The Budget
I once (2003? 2004?) wrote a blog post noting that no British bloggers covered the Budget in that year. And this isn't going to cover the budget either. Instead it's merely a short bit of special pleading about how unfair the government's green car taxation policy is.Basically they've extended and increased the differential you pay for having a car that produces a greater amount of CO2 per km. So for example people who own large multi-purpose vehicles* now have to pay a whopping £215 a year road tax.
The idea is not silly - cutting CO2 emissions is important. Not even Iain Murray denies global warming exists and is contributed to by humans these days. What is silly is the imposition of the tax per km. For example people who only do about 8000 km a year will have to pay as much as those who do 50,000 a year, even though their emissions will be 1/10th as much. They'll pay more than those with 'less polluting' vehicles who actually produce more pollution.
CO2 emissions rise essentially in line with fuel consumption. An increased tax on fuel would be a better measure*.
* Camper vans.
** Particularly when most of those kilometres are done in France, where the diesel is much cheaper and wouldn't affect me.
Update: Well I've attacked Brown, so now a go at Charlie. I'll probably be accused of nanny-statism but I didn't like seeing him cycle without a cycle helmet. I thought his speech was quite good, except the ending, which sounded terrible. And it wasn't helped by his troops: George Osborne, who looks as if he's only in politics because he thought it was a bit of a wizard wheeze, presumably to to cut inheritance tax; the woman to Charlie's right who was wearing the most odd golden footwear, and who should try to look less overawed by Charlie, and c) the headless man (at least on TV) with the terrible tie behind him. This was all based on the BBC's Ten o'clock news broadcast, where I thought Andrew Marr's replacement (it's the first time I've seen him on television) is a vast improvement on Snuffles.
posted by Matthew @ 3/22/2006 05:53:00 PM
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