Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Actually that's not especially true. A great many do and fuel taxes take 10% of their income if they do.
The most recent data show the labour market continuing to recover.
The number of payroll employees showed another monthly increase, up 356,000 in June 2021 to 28.9 million. However, it remains 206,000 below pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic levels. For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, some regions are now above pre-pandemic (February 2020) levels. These include North East, North West, East Midlands and Northern Ireland.
Following a period of employment growth and low unemployment, since the start of the pandemic, the employment rate has generally decreased, and the unemployment rate increased. However, since the end of 2020 both have shown signs of recovery. In the latest period (March to May 2021), there was an increase in the employment rate of 0.1 percentage points, to 74.8%, and a decrease in the unemployment rate of 0.2 percentage points, to 4.8%. The economic inactivity rate is up 0.1 percentage points on the previous quarter, to 21.3%.
It's incredible isn't it? Brexit has destroyed the economy, the country is a pariah, the government's policies are, well choose between useless, incompetent and shameful, and we create 356k jobs in a month and is doing particularly well in NI. Next month employment will exceed the pre Covid level but Sunak will no doubt still be a, checks thread, "clown" and Boris totally incompetent.
Of course all these incredibly well educated people will no doubt have factored this in. Who could doubt it?
Alternatively, the Furlough scheme is ending and people are returning to jobs that have not been "created" but are resuming. That said there are certainly a lot vacancies out there right now. The issue is whether they will be filled and what happens if they are not.
Nah, furlough is counted separately. Including furlough the unemployment rate is about 9%. From Monday that number will go down a lot as the last few businesses open up now that social distancing is not mandated.
Vote Tory, for massive borrowing and higher taxes on your food, holidays and car travel....even for Boris that seems like an incredibly hard sell to his base.
If he thinks they are the right thing to do he has a big enough majority to do it and should do it. If you wont do necessary but unpopular things when you have a big majority when will you?
Of course, it may not be necessary at all but this is about what he thinks best.
On-topic: this is excellent for Johnson then, because the population is becoming ever less educated. I didn't believe a friend of mine when she told me that most people these days don't do joined-up handwriting, but when I checked everything I'd received recently that was handwritten I found that every single item was written with the letters "printed". That explains the vibes I got in a car garage when they asked me to write a description of the problems they should take a look at and I wrote 5-6 lines of joined-up writing, consisting of sentences each beginning with a capital letter and ending with a full stop.
Meanwhile exam boards and headteachers have had analogue clocks removed from exam rooms, because so few 16-year-olds know how to tell the time. (Source.) If an exam is due to end at 1.05pm and the small hand is now between 12 and 1 and the big hand is at 10, it's too hard for many of them to work out that they've got 15 minutes left. They can't half pick those little handheld computer terminals they carry, though.
I have no doubt you haven't a clue how to use a slide rule or an abacus, or harness a horse to a cart and drive it properly. Things change.
Upthread some said the educated are easy to con. The point is that Boris has deliberately found a way to, let’s be polite, play to the hearts of the less educated.
It’s a very successful act, but it is an act. Educated or not, once you see the act, it loses its potency and becomes a very cynical thing indeed.
That is true, but I also think all successful politicians have an act.
They have a story about themselves and their country that the people want to hear.
Blair had an act. Reagan had an act. And so on.
T. May did not have an act ... and she must rank as the most woeful PM of modern times.
SKS does not have an act ... but then SKS is not a successful politician
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Actually that's not especially true. A great many do and fuel taxes take 10% of their income if they do.
Most don't. Car ownership among the lowest income groups is around one-third.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 8p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £1.8bn
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
Oh I just went to google asked for the UK's 2020 electricity consumption figures and did some maths. and discovered I missed placed a zero
It's 8p that needs to be added not 73p but that's still a 50% increase in electricity prices...
Now advantage is that is doable but it means those with cars are going to be taxed twice and you can't remove fuel duty as longer term we need those cars off the road.
Annual UK elec is around 2200TWh, I think ? So 0.5p would raise around 11bn - so replacing fuel duty would need about 1p on electricity per kWh.
