The goverments latest hair brained idea!

[James]

Im not sure how many would have heard about this yet as I only caught it on GM TV as I was going out the door, a group of Right Honerable morons are pushing for the goverment to raise taxes on both air travel and car tax, they claim that each pasenger on a plane travelling from London to Florida is responsable for the same amount of green houses gasses as a car in a one year period.

They also claim that the only area where these gasses are increasing in the U.K is the road and therefore the car is for the axe as well, the proposed new cost for car tax is a little sketchy (I have heard three diffrent figures this morning) but is likley to range from £1,200 per anum to £1,800 for "Gas gusllers" droping in three hundred pound chunks down to 0 for pedal cars, I dont know what impact that will have on the westi but I bet its not going to be in the low bracket

Now as far as I can see there is a big hole in this idea the goverment claim that if you poluate the planet that you should pay moire for the privallige fair enough, but they have admitted that air travel is the worst offender and whilst they are going to look at increasing taxes on air travel I bet they wont go up proportainatley with the car tax as there would be out rage to a ticket price of £200 - £2,500 and yet they have admitted that the car isnt that bad in comparison, so why should the car pay more when it poluates less?

I wonder if the goverment sees a nice way of making a |fortune ans appering green? ( I also wonder if ANY of this money would be used in the search for alternative non poluating fuels)

And why is it that we have to pay more than anyone else on the planet considering the size of our country in relation to world poluation.

All of this is going to be in vain of course because what ever we as a nation manage to save in poluation on an anual basis will fade into insignificance by some fat American driving his 6.5 liter cady to his nearest eat all you can beef grill on a daily basis.

Why cant they just leave us the f**k alone?

[Richgm]

Piston Heads say that the goverment have ruled it out.

[pistonbroke]

Quite right IMO

All those of you who have flown to Florida recently should cough up, you nasty lot of air poluters !

Serves you right for spending all yer hard earned in foriegn places    

How else can Blair & Co get there hands on yer dosh if you don't play the game  

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Blair and Co have a habit of arranging for these little leaks to soften us up for a half way measure though.

[/cynic]

[Blatman]

I agree. It smacks of another smoke screen. Watch the political news carefully...

[Bazzer]

Its quite obvious what to do if you want to tax the cause of CO2 emissions. Tax fuel, CO2 emissions are proportional to fuel burnt.

Then people with thirtsy cars who don't use them much and thus don't contribute a lot to green house gasses will do better than people who use them a lot and generate lots of green house gasses.

Does that not sound senisible ? I can't for the life of me think why the government does not think this way.

Bazzer

[Blatman]

They do think like that, but I suspect they want to increase the fuel duty on AvGas and and petrol by *a lot* so they need to soften the blow. So *when* they announce inflation busting fuel duty increases and kill off the cheap airline tickets, they can say that yes it's a big rise, but it wasn't as big as we said it would be back in August...

Misdirection is one of the few things this Government does really well...

[neilb]

They do think like that, but I suspect they want to increase the fuel duty on AvGas and and petrol by *a lot* so they need to soften the blow. So *when* they announce inflation busting fuel duty increases and kill off the cheap airline tickets, they can say that yes it's a big rise, but it wasn't as big as we said it would be back in August...

Misdirection is one of the few things this Government does really well...

AvGas has duty on it already it's Jet A1 fuel that is duty free.

There is also a case that airline traffic is slowing the rate of warming - global dimming.

[Blatman]

Yes I have seen the argument for global dimming (con trails etc) and it's an interesting theory.

And I was using AvGas as a colloquialism for A1 jet fuel.

[neilb]

Just to be clear that it's only the Jet/gas turbine aircraft that don't pay duty on fuel, if you have a little piper or cessna then you pay as much as motorists.

[Man On The Clapham Omnibus]

I agree with Blatman; the one thing you can be sure of is that what they say is NOT what they mean. Especially when one of them says

"Now John*, let me be perfectly clear...."

*insert the 'Today' presenter of choice.

[lukeyboy]

This one of the reasons I will not support "Fair Trade" items or Indian call centres... the gits just go out and start buying stuff that burns electric and petrol. Look at the rate China and India are burning fossil fuels.

Keep the b*******s down, otherwise we'll be the one's who get hammered (we always do)  

Plus, make sure when your next election is due and the politicians come knocking, tell em you're not voting for them unless they stop hitting fuel (and beer).  

[steve_m]

They need more and more money to pay for public sector pensions and general numptie political b*****k, crap IT systems, poor education and paying people to have kids staying at home who've never worked . . . nothing to do with emissions or the climate.

Climate chage is just a suitable and convienienent (policically correct) excuse, same as road safety for scameras, the cash from scameras is now all going to central Govt as was the original plan now the local authorities have had enough of it to install plenty of cameras.

[lukeyboy]

We have global e-mails sent out every night, generally informing you of pointless rubbish blah blah!

The other morning i read an e-mail about free places for childcare / nursery age children. It was there in black and white saying it was free if you were and asylum seeker (translated - economic migrant), traveller (translated - theiving gypo), on benefits (translated - couldn't be arsed to work as you make loads on dodgy dealing down the pub or get a good payout on sickness benefit), plus all the other freeloaders you could think of.

What a crock... why do these people need rid of the kids during the day? Theres no pizza's or kebabs need servig / delivering, robbing doesn't start till it gets dark and most benefit cheats don't get out of bed until after Trisha has finished!!!

No wonder the country is in termoil

[Mark Stanton]

I just love it when folks post without any PC crap         well done Lukeyboy