"I love electric vehicles – and was an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped."

It's that Guardian column — by Rowan Atkinson — that's getting a big reaction.

Who cares what a comedian says? He does claim some credentials:

My first university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent master’s in control systems. Combine this, perhaps surprising, academic pathway with a lifelong passion for the motorcar, and you can see why I was drawn into an early adoption of electric vehicles. I bought my first electric hybrid 18 years ago and my first pure electric car nine years ago and (notwithstanding our poor electric charging infrastructure) have enjoyed my time with both very much. Electric vehicles may be a bit soulless, but they’re wonderful mechanisms: fast, quiet and, until recently, very cheap to run. But increasingly, I feel a little duped. When you start to drill into the facts, electric motoring doesn’t seem to be quite the environmental panacea it is claimed to be....

Just to begin to Google the response:

Unhappy marriages, circa 1970.

1. "Crossroads" by Jonathan Franzen. This is a 2021 novel — 600 pages — that I just finished. It takes place mostly around Christmas 1971 and Easter 1972. The parents have an early-70s-style struggle with marriage, and one of their offspring — the troubled genius son — is named Perry. 

2. "Diary of a Mad Housewife" is a movie that came out in 1970. I watched it because I was reading "Crossroads," and I got the idea that it might have influenced Franzen and that the name Perry was intended as a clue. The director of the movie was Frank Perry, and the screenplay was by his wife Eleanor Perry. I'd never seen this movie before, even though I saw tons of movies in 1970. I think I avoided it because I didn't want to get bogged down in the problems of a subordinated housewife.

Anyway, I enjoyed both works of art, even though I didn't identify with either married couple. "Crossroads" had a younger generation that got caught up in events and ideas that affected me when I was young, and "Diary of a Mad Housewife" had little to do with the 1970s that I lived through. It was about awful people of a sort that I avoided. But what a spiffy work of art. 

I especially liked the 2 male actors — the husband played by Richard Benjamin and the lover played by Frank Langella. Benjamin was comically repellent and his odd looks intensified the effect. I said he looked like Pete Buttigieg, and Meade said take Pete Buttigieg and add Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson):

Free speech in Britain.

Free speech is a hot topic in Britain these days, as a Birmingham theater closes down a play that offended a religious group and touched off a violent protest.

Also:

Only last week, the comedian Rowan Atkinson led a call defending "the right to offend," against government plans to outlaw incitement to religious hatred.

Atkinson argues the law would force "creative thinkers" to bite their tongue, and so produce a "veneer of tolerance concealing a snakepit of unaired and unchallenged views."