On topic I think it is unwise to try to say the higher educated are morally and in many ways superior to those with less educational achievements
This attitude just increases division and those highly educated should have much more empathy to the millions who are not
Turning to Boris, he has had a shocking few days and looks haunted
I have no idea whether he is suffering from long covid or just simply not enjoying the job but surely this cannot continue
There is an element in the conservative party who are so out of touch they can make idiotic public statements like Natalie Elphicke and others and just do not get it
England is a fantastic example of our country 's diversification and Marcus Rashford is an outstanding example of a talented footballer, but one who suffered terribly as a child with poverty and lack of food, and has used his experiences to waken politicians to this important issue is to be celebrated and I for one admire him in so many ways not least because he has always made the issue with him as non political
I know I am a minority in the conservative party but I do support the £20 UC uplift, free school meals, and ending the triple lock
As others have said, there are no acceptable political parties for me as I do want covid beaten, brexit trade deals expanded, and the party is far the best for the economy
The day Boris stands down will be the opportunity to reset the party and the sooner the better
I would never argue that the better educated are in any way morally superior to others. Going from a Scottish comprehensive school to an elite University, with a year off in between where I worked full time in a restaurant at £1.80 an hour, I had never come across people as arrogant, entitled and incurious as I found at University.
Found something similar doing science outreach as a PhD student. We took a load of demos into a private school (hosts, the local comps were also invited). The private school kids were very polite and listened attentively (it seemed) but it was the comp kids who showed enthusiasm for trying the demos, asking lots of questions - and thereby getting beyond only the information we had presented, asking some of us what it was like to do research... Maybe what we were doing was just more exciting to them compared to a normal day, whereas much more run of the mill for the privately educated children. But at interview, I know which I would have employed for a research post (the problem being that perhaps very few of the comp kids would end up with the paper qualifications to get the interview in the first place).
Leaving aside the costs to business does anyone actually understand the supposed purpose of “vaccine passports (for domestic hospitality etc”?
Is it to protect the unvaccinated or the vaccinated? If it’s the latter then the message needs to be made more strongly that protection comes from the vaccine, not from avoiding contact with unvaccinated (and possibly infected) people. If the latter, the message should be that you are acting at your own risk and you should get vaccinated.
It seems to me that the only real purpose is to reduce problems due to mandatory self isolation for all. Which is a stupid policy which is going anyway.
As I pointed out yesterday 46% of men between 18 and 30 in Tayside have not been vaccinated at all. Something just under 7m adults have not been vaccinated in the UK. This is a clear and obvious medical risk and will create a pool of infection, hospitalisation and death going forward. Pretty much all of these people will now have been offered a vaccine but have declined or not bothered.
Do we (a) think that current rates are actually top of the class internationally and accept this risk or (b) try to incentivise the laggards to get their jabs after all? The government is opting for (b) and they are right to do so.
Or we just let nature take its course for people who have refused the vaccine. If some of them die then it's the choice they've made.
On topic I think it is unwise to try to say the higher educated are morally and in many ways superior to those with less educational achievements
This attitude just increases division and those highly educated should have much more empathy to the millions who are not
Turning to Boris, he has had a shocking few days and looks haunted
I have no idea whether he is suffering from long covid or just simply not enjoying the job but surely this cannot continue
There is an element in the conservative party who are so out of touch they can make idiotic public statements like Natalie Elphicke and others and just do not get it
England is a fantastic example of our country 's diversification and Marcus Rashford is an outstanding example of a talented footballer, but one who suffered terribly as a child with poverty and lack of food, and has used his experiences to waken politicians to this important issue is to be celebrated and I for one admire him in so many ways not least because he has always made the issue with him as non political
I know I am a minority in the conservative party but I do support the £20 UC uplift, free school meals, and ending the triple lock
As others have said, there are no acceptable political parties for me as I do want covid beaten, brexit trade deals expanded, and the party is far the best for the economy
The day Boris stands down will be the opportunity to reset the party and the sooner the better
I would never argue that the better educated are in any way morally superior to others. Going from a Scottish comprehensive school to an elite University, with a year off in between where I worked full time in a restaurant at £1.80 an hour, I had never come across people as arrogant, entitled and incurious as I found at University.
