As I'm sure you've heard, the green-eyed madmen of Richmond upon Thames in London have elected a bunch of über-loonies to run the borough's services and now, predictably, everything is falling apart.
Instead of organising war memorials and better rubbish collection, the super-loons have announced that if you fail to send the council an e-mail before you go shopping, they will assume your car produces a great deal of carbon dioxide and, as a result, will charge you 40p an hour more for parking than someone who has sent an e-mail.
Quite what difference 40p will make to someone who has a £30,000 car, I have absolutely no idea. It will really hurt only the poor. But this is the way with the world's mega-loons. They leap from bandwagon to bandwagon, simply not understanding that bandwagons are transient because they're silly and the tune they're playing always goes out of fashion.
Of course I quite agree that something must be done to unclog the nation's town centres. And I'm not certain the banks have got the right idea either. By running out of money they are now ensuring that every restaurant, pub, building society, estate agent and shop is closing, so that soon there will be no reason for popping into the local conurbation.
This will definitely ease congestion but the side effects are even more profound than the ideas being implemented in Richmond by the giga-loons.
Happily, however, I have been giving the matter some serious thought and I have devised a plan of my own that might just work.
As we know, Monte Carlo is a fairly horrible place full of prostitutes, wedding cake architecture and greasy little men who've learnt their English from baddies in James Bond films and who meet in bars at night to sell one another machineguns. It rains more than you might think, too.
And yet it is perceived to be a glamorous place simply because of the cars that prowl round Casino Square. Big is good. Low is better still. Red is best. And plainly, if Simon Cowell lived here, they'd put him on income support.
The cars are what makes Monaco look so good and it's the same story in Tokyo. Mostly, this is an all-grey 50-mile Lego set with concrete telegraph poles and a wiring system that seems to have resulted from a massive primary school game of cat's cradle.
But once again we find ourselves amused and impressed, partly because you are encouraged to smoke indoors but mostly because of all the funny little Postman Pat cars that hop about the place, with their cheeky smiles and their lilac paint jobs.
And then there are the taxis with their antimacassars and their electric-opening rear doors. We know, as soon as we climb into such a thing at the airport and are overtaken by a Mazda Bongo in teenage lip gloss pink, that we have arrived in a funky go-ahead place and that we shall be happy there.
Exactly the opposite applies in San Francisco. Make no mistake, this is my second favourite city in America - after Detroit - with its hills and its sharp, clear afternoon skies. I adore the hills and the patisseries, but the whole place is let down by the cars. Because the people who live there like to sit around pretending to be French, they all drive crappy Hondas.
You may imagine as you cross California Street that you will be mown down by Steve McQueen in a Mustang or Nicolas Cage in a faux Ferrari 355 but it's more likely you will be killed by some bespectacled librarian in a VW Beetle who's not looking where he's going because he's too busy trying to be Jean-Paul Sartre.
And that brings me, naturally, on to Huddersfield. Without a doubt this is one of Britain's most impressive towns. The square in the centre stands as four-square testimony to the fact that money does not necessarily equal a here-today, gone-tomorrow excursion into the shag-pile world of bad taste.
It's gorgeous, especially because your eye is drawn down each of the streets that lead off it to those dark satanic hills that lie beyond.
But you're not looking, because all the streets are lined with such a terrible collection of rubbish. It's hard to understand why. The council would insist you got planning permission before painting the roof of your house beige, and yet it does nothing to prevent people from buying a Nissan Bluebird and leaving it on the drive, or in the road, where it can be seen by passers-by.
So how's this for an idea? Each council should allow free parking for people who have a nice car, while those with unpleasant eyesores such as the Bluebird should be made to pay around £1m a minute.
It is much simpler to implement than the gas-based system being used by Richmond because just one person is needed to decide what's okay and what's not. You don't need a computer and an army of traffic wardens with degrees in upper atmosphere dynamics.
Don't for a minute imagine that I'm looking for Ferraris here. Far from it. Anyone who has a Mondial, for example, or a 308 GTB would be made to pay a great deal because these are terrible cars and nobody wants to see one on their street.
There would be similar penalties for people in disgusting Hummers but anyone with an interesting older car, such as a Rover 90 or a Hillman Hunter GT, would be allowed to park wherever they pleased.
Not only would the system improve the look of a town centre but it would ease congestion too because people with Kias and Hyundais would simply be priced out of the market. And here's the brilliant bit. They won't mind.
Because anyone with a Kia is plainly not interested in cars it's no hardship being made to go shopping on the bus. That's the fatal flaw with the system in Richmond. It penalises cars with big engines, which tend to be driven by enthusiastic drivers who would mind very much being made to go on public transport.
It also penalises people who drive large school-run 4x4s and that really is idiotic. I've just bought my third Volvo XC90 in a row and the simple fact is this: it takes six children to school in the morning.
If I were forced to swap it for something smaller, we would need to do the run in two cars. And I'm sorry but two Minis produce 256 grams of CO2 per kilometre. A single Volvo diesel produces just 219. This means the XC90 is actually good for the environment and we should all have one immediately.
Just don't do what I've just done and buy the "sport" version. Because fitting an XC90 with hard suspension and chunky alloy wheels may make it look good but it will ruin the ride. I've been in more comfortable jet fighters.
I don't know what I was thinking of really because I know the Volvo is not sporty in any way. The diesel engine, though better than it was in the early days, is still desperately agricultural. The handling is straight from the playpen and the speed is woeful. Sticking four exhausts on a car like this is a bit like sticking four exhausts on Eamonn Holmes and attempting to sell the end result as a sport model.
Other versions, though, are just epic. People think this car has become such a common sight on the road because it is part of the private school uniform. That may be so. But there's another, bigger reason. It is by far the best of all the school-run-mobiles because there really is room for seven people, 14 legs and two dogs in the boot as well. No other car maker - and this is strange - has managed to pull off a similar trick without ending up with a bus.
And if it's a bus you're after . . . Well, why not get out of my way and use one from the council.
The Clarksometer
Volvo XC90 D5 SE R-Design
ENGINE 2400cc, five cylinders
POWER 182bhp @ 4000rpm
TORQUE 295 lb ft @ 2000rpm
TRANSMISSON Six-speed manual
FUEL 34mpg (combined)
CO2 219g/km
ACCELERATION 0-60mph: 10.3sec
TOP SPEED 121mph
PRICE £36,850
ROAD TAX BAND F (£210 a year)
ON SALE Now
