking control of the issue” and apparently has “a huge amount of convening powers”.

Ironically, boaters make good use of solar panels, making them pin ups to the Net Zero religion, demonstrating that on a small scale they are actually effective, as opposed to when destroying 1000s of acres of farmland in Lincolnshire that can be destroyed by hail stones and drive national energy prices to record levels due to their profound inefficiency. Living off grid is of course the anathema to our rulers, who prefer us to live in forever gratitude to their magnanimity of allowing us to exist while taxing us entirely out of existence. That no new builds or flats now have chimneys has created a population entirely dependent upon Net Zero clowns like Ed Miliband, who will be still mumbling ‘get a heat pump’ on his death bed. Good luck with a heat pump on a boat that is more likely to capsize it than anything else.

The honesty of log burner is that carbon emissions are local; rather than filling Chinese skies. They drift in the evocative wood smoke from chimneys with that companionable puff of Hobbiton in the Shire. Rather than making boaters even colder on narrow boats, perhaps Khan could pick on someone his own size. Authoritarian China for example who contribute world beating emissions as a result of the UK’s displacement of Co2.

In the spirit of Naked Gun ‘There’s nothing to see here,’ as a fireworks factory catches fire behind him, a senior Chinese official has said “China has always been a doer in climate response and is firmly committed to green and low-carbon development,” somehow without laughing. China has more coal capacity in construction last year than at any point in the past decade. They would also be proud of the UK’s rampant suppression of individual choice in the name of a manufactured cause to justify authoritarianism dished out by Khan in the name of self-righteous people like Paul.

What nodding-dog O’Brien omitted to ask Paul is that if he’s so worried about the environment then why has he got the windows open in winter? Maybe he should close them like he should keep his beak out if other people’s business and not prioritising his own luxury pastime over London’s boaters basic requirement to live and stay warm.

This article (The Government is coming for the narrow boats.) was created and published by Tom Ed and is republished here under “Fair Use”