I'm a politician, and see it more in practical terms without attributing any special moral qualities to either group, but just considering the electoral effect. On the whole, people with more education tend to vote more, just as elderly people do. Demanding voter ID will be little deterrent to the former but a definite deterrent to some of the latter. It's an unusual example of a party acting to suppress its own vote.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Please, don't let mere facts get in the way of Philip's narrative.
On topic I think it is unwise to try to say the higher educated are morally and in many ways superior to those with less educational achievements
This attitude just increases division and those highly educated should have much more empathy to the millions who are not
Turning to Boris, he has had a shocking few days and looks haunted
I have no idea whether he is suffering from long covid or just simply not enjoying the job but surely this cannot continue
There is an element in the conservative party who are so out of touch they can make idiotic public statements like Natalie Elphicke and others and just do not get it
England is a fantastic example of our country 's diversification and Marcus Rashford is an outstanding example of a talented footballer, but one who suffered terribly as a child with poverty and lack of food, and has used his experiences to waken politicians to this important issue is to be celebrated and I for one admire him in so many ways not least because he has always made the issue with him as non political
I know I am a minority in the conservative party but I do support the £20 UC uplift, free school meals, and ending the triple lock
As others have said, there are no acceptable political parties for me as I do want covid beaten, brexit trade deals expanded, and the party is far the best for the economy
The day Boris stands down will be the opportunity to reset the party and the sooner the better
Damn, I think I have to agree with HYFUD, Big G - you're not a proper Tory, you're far too nice and level headed
(for the avoidance of doubt, I'm just joking, I don't think Tories are generally nasty)
The most recent data show the labour market continuing to recover.
The number of payroll employees showed another monthly increase, up 356,000 in June 2021 to 28.9 million. However, it remains 206,000 below pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic levels. For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, some regions are now above pre-pandemic (February 2020) levels. These include North East, North West, East Midlands and Northern Ireland.
Following a period of employment growth and low unemployment, since the start of the pandemic, the employment rate has generally decreased, and the unemployment rate increased. However, since the end of 2020 both have shown signs of recovery. In the latest period (March to May 2021), there was an increase in the employment rate of 0.1 percentage points, to 74.8%, and a decrease in the unemployment rate of 0.2 percentage points, to 4.8%. The economic inactivity rate is up 0.1 percentage points on the previous quarter, to 21.3%.
It's incredible isn't it? Brexit has destroyed the economy, the country is a pariah, the government's policies are, well choose between useless, incompetent and shameful, and we create 356k jobs in a month and is doing particularly well in NI. Next month employment will exceed the pre Covid level but Sunak will no doubt still be a, checks thread, "clown" and Boris totally incompetent.
Of course all these incredibly well educated people will no doubt have factored this in. Who could doubt it?
Alternatively, the Furlough scheme is ending and people are returning to jobs that have not been "created" but are resuming. That said there are certainly a lot vacancies out there right now. The issue is whether they will be filled and what happens if they are not.
So the issue has changed from mass unemployment to we don't have enough people to fill the jobs in a booming economy. Do you think the Government deserves any praise for this remarkable turn round in the jobs market?
I think booming economy is pushing it! Any praise the government may deserve should be reserved for the point when we can see that its decision to make vacancies so much harder to fill has ended up benefiting the economy.
I don't think booming is pushing it at all. The jobs data this morning highlights this. There is no way Labour will be talking about the economy over the coming year.
We'll see. If our business is anything to go by, a very strong H1 has given way to much slower progress at the start of H2.
All this demonstrates is that higher education = progressive political views, particularly amongst people lower than 60. Higher education, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, can involve a significant element of political indoctrination, and this has been increasingly so for 40+ years.
No that really is not 'all' this demonstrates.
