"The programme needs a different name for post-car Britain"

Comments to The Times are very different in character to Letters to The Times. If the comments below an article about the BBC's Jeremy Vine today are anything to go by they contain vastly more insults for starters. A long list of rude or uncomplimentary words could be compiled from them. 

And what has the Radio 2 host done to attract all of this abuse? Well, he's demanded that Radio 2's Drivetime be renamed:

Our addiction to the motor vehicle has made our cities traffic sewers; made us asthmatic, fat and angry; and made our planet suffer. We shouldn’t be celebrating a form of transport that kills 1,700 people a year. The programme needs a different name for post-car Britain.

 One of the top-rated comments speaks for most Times commenters:

Jeremy Vine's biggest contribution to the supercharged, unhealthy and unsustainable London economy is to personally extract at least three-quarters of a million pounds a year from licence-payers contributions for presenting a radio chat show. He is personally withdrawing funds that he does not need to the tune of at least 30 average households - whose occupants are then bound to drive around, eat junk food and turn the city into the unhealthy mess it is - just to make ends meet. 

Rather than posturing about green remedies and riding his bike, Jeremy could make a real impact by redistributing the unnecessary wealth he is accumulating and reducing the need for those further down the tree to continue to do all the nasty things he despises. He could encourage half a dozen other BBC millionaires to ease the strain on the environment by reducing the workload on the less well-off. 

Or he could continue to posture  - which is, after all, a BBC policy.