Countries such as China can become victims of their own industrial success with the pollution that it creates. Photograph: Stringer Shanghai/Reuters

I recently got stuck in a snarl up near the turnoff for Vientiane‘s airport. I saw a young man’s body being peeled off the road. The police did not clean up before letting traffic flow again, so I drove queasily through the remaining blood and brains and was haunted onto the flight to Bangkok. Judging by the mess, both he and the truck that hit him were travelling at high speed. That it was early afternoon did not preclude either him or the driver of the truck from being drunk. He was one of an estimated 1.7 million annual road fatalities, 70-90% of which happen in the global south.

 

What is it about the European Union that encourages newspapers to write such nonsense about it? Is it because it seems so far away that no one is expected to check? Is it that the European commission fails to respond effectively to false stories?

 

I don’t know, but the stories told about it rank among the most outlandish and entertaining of all urban myths. Among my favourites are the Sun’s claim that the European commission had ruled that Bombay Mix must be renamed Mumbai Mix; the same paper’s insistence that “red-faced women … must take back old vibrators for recycling before they can buy a new one“; and the reliably barmy Christopher Booker’s assertion in the Sunday Telegraph that under EU rules you’ll be able to bury dead pets only after “pressure cooking them at 130 degrees centigrade for half an hour”.

 

The government’s chief scientific adviser has hit out at climate sceptics who attack global warming science on spurious grounds.

The statements from Professor John Beddington appeared to be a veiled attack on the former Tory chancellor and arch climate sceptic Nigel Lawson.

Beddington said that he had met Lord Lawson to brief him about the science of global warming.

His comments came as the Royal Society announced that it would publish a new guide to climate science for the public following criticism of existing statements on the topic, reportedly from 43 of the society’s 1,489 fellows.