The idea that higher education is full of political indoctrination is terribly old hat and no longer particularly true. But your argument is unravelled by the fact that this divide has never before been seen so starkly. Theresa May did not attract such levels of distrust among the educated. Nor did David Cameron. Nor Gordon Brown. Nor Tony Blair. Nor, even, did Margaret Thatcher.
The reason is not the one you've given. It's because we have a charlatan, a shamster, a blaguer, a serial liar, in charge of this country.
We can see it. Clearly.
The evidence about the left wing bias in universities is overwhelming. Look up the work that Eric Kaufmann has done recently. It is inevitable this has an impact on graduates.
Boris is like Trump, he upsets the values of the educated progressive elite; making no attempt at all to placate them unlike his predecessors. That explains his success with the less educated, who have always been easier to herd for political purposes than intellectuals.
Which came first? Are graduates generally more left-leaning because they're indoctrinated, or are universities full of the more intelligent people who see the complexity of life and don't buy the simplistic arguments of Johnson and his ilk?
You cite humanities and social sciences as being havens of left-wing thought. I think that is true, but for the reasons above. They encourage you to consider the shades of grey in life. There are few absolutes. Your personal assumptions are challenged. You have to have think.
Maths, physics, engineering degrees, those based on numbers, probably have a higher degree of right-leaning students. Because they are neat. 2+2 always equals 4. There are always measurable, repeatable, outcomes. They are essentially 'Common sense', if you will.
I don't thing that's necessarily a bad thing, just an inevitable result of what subjects differing personality types are drawn to study.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 8p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £1.8bn
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
Oh I just went to google asked for the UK's 2020 electricity consumption figures and did some maths. and discovered I missed placed a zero
It's 8p that needs to be added not 73p but that's still a 50% increase in electricity prices...
Now advantage is that is doable but it means those with cars are going to be taxed twice and you can't remove fuel duty as longer term we need those cars off the road.
Annual UK elec is around 2200TWh, I think ? So 0.5p would raise around 11bn - so replacing fuel duty would need about 1p on electricity per kWh.
Sorry, that's total energy usage. You're about right.
Though actually it's closer to 6p than 8. And of course elec usage is likely to increase steadily as renewables replace fossil fuels - and spreading the levy in energy usage more widely would make sense.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Please, don't let mere facts get in the way of Philip's narrative.
Actually, my anecdata is that the Welsh rural poor almost always have cars, old bangers -- impossible to survive in Gwynedd or Powys, if not.
My wealthy academic friends in the University towns are the ones who bike or belong to car pools & car shares.They rarely need to drive.
It would be interesting to see some actual data, but @Philip_Thompson is not obviously wrong.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Please, don't let mere facts get in the way of Philip's narrative.
In many places, particularly in the South East, public transport is very poor or non-existent and poor people are forced to keep a car on the road, for example to be able to work. They will often be paying more tax than drivers of new, expensive cars.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Please, don't let mere facts get in the way of Philip's narrative.
In many places, particularly in the South East, public transport is very poor or non-existent and poor people are forced to keep a car on the road, for example to be able to work. They will often be paying more tax than drivers of new, expensive cars.
Yes - "public transport poverty" is a noted thing.
The other thing about the chart at the start- to have no qualifications at all these days puts you in a very specific demographic. You have to be fairly old; born in about 1970 at the earliest, and probably before about 1960 to avoid ROSLA. You also had to have the skills and interests to leave school and presumably walk straight into an entry-level job.
People with that life story and at that life stage are pretty much the centre of the Red Tory narrative- bring back decent factory jobs (like I had), turn back the culture war clock (to my youth). But they're not numerous.
I think this is going to go down like a lead ballon outside those who aren't big fans of Boris government. Adding a £200-300 to families food bills.
Is that carelessly worded or are you saying Boris's sugar and salt taxes will be hated by Boris-supporters? If the latter, you may be right, but surely it implies they will not be introduced.
An argument revisited to yet again no effect to distract from more uncomfortable events, has this ever happened before?
No surprise there as Johnson is a disingenuous racist fat fornicator - i.e. a c*nt!
