Diary of an Ethical Man - August

Newsnight's Justin Rowlatt has agreed to take part in an experiment for the programme - to live as ethical a lifestyle as possible for a whole year...

AUGUST | JULY | JUNE | MAY | APRIL | MARCH

BIG GREEN GATHERING - 8 AUGUST

Can giant red lobsters really help save the world?
As the world struggles to find ways to tackle climate change, one of the biggest questions is whether renewable energy sources can really replace our dependence on fossil fuels.

On the evidence of the community I visited on the weekend, the answer is yes.

It has a population of 20,000 people, but uses no petrol, diesel, coal or natural gas. The electricity that powers this community's many nightclubs and bars is provided by solar or wind power. Transport is by vehicles powered by vegetable oil or grass - the use of horses is encouraged.

It was a pretty unconventional place in other ways too. Its inhabitants included a man who sings Buddy Holly songs hanging upside down, a couple of giant dancing lobsters and any number of men with dreadlocks wearing silver tutus.

In my capacity as Newsnight's "Ethical Man" my family and I had been invited to spend the weekend at an event that bills itself as the world's biggest green festival.

Hippies

I'll admit that as I'd thumbed through the programme for the Big Green Gathering before we left it wasn't only the renewable energy displays that caught my eye. I was also intrigued by the invitation to visit the Green Man Dome to discover my inner man, to learn Mongolian throat singing in the Moon yurt and to see if something called "Vortex Healing" could help with a persistent ankle injury.

The Big Green Gathering grew out of the hippy festivals of the seventies, and there is no shortage of hippies in attendance. But as climate change becomes a mainstream issue the preoccupations of these hippies camping in a few Somerset fields can teach us all a few lessons.

Visit the festival's main music stage, for example. This is a venue that can hold over a thousand people, has a PA system with the equivalent of a 10,000 Watt output, and a full lighting rig. The entire thing is powered by solar panels, which feed a bank of giant submarine batteries ensuring power day and night. But standing in the audience as a band plays on stage you would never know it wasn't hooked up to a giant generator.

Or what about the man they call Ian the Wizard? When he's not trying to explain how external combustion engines (yes - external) will help wean us off petrol, he's trying to flog you the cheap solar panels and wind turbines he imports from China. "£265 for a full turbine kit", he tells me, sounding more like a trader down at Bermondsey market than the scientist he is.

Bicycle-powered washing machine

Indeed there's no shortage of entrepreneurial acumen among the greens gathered here. I'm accosted by a Norwegian woman brandishing a fully compostable bottle. It has all the properties of plastic packaging, she assures me, but because it is made from corn starch instead of oil, it will biodegrade in as little as ten weeks.

Then there is Alex who has designed a bicycle-powered washing machine and runs (or should I say "pedals") the festival laundrette. You can get a work-out as you do your washing, says Alex, as he sweats his way through the spin cycle. "Not only that," he says "if Armageddon comes you'll know that you can face it in a nice clean shirt."

I spent so much time looking at all the green technologies on show that it was only on Sunday afternoon that we made our way up into the Healing field, where the masculinity workshops were being held.

Inner man

On the way I passed the women's tents including the Goddess zone, complete with workshops on every aspect of female sexuality, strewn with silk cushions and occupied by women holding an animated discussion about breasts.

The Green Man's Dome was billed as being somewhere men could examine their masculinity and find support from other males. From outside it was rather less inviting than the women's tent though. The door of the yurt was open so I popped my head inside to see what was going on. It was completely empty, except for a large man snoring gently on a lilo.

"I'm not sure he's my inner man", I said to Bee, and we quietly slipped away.

I just had time to pop by for a little Mongolian throat singing before it was time to manhandle our tent into the back of the hire car.

The festival site is a good few miles from the nearest town. The event lays on buses from the station but with two toddlers and a two month old baby we can't travel light. Bee and I reckoned we were justified in hiring a car.

As we drove out of the festival site we saw we were not alone. The Big Green Gathering sets its environmental standards admirably high, but the two vast car parks showed that many of the festival goers still rely - like the rest of us - on the traditional, carbon-intensive forms of transport.

How realistic an alternative do you think renewable energy sources are? Could you wean yourself off fossil fuels? Please tell me what you think.

2 AUGUST

Sacrifice

The biggest sacrifice I have made since I was coerced into becoming an "Ethical Man" has undoubtedly been getting rid of the family estate car. I'm not saying it is impossible living without a motor but it certainly not as easy.

On Saturday we returned from a short holiday in southern France. Naturally we travelled by train. The journey out was mostly quite pleasant - a break in Paris for lunch and a comfortable run down south in a TGV. The return was far less comfortable. Indeed one leg of the trip has to rate as one of the unpleasant journeys of my life.

Me and Bee endured a three hour sauna with our two toddlers and seven-week-old baby in a carriage with no air conditioning during the 40 degree heat wave.

That was bad enough, but I made things immeasurably worse was when I decided to move a large suitcase to clear a seat for the family. As I dragged it away the handle broke. For the rest of the journey we had to face the silent fury of a French skinhead. Bee was far from pleased.

This is one incident which will not appear in the Ethical Man series. Had I produced my video camera I am sure both Bee and our thuggish French friend would have taken some delight in beating me within inches of my life.

Ferrari

That is why it was particularly galling when, after our latest ethical episode (on water), I saw the Newsnight in-box filling with emails criticising me unethical behaviour. Namely taking to the wheel the wheel of a bright red Ferrari.

I can see why anyone who saw Panorama on Sunday 16th July might be confused. The programme looked at what has been dubbed "the biggest heist in British history": the VAT "carousel" frauds which drain billions of pounds out of the Treasury each year.

I reported the programme wearing the green suit and lurid yellow tie that have become Ethical Man's hallmark and - yes - I drove that bright red Ferrari. But that was before I became an ethical man. The Panorama was made before I joined Newsnight but transmission was delayed by fears that the programme could prejudice an important fraud trial.

So why the uncanny similarities between Ferrari man and Ethical man?

The suit and tie are easy to explain. When the editor of Newsnight assigned me this ethical brief the producer, Sara, and I decided it might be amusing to give Ethical Man his own uniform. What better than that green suit I already had hanging in my wardrobe? I like to think of it as Ethical Man's first recycling project.

The car takes a little more explaining. Our logic was this: VAT fraud doesn't lend itself to exciting TV but we had a great character at the heart of our story, a VAT fraudster called Ray Woolley.

Ray and his gang stole £37 million over a period of six months. Ray was caught and convicted of his crimes - he was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison.

The problem is they put him in an open prison and when he was asked to pay back millions of pounds of the proceeds of his crime he walked out. We managed to track him down to Switzerland and persuaded him to do an interview.

Fun

I'm sure you've guessed already but Ray Woolley drove - that's right - a bright red Ferrari and we thought that a similar car might help bring this potentially rather dry subject to life.

Yes it wasn't very environmentally friendly. Fuel efficiency isn't Ferrari's big selling point and we took the car over to Brussels so covered a good few hundred miles.

So was it justified? Well the programme drew attention to a serious problem - according to HM Revenue and Customs own figures £7.4 billion of exports in the last quarter were down to fraud, that's well over ten per cent of all British exports.

I am convinced that featuring the car helped make it popular with the viewers. Four million people tuned in, which is pretty good for a serious current affairs programme like Panorama.

Not only that, it was good fun.

Please write in to the Ethical Man to say whether you think all those Ferrari miles were worth it.

If you want to find out more about Ray Woolley and our Panorama on VAT fraud go to the Panorama website.