Saving the world. One company at a time

He’s changed the way we use record shops, recording companies, internet providers, mobile telecommunications, media companies, perfumeries, transatlantic air travel and the trains. There are very few areas of life Richard Branson hasn’t set out on a crusade to revolutionise for us, ‘the people’. He’s still at it. He’s working on public transport in space, and is now saving the world via the Virgin Earth Challenge. He’s like a modern day Robin Hood, but without the tights and rather eccentric hat.

There are many people I’m sure who feel that he’s far from having won many of his battles. As a customer, the Virgin Internet’s Team’s service has plenty to improve on. I stopped travelling on trains as soon as a Virgin ‘train manager’ – whatever happened to conductors? – tried charging me for a ticket for my cello or threatened to hide it in the buffet car for storage. And to be honest, the concept of travelling Virgin Galactic fills me with dread. No doubt the journey to space will involve the latest gadgets in the rear of the seat in front of you, complete with the latest films, but what use is that when you arrive on the next planet light years late. Or worse still, you start to slow down at Stoke due to a mechanical problem.

The thing is, you have to admire him. Like the thinking man’s crumpet Stephen Fry, who was incarcerated just down the road from where I live now, he’s a reformed guy who’s actually done remarkably well for himself. He has remarkale resilience. I can’t think of any of his ventures that haven’t almost immediately come off the rails and had to be set back in motion, but every few years there he is on the news launching something new with that childish glint in his eye, smiling behind his little beard.

This time though he’s less Robin Hood more Sheriff of Nottingham, putting a bounty on the head of anthropogenic nasty gasses. Greenhouse gasses and $25m to be precise. He’s established an expert panel to act as judges, and you can even register as a competing team on his website. It’s a fantastic venture of Phileas Fogg proportions.

The thing is, I can’t help wondering why nobody has thought of this before? £12.5 million pounds isn’t very much. I would imagine there are a handful of MP’s claiming that as legitimate stationery expenses. In 2003 the government spent £88m investing in haemophilia treatments for example. £12m is petty cash. Just last summer his Tonyness spent £12m on two private jets for use of Prime Ministers and the cabinet, dubbed “Blair Force One”. Why hasn’t Tony been on the news putting a bounty on the head of global warming?

I suspect the answer is that people would say that’s just not a good use of public money. I’m sure millions of pounds more are being spent on students working in uni laboratories under strict Health and Safety supervision. That’s the problem though. Fleming didn’t discover Penicillin using a fully equipped lab and strict drug trials. It was an English chemist, Humphry Davy, who invented the very first lightbulb in 1809, not a physicist or researcher.

The truth is, in this country anyway, it’s blokes called Bill and Bob working in drafty sheds on Sunday afternoons drinking Earl Grey out of Thermos flasks who actually invent stuff and make the world a better place. Thankfully Sir Richard, who probably didn’t lend money to either the Conservatives or Labour befoer he was knighted, recognises that. He is, afterall, one of the Bobs and Bills. Well, he’s a Dicky.

I hope to see that prize taken. I really hope someone creates such a fantastic machine. It will prove that entrepreneurship is still alive and well, and that men in suits and smart M&S ties driving grey BMW 5 series cars don’t make all the decisions. I just bet that it won’t be a group of Tarquins and Amelias from a fine Educational institution at the finish line. There’ll be a picture of Al Gore and Richard Branson flanking two men in anoraks from the North East clutching a box held together by gaffer tape with a hoover nozzle hanging out the side.