|
Why do we get ourselves into messes? By pandering. It`s the essence of New Labour. We pander to the Daily Mail by being tough. That gets us into the 42 days mess. We pander to the environmentalists by high fuel duties and higher VED on cars bought since 2000. There`s the fuel revolt. We pander to the Tories by tax measures, like the abolition of the 10p rate to lower the basic rate, and look where that got us.
Be yourself, Gordon. Stand up. Do what comes naturally. Try pandering to the Party.
* * *
We get out of the fuel mess by scrapping the VED increase on old cars, not on new, and by dropping the 2p fuel duty increase due in October. OK Alistair?
Long term it`s more difficult. If we can`t reduce fuel tax to the EU average we must either reduce fuel tax for essential users, like road transport and fishing. Or we turn the heat on EU competition:
All foreign lorries coming into the country should be issued a ticket on which they will be charged on the number of days and miles of road use as they go out.
Stop French vessels fishing in our waters on the grounds that they`re being subsidised to do so.
Then let the Commission strike down both measures. If they dare.
* * *
We`ve reached environmental crunch point sooner than I thought. Tony Crosland pointed that that the environmentalists want to stop the working class enjoying all the environmentally damaging things the middle class has of right: big cars, foreign holidays, more and bigger gadgets, more space, more travel.
So increased in VED, fuel prices, taxes on flying, are designed to exclude the poor from all those joys. That`s how the price mechanism works: to benefit wealth.
* * *
The North East Lincolnshire Planning Department, ever concerned to stop development, has now found another way to keep us backward. It`s turned down the windfarm at the Novartis plant. Bugger alternative energy. It might kill birds fleeing from the wind turbines already established on the North Bank.
|
