If you want to beat fuel prices just get walking

What tosh! Only far-reaching changes in behaviour will really reduce our ever-increasing energy consumption. As for the price of oil going down at all - well, George, I wouldn't bank on it. No, I won't believe the Tories' touchy-feely green credentials are anything but a fig leaf until Osborne and his leader propose some policies that necessitate people getting out of their cars and - gulp! - walking.

I know I often write shamelessly about my own walking but since getting rid of my car at the beginning of this year I've been walking even more. Take this Saturday, for example. I wanted to exercise the dog, accompany my nephew to meet his father in the West End, meet up with my older children and return some rental DVDs.

If I'd had a car, I might simply have set off blithely to do all four - only to get snarled up hopelessly in traffic as I ran into the Gay Pride march, and then the all-day concert in Hyde Park. In the process I would have emitted plenty of exhaust, become stressed out and improved my fitness not one jot.

As it was, my nephew and I set out on foot, trusting to public transport if we needed it. We took 45 minutes to stroll into Pall Mall from Stockwell, where we met my brother. I then remembered that there was an exhibition nearby that they might both enjoy, so I walked with them round to the White Cube Gallery in Duke Street. I went on via Green Park to Hyde Park, where I was able to enjoy a little of the popular beat music wafting over the high fence from the Wireless arena.

Then, at the Serpentine Gallery, I came by chance on the new Frank Gehry pavilion in the process of being completed. I dallied for a while, then walked on across the park to Notting Hill Gate, where I saw my kids and returned my films. Job done, including exercising the dog and myself; although he, being a dumb beast, knows no better than to walk in public.

The point about all this was that it was unpremeditated: I simply got up and went. I didn't need to think about routes, parking restrictions or fuel costs. Perhaps it's the very liberalityof walking that so scares politicians - I mean, if they were positively to encourage it, who knows where it might stop? They'd have nothing to tax at all - and all those nice parking contractors and oil company executives would be out of work.