When will the Government wake up? In fact, when will governments worldwide wake up? Worldwide, there are problems with environmental pollution. Worldwide, there are problems with traffic congestion, with road accidents, with burglaries when people are out at work, with rising transport costs affecting food and all other commodities due to traffic congestion, with loss of community spirit in villages and towns, with depression among workers forced to commute for hours daily, spending insufficient time with their families..

Yet, there is an answer to all this! It's simple, clean, environmentally friendly, popular with voters and should be relatively cheap to implement! All that is required is for governments to give incentives - which may be positive in terms of grants or ultimately punitive in terms of tax penalties - to employers to get them to encourage working from home. Some already do it, but most cling to an antiquated view that employees will 'skive off' if they can't see them. The truth is, modern technology is more than adequate to keep track on output - and the real truth is, many middle managers will find their roles unnecessary if the work is being done from home, not 'bums on seats' in offices.

Of course, not everyone can work from home: incentives are also needed to encourage more flexible working where that is an option. But certainly, if everybody who could work from home, did, even if only a few days a week, the effect worldwide would be phenomenal. Pollution would be cut to safe levels at a stroke, communities would be regenerated because people would be there all day and have far more leisure time, families would be happier, burglaries would drop dramatically..

Proof that this would be a popular move comes from you, Motorbase readers: in our recent reader poll, 55.3% of you agreed that the government giving incentives to employers and employees to encourage working from home would be the best solution to reduce congestion on our roads.

31.9% felt that to build more motorways paid for by tolls at peak times would help (though of course, that is dependent on the tolls being affordable), 8.5% thought the government should encourage private motorway building financed by tolls at all times and only 4.3% agreed with what seems to be the British government's favoured scheme, to introduce widespread road pricing, so you pay by the mile for the roads you drive on, including punitive pricing at peak times.

Malcolm McKay, Motorbase News Editor