I love Johnson
Dr IshmaelZ MA Oxon MA Exon PhD
Blimey, you must have one hell of a student loan to pay back once you exceed a 20 grand a year salary!
I turn 60 on Saturday. In my day a grateful nation paid your undergraduate fees and living expenses as a reward for having parents who could afford to send you to public school. The second MA was in my maturer years when I was living alone, and the cost of the course was cancelled out by the council tax exemption. The PhD was sponsored (and sponsorship is tax free). One glorious scam, start to finish.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 8p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £1.8bn
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
Oh I just went to google asked for the UK's 2020 electricity consumption figures and did some maths. and discovered I missed placed a zero
It's 8p that needs to be added not 73p but that's still a 50% increase in electricity prices...
Now advantage is that is doable but it means those with cars are going to be taxed twice and you can't remove fuel duty as longer term we need those cars off the road.
Annual UK elec is around 2200TWh, I think ? So 0.5p would raise around 11bn - so replacing fuel duty would need about 1p on electricity per kWh.
Sorry, that's total energy usage. You're about right.
All this demonstrates is that higher education = progressive political views, particularly amongst people lower than 60. Higher education, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, can involve a significant element of political indoctrination, and this has been increasingly so for 40+ years.
No that really is not 'all' this demonstrates.
The idea that higher education is full of political indoctrination is terribly old hat and no longer particularly true. But your argument is unravelled by the fact that this divide has never before been seen so starkly. Theresa May did not attract such levels of distrust among the educated. Nor did David Cameron. Nor Gordon Brown. Nor Tony Blair. Nor, even, did Margaret Thatcher.
The reason is not the one you've given. It's because we have a charlatan, a shamster, a blaguer, a serial liar, in charge of this country.
We can see it. Clearly.
The evidence about the left wing bias in universities is overwhelming. Look up the work that Eric Kaufmann has done recently. It is inevitable this has an impact on graduates.
Boris is like Trump, he upsets the values of the educated progressive elite; making no attempt at all to placate them unlike his predecessors. That explains his success with the less educated, who have always been easier to herd for political purposes than intellectuals.
Which came first? Are graduates generally more left-leaning because they're indoctrinated, or are universities full of the more intelligent people who see the complexity of life and don't buy the simplistic arguments of Johnson and his ilk?
You cite humanities and social sciences as being havens of left-wing thought. I think that is true, but for the reasons above. They encourage you to consider the shades of grey in life. There are few absolutes. Your personal assumptions are challenged. You have to have think.
Maths, physics, engineering degrees, those based on numbers, probably have a higher degree of right-leaning students. Because they are neat. 2+2 always equals 4. There are always measurable, repeatable, outcomes. They are essentially 'Common sense', if you will.
I don't thing that's necessarily a bad thing, just an inevitable result of what subjects differing personality types are drawn to study.
Alternatively humanities graduates can be more prejudiced because they don't have to deal with the 2+2=4 aspects of life and instead believe in what they want to. The 'communism has not been properly applied' mentality.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Please, don't let mere facts get in the way of Philip's narrative.
Actually, my anecdata is that the Welsh rural poor almost always have cars, old bangers -- impossible to survive in Gwynedd or Powys, if not.
My wealthy academic friends in the University towns are the ones who bike or belong to car pools & car shares.They rarely need to drive.
It would be interesting to see some actual data, but @Philip_Thompson is not obviously wrong.
You are again being selective. What you say to an extent is true here in the rural Vale although the generationally jobless can't afford to run a car and they use taxis or buses. The single mother families in Gurnos, Bettws, St Mellon's and Pentrebane do not have cars, and neither do their feral boyfriends, well not their own at least.
Leaving aside the costs to business does anyone actually understand the supposed purpose of “vaccine passports (for domestic hospitality etc”?
Is it to protect the unvaccinated or the vaccinated? If it’s the latter then the message needs to be made more strongly that protection comes from the vaccine, not from avoiding contact with unvaccinated (and possibly infected) people. If the latter, the message should be that you are acting at your own risk and you should get vaccinated.
