Wednesday:
Mr Frown has made his pre-budget statement and in it he has raised taxes on fuel and flying. A bit. And he plans to invest in new green programmes like, er, building more schools and, er, the War in Iraq.
Unlike the Liberal Democrats "Green Tax Switch", Mr Frown is just skimming a little more cash off the top of everyone's wallet in order to pay for some more of his pet projects and some more of Lord Blairimort's insane adventure. The aim of a PROPER green budget should be to give people BACK money that they EARN and then raise taxes LOTS on things that are bad for the environment so that people have a REAL CHOICE.
Raising the airport tax – the tax on individual passengers – is NOT as sensible as switching the tax to be on each AEROPLANE that takes off. Mr Frown is actually penalising aeroplanes that carry MORE passengers, when in fact they are the ones that are at least a little bit LESS environmentally unfriendly!
Under Mr Frown's scheme, a 747 with one passenger would pay the same tax as a balloon with one passenger.
Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, Mr Vince Power-Cable, was VERY not impressed with Mr Frown!
He said that Mr Frown was like the clever schoolboy who always gets ten out of ten because he marks his own papers. Mr Power-Cable called on Mr Frown to get some proper external auditors in to look at the treasury books and see if they are really as good as Mr Frown claims they are.
In fact Mr Frown only gets ONE out of TEN: the recent Stern Report on climate change said that it would take taxes of around 1% of GDP to have a real effect on saving the world; Mr Frown only managed about one tenth of 1%.
And if he is not making a PROPER EFFORT to slow down everyone else's carbon emissions, Mr Frown is certainly putting his weight behind people who are trying to SPEED UP emissions more!
"The chancellor's environmental credentials are not really helped by publishing in parallel the Barker report, which is really a property developers' charter, and the Eddington report which has an unashamed plea for the expansion of airports," said Mr Power-Cable!
And that's before all the cash that Mr Frown intends to blow on building the Olympics, nuclear submarines and the giant computerised control centre "Star One" to control the I.D.iot card scheme.
Mr Frown failed to impress other people too.
The airline industry were unsurprisingly unsupportive, saying that the passenger tax gave them no incentive to improve environmental efficiency and of course the Friends of the Earth said Mr Frown had not gone nearly far enough.
The Conservatories wondered why Mr Frown did not mention the NHS – what with it having been such a big thing of his for the last ten years. Maybe it slipped his mind.
Mr Frown DID receive support from Mr Millipede and the Secretary of State for Religious Genocide Mr Ruth Kelly. Funnily enough they are both on his side!
"This is marvellous," said Mr Kelly, "please can I keep my job when you're Prime Minister, Gordon?"
"This does a lot for the environment," agreed Mr Millipede, "I'd like to keep my job too, please!"
Why is this called a "pre-budget statement" anyway? Mr Frown has raised some taxes and increased some spending plans. That sounds like an ordinary budget to me.
I think he is just trying to get two bites of the cherry cake, and you know what that leads to… half-baked cake!
And a Very Happy 14th Day of Advent to All of You at Home!
1 comment:
"Star One" - excellent :-)
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