The Proliferation of Great Ideas
The Internet is the perfect tool for spreading memes, good and appalling. This one not only saved its users a fortune, but improved the traffic-jam experience, contributed to fighting global warming and supported the farming industry. Pity it was illegal and cost some of its perpetrators a bomb.

Some of the Welsh have been running their diesel cars on cooking oil from the local supermarket for some months, partly because its cheaper than petrol station fuel which is taxed till it hurts. But the whole thing started during the blockades of British Petrol stations a couple of years ago when fuel suddenly dried up. John Nicholson decided to try cooking oil to fuel his car because his wife, a nurse, needed to be mobile. Not only did it work at the time, but it worked better than proprietary brands and was much cheaper. So he setup a bio fuels website and Welsh drivers started getting the idea.

Now the cover has been blown and the swingeing fines are being handed out. In Germany you get a tax rebate and a pat on the head for using renewable fuels, in Britain you get a boot up the exhaust pipe and a massive fine. Looks like the Anglo rhetoric about environmental responsibility continues to be just that, smoke blowing.

However, if you pay the tax, about 26p a litre, the fuel becomes legal again and as the Guardian Says
But there is something appealingly anti-establishment about all this; something subversive about how, largely on individual initiative, undertaken without flourish or fanfare, it is possible to sidestep the multinationals and the government and power your car in a natural, clean and efficient way. Today. All you need is a bit of cooking oil, new or second-hand, and the relevant tax return form, available to download from Nicholson's biopower website.

The revolution will be quite small and very quiet, downloadable from the Internet, and smell like dinner.