Putting 1.25p on a litre of fuel could be seen as road users getting off lightly and, certainly, all the green campaigners who have been baying for motorists to be squeezed till their pips squeaked, have been clamouring to get on the media to tell us so. ...One of the first things he talked about in this week's Pre Buget Report was increasing investment in road and rail infrastructure. Has he also recognised that it is time to move away from hammering the obvious soft target and tackle some of the really big potential emission targets. ...In the UK we are lagging 'way behind Scandinavian countries in terms of energy efficiency for our houses. On the other side of the North Sea they have had low-energy homes (costing no more than a few hundred pounds per year to heat) and even zero energy homes for years. That makes the Chancellor's announcement that all new homes should be 'zero carbon' in ten years as enlightened as it is bold. Within ten years - the way technology is going - our cars are almost certainly going to be zero emission in any case, even without tax incentives.The tax breaks for biofuels are also good news, but something needs to be done to kick start widespread availability of them. I was over in the USA recently and the farmers there are clamouring for the adoption of biofuels. ... As in the USA, these fields could be turned to growing fuel, providing income for farmers, low-emission fuel for our vehicles and reducing use of fossil fuels. ...If the civil liberty concerns of tracking every vehicle's movements could be addressed, road charging might be acceptable if it didn't mean an increase in taxes (in other words if fuel and road tax were scrapped). But you just know that the temptation to rake in another £26 billion on top of the existing £36 billion in road taxes will prove too great.
[Only Registered Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register]
Chancellor avoids temptation to hammer road users... for the moment 
