Green Taxes? What's the Problem?

[BoredBloke]

This is just like the alcohol thing Spewitt was touting last week. It has nothing to do with the issues at hand and everything to do with raising more tax. All they are doing is softening us up for a big tax hike becuase our 'world class chancellor' has hit a sh1tty streak. But it is like everything NL do - there is nobody in the media holding them to account. There is nobody out there to voice any opposition. Paxman last night tried to get Miliband to confirm that the 'green taxes' would replace other taxes but although he got close, Miliband didn't actually confirm this.

If the government was keen to cut greenhouse emissions, then why not use the carrot. Why not offer grants to everybody to insulate their home - not just those hard working families on benefits.

As I said earlier I'd happily pay towards having a heat pump put in the garden, fully insulate my house and install a more up to date boiler, but at this moment in time I can't afford it. If I was on benefits a certain portion of all that would be free.

[zeitghost]

A few months ago, whilst browsing the yahoo forums, I actually saw a post that went along the lines of:

HIV will work its magic in Africa.

couldn't believe that someone could say that and mean it

It already is.

I was listening to some R4 prog last week that was relating that one of the African paradises has a HIV infection rate greater than 40%...

[realityhack]

Normally, when a government raises taxes it has something specific in mind to waste the money on, total losers and their spawn, politicians' perks, parasitic civil servants' pensions, extra parasitic civil servants, useless immigrants, wars, extra security to cope with consequences of said wars, donations to fraudulent EU farmers and so on.

In this case the taxation itself is the primary purpose rather than the money it raises, they hope to encourage people to be less wasteful of fuel and energy. It is an enormous tax windfall with no prior demands on it. Let's see, will this tax...

1) be part of an overall tax neutral package with targetted reductions in VAT to encourage consumers to save energy and buy more efficient goods and in corporation tax to encourage companies to the same ends and also to invest in research and methods to produce more efficient products?

2) be wasted on MORE total losers and their spawn, MORE politicians' perks, MORE parasitic civil servants' pensions, MORE extra parasitic civil servants, MORE useless immigrants, MORE wars, MORE extra security to cope with consequences of said wars, MORE donations to fraudulent EU farmers and so on?

3) be spent in some apparently worthy way, e.g. in an attempt to provide a decent public transport system in the UK which will enrich lots of foreign consultants, be collossally overspent, inconvenience us all for years and deliver a system, if it delivers anything at all, that will be so utterly crap that hardly anybody will use it and more taxes will be needed to raise the £5bn needed to bribe Disneyland to take it over as a theme park?

4) destroy the competitiveness of the UK economy even further requiring more taxes to be raised to support the total losers etc. from a declining GDP and donating even more of our business to the likes of India and China, who won't give a fek about efficiency or climate change, causing a global INCREASE in CO2 emissions just like Brownstuff's destruction of our road haulage business has already?

5) all of options 2, 3 and 4 with necessity for extra taxes that I haven't thought of?

Fantastic... couldn't have put it better myself. I've sent this to the Guardian for their 'Today on the web' section on P2.

[Forumbore]

Libby Purves in the times

Libby gets it about right too

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...429172,00.html

[sunnysan]

Nice

Good article,

She about sums up my attitude.

I really hope that this actually causes people to sit up see what these barstards are trying to do.

I wonder if it will be enough to cause a revolt?

Molotovs and motorcycle helmets anyone?

[BoredBloke]

" I wonder if it will be enough to cause a revolt? "

Naaah! As usuall we will moan about it and do nothing.

[sunnysan]

Interesting

Didnt hear this on any of the UK news sources
http://www.businessday.co.za/article...?ID=BD4A306846

British climate change report ’unfounded’ - Opec

MOSCOW - A hard-hitting report on climate change published by the British government yesterday has no basis in science or economics, Opec’s Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo said today.
The report written by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said that failure to tackle climate change could push world temperatures up by 5 degrees Celsius over the next century, causing severe floods and harsh droughts and uprooting many as 200-million people.

The study recommended taking action now to offset the far greater cost of dealing with climate change later.

But Barkindo told an energy conference in Moscow that the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) — which holds around two thirds of the world’s oil reserves — opposed such research efforts.

“We find some of the so-called initiatives of the rich industrialised countries who are supposed to take the lead in combating climate change rather alarming,” he said.

“One recent example is the review on climate change that was issued yesterday by the UK government in London.”

Stern’s report was welcomed by environmental activists as well as by the British government and the European Commission.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality said it was a contribution to an abundance of economic analysis on climate change.

Barkindo said it was misguided but he did not elaborate on possible solutions to the problem.

“The mitigation and adaptation to climate change can only be accomplished on the principles of common responsibility and respected capabilities and not by scenarios that have no foundations in either science or economics as we had yesterday from London,” he said.

Opec is made up of Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

Australia, which alongside the US has not signed the Kyoto Protocol designed to curb Greenhouse gas emissions, also said today it did not accept the British report.

[xoggoth]

Damn fools. Waste of time the UK bothering if nobody else does though as nothing we and the rest of Europe does alone will make no difference. Still, at least we will be able to say we told you so. I will anyway. Not threaded.

[Mailman]

Hahahaha...I hardly think OPEC should be taken seriously on anything other than price rises to line their pockets

Mailman

[BoredBloke]

Had thought that myself. Its a bit like Ian Brady giving out childcare tips.