Date published: 2008/07/10
The BBC says:
An estimated 9.4 million motorists will have to pay more road tax under reforms aimed at punishing "gas-guzzling" vehicles, the government has admitted.
Official estimates say vehicle excise duty will rise for 43% of vehicles made since 2001 - by up to £245 for the most polluting ones - but will fall for 18%.
The AA said the figures, for 2010-11, confirmed "our worst fears", while the Tories said the PM misled Parliament.
No 10 rejected that suggestion and said the aim was to cut carbon emissions.
Environmental groups have urged the government to "stand firm" on plans to raise excise duty.
Friends of the Earth has also called on ministers to invest the money raised in better public transport, which it said was a "greener" alternative to the car.
...
It is calculated that the Exchequer will receive more than £1 billion in additional revenue from the scheme by 2011.
While the Blair administration will be remembered for the idiotic invasion of Iraq and for wholesale removal of civil liberties, the Brown administration will be remembered for messing up practically every fiscal decision it has made. Of course since 43% of owners are worse off, this means that 57% are not worse off, and the latter is the silly angle that the government has been plugging. But the fact that only 18% are better off should have told any sensible politician they were being politically dumb. Those 18% will probably not even be very grateful. But the 43% will long remember another poke in the eye from the government.
Unfortunately for the so-called environmentalists (some of whom evidently support retrospective taxation of the sort proposed by the government) so-called public transport is not "green". Indeed, any service that is subsidised is not "green". People who use a subsidised service of any kind have managed to externalise the true cost of the service onto the rest of society. That is the ultimate definition of an "unsustainable" practise. Indeed, since car owners pay far, far, far more tax than any so-called environmentalist has ever been able to justify on environmental grounds, it is car drivers who are conducting themselves in a "sustainable" way. But so-called environmentalists never let facts get in the way of their propaganda.
However Downing Street takes the biscuit for the stupidest remark of them all. Given that the government is going to raise a lot more revenue from this tax change, it is pretty evident that this has nothing to do with carbon emissions (i.e. encouraging people to buy smaller cars) and everything to do with raising yet more tax money courtesy of drivers.
It's looking more and more likely that the Tory majority at the next election is going to swamp any majority that Blair ever managed to have. And all without the Tories even saying anything sensible.
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