It seems to me that the only real purpose is to reduce problems due to mandatory self isolation for all. Which is a stupid policy which is going anyway.
As I pointed out yesterday 46% of men between 18 and 30 in Tayside have not been vaccinated at all. Something just under 7m adults have not been vaccinated in the UK. This is a clear and obvious medical risk and will create a pool of infection, hospitalisation and death going forward. Pretty much all of these people will now have been offered a vaccine but have declined or not bothered.
Do we (a) think that current rates are actually top of the class internationally and accept this risk or (b) try to incentivise the laggards to get their jabs after all? The government is opting for (b) and they are right to do so.
If it was to protect the vaccinated then it would conflict with the "message" that actually it doesn't protect the vaccinated much and what protects them much more is the vaccination they got...especially if the vaccination keeps being boosted...but not so much if you're interested in protection against long Covid, in which case, weeeelll...
My point being that we are in a time of great uncertainty throughout the entire population. Or in fact it should be throughout the entire population. Those who think they are certain are the biggest fools.
In June 2018 Ipsos-MORI had Jeremy Corbyn's Labour ahead of Theresa May's Tories by 43% to 32% among those geniuses with degrees. The more voters are educated, the more likely they are to support Marxists.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Please, don't let mere facts get in the way of Philip's narrative.
In many places, particularly in the South East, public transport is very poor or non-existent and poor people are forced to keep a car on the road, for example to be able to work. They will often be paying more tax than drivers of new, expensive cars.
Perhaps we need to define "poor". How many leased BMWs can one fanily afford on universal credit?
The jet created for the Prime Minister to travel in hasn't been used for travel at a time of very heavily restricted international travel. Meanwhile it continues to be used in its primary role.
Why has he since bought another 2 x A321LR in same tawdry livery and very expensive VVIP interior fits?
Does the useless flabby fucker just like spunking money on vanity purchases?
Though actually it's closer to 6p than 8. And of course elec usage is likely to increase steadily as renewables replace fossil fuels - and spreading the levy in energy usage more widely would make sense.
And whilst that could be done, remember the fury the descended on the Major government when it tried to put VAT on domestic fuel bills?
The grim reality is that there aren't significant places where public spending can easily be cut (Overseas Aid is about the only popular cut out there, and the saving is peanuts), there are limits to how much you can hope for growth to pay the bills, so we fall back on which taxes we are prepared to pay.
On topic I think it is unwise to try to say the higher educated are morally and in many ways superior to those with less educational achievements
This attitude just increases division and those highly educated should have much more empathy to the millions who are not
Turning to Boris, he has had a shocking few days and looks haunted
I have no idea whether he is suffering from long covid or just simply not enjoying the job but surely this cannot continue
There is an element in the conservative party who are so out of touch they can make idiotic public statements like Natalie Elphicke and others and just do not get it
England is a fantastic example of our country 's diversification and Marcus Rashford is an outstanding example of a talented footballer, but one who suffered terribly as a child with poverty and lack of food, and has used his experiences to waken politicians to this important issue is to be celebrated and I for one admire him in so many ways not least because he has always made the issue with him as non political
I know I am a minority in the conservative party but I do support the £20 UC uplift, free school meals, and ending the triple lock
As others have said, there are no acceptable political parties for me as I do want covid beaten, brexit trade deals expanded, and the party is far the best for the economy
The day Boris stands down will be the opportunity to reset the party and the sooner the better
Damn, I think I have to agree with HYFUD, Big G - you're not a proper Tory, you're far too nice and level headed
(for the avoidance of doubt, I'm just joking, I don't think Tories are generally nasty)
Though actually it's closer to 6p than 8. And of course elec usage is likely to increase steadily as renewables replace fossil fuels - and spreading the levy in energy usage more widely would make sense.
And whilst that could be done, remember the fury the descended on the Major government when it tried to put VAT on domestic fuel bills?
The grim reality is that there aren't significant places where public spending can easily be cut (Overseas Aid is about the only popular cut out there, and the saving is peanuts), there are limits to how much you can hope for growth to pay the bills, so we fall back on which taxes we are prepared to pay.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Please, don't let mere facts get in the way of Philip's narrative.
In many places, particularly in the South East, public transport is very poor or non-existent and poor people are forced to keep a car on the road, for example to be able to work. They will often be paying more tax than drivers of new, expensive cars.
particularly in the South East
It must be bad if its worse than in the rest of the country.
I'd say that its rural areas which have the worst public transport services and one of the better things Corbyn did was to point that out.
On topic, I suspect it's a small factor but not "only thickos support Johnson", which is how confirmation bias will interpret it.
Apart from age (already done, and the generational value shift) it's also down to the fact that your economic experience is very different if you're highly educated, as is your ability to ride change waves and insulate yourself from any problems that result from it.
All this demonstrates is that higher education = progressive political views, particularly amongst people lower than 60. Higher education, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, can involve a significant element of political indoctrination, and this has been increasingly so for 40+ years.
No that really is not 'all' this demonstrates.
The idea that higher education is full of political indoctrination is terribly old hat and no longer particularly true. But your argument is unravelled by the fact that this divide has never before been seen so starkly. Theresa May did not attract such levels of distrust among the educated. Nor did David Cameron. Nor Gordon Brown. Nor Tony Blair. Nor, even, did Margaret Thatcher.
The reason is not the one you've given. It's because we have a charlatan, a shamster, a blaguer, a serial liar, in charge of this country.
We can see it. Clearly.
The evidence about the left wing bias in universities is overwhelming. Look up the work that Eric Kaufmann has done recently. It is inevitable this has an impact on graduates.
Boris is like Trump, he upsets the values of the educated progressive elite; making no attempt at all to placate them unlike his predecessors. That explains his success with the less educated, who have always been easier to herd for political purposes than intellectuals.
Which came first? Are graduates generally more left-leaning because they're indoctrinated, or are universities full of the more intelligent people who see the complexity of life and don't buy the simplistic arguments of Johnson and his ilk?
You cite humanities and social sciences as being havens of left-wing thought. I think that is true, but for the reasons above. They encourage you to consider the shades of grey in life. There are few absolutes. Your personal assumptions are challenged. You have to have think.
Maths, physics, engineering degrees, those based on numbers, probably have a higher degree of right-leaning students. Because they are neat. 2+2 always equals 4. There are always measurable, repeatable, outcomes. They are essentially 'Common sense', if you will.
I don't thing that's necessarily a bad thing, just an inevitable result of what subjects differing personality types are drawn to study.
Alternatively humanities graduates can be more prejudiced because they don't have to deal with the 2+2=4 aspects of life and instead believe in what they want to. The 'communism has not been properly applied' mentality.
Anyone can believe what they want to, not just humanities graduates!
I'm sure Communism will continue to be applied, in differing forms, in the decades to come. As will fascism/National Socialism/extreme right-wing populism. Call them what you will, they're all cheeks of the same arse.
Don't trust seemingly cohesive political systems based on a few, again seemingly simple, beliefs!
Leaving aside the costs to business does anyone actually understand the supposed purpose of “vaccine passports (for domestic hospitality etc”?
Is it to protect the unvaccinated or the vaccinated? If it’s the latter then the message needs to be made more strongly that protection comes from the vaccine, not from avoiding contact with unvaccinated (and possibly infected) people. If the latter, the message should be that you are acting at your own risk and you should get vaccinated.
It seems to me that the only real purpose is to reduce problems due to mandatory self isolation for all. Which is a stupid policy which is going anyway.
As I pointed out yesterday 46% of men between 18 and 30 in Tayside have not been vaccinated at all. Something just under 7m adults have not been vaccinated in the UK. This is a clear and obvious medical risk and will create a pool of infection, hospitalisation and death going forward. Pretty much all of these people will now have been offered a vaccine but have declined or not bothered.
Do we (a) think that current rates are actually top of the class internationally and accept this risk or (b) try to incentivise the laggards to get their jabs after all? The