At the weekend I read an article in the Daily Telegraph by John Whitmore in which he expressed his opinion that the 1.8 million motorists who signed the anti-road pricing petition were short sighted, selfish and irresponsible. He takes the time to list the four ways in which to solve congestion:

1. Price motorists off the road.
2. An annual carbon allowance for each road user.
3. Self-regulation
4. An absolute limit of 110g/km for new cars from 2010.

When we look at these four options it's clear that Sir John has become somewhat confused as to what issue he is attempting to address. Options 2 and 4 have nothing to do with emissions and everything to do with pollution. I may take my carbon ration book and drive exclusively between the hours of 8 and 9am in Central London, but that will have little effect on alleviating congestion.

Pricing users off the road simply gets us back to the position of 100 years ago. The rich have the Coach-and-Four, as he puts it and the poor have shank's pony, or maybe a real one with a bit of luck. I don't see this option as a great step forward for the human condition and while major conurbations like London may well have an integrated transport system, there is still a huge part of the country where this is a mere pipe-dream.

Self-regulation won't work, because I have news for Sir John. Most people don't travel at peak times because they want to. The travel because they have to. People struggle to go to work before 9am, because their employers insist on it. The majority of people working in the country today do not have much of a say in the matter.

It is of course ironic that in an article which discusses the revolution that the car brought to personal transport over the last 100 years, Sir John completely misses the real revolution of our time - the Internet. We are now in an age where communications are fast, reliable and cheap. We can communicate with friends and colleagues across the world, sharing documents, photos, video and voice calls, all for the cost of a broadband subscription and a commodity level PC.

So why, then, is the potential for the internet to change the shape of working patterns and social interaction not even being touched on? I have worked from an office in my home on and off for the last seven years, during which time the technology has become faster, cheaper and easier to use. I can work collaboratively with colleagues, email them, call them using an internet phone, video conference, share documents and perform every task required just as easily as I could in a physical office. And the most important point is, I'm not commuting anywhere to do it.

If banks can outsource their call centres to India while enthusing about how modern communications mean their customers won't be able to tell the difference, then they can certainly use these same communications to allow their back end staff to work remotely as well. Of course people in customer facing roles or in what is left of our manufacturing industry will still need to go to a physical place of work, but the modern workplace is brimming over with back room service oriented jobs that can easily be done away from a traditional office.

The one thing that would kick start this workplace revolution would be tax incentives for businesses to encourage their staff to work remotely. But there is a huge problem with such a scheme. People might actually take it seriously and change their working practices and then where would Gordon get all his lovely tax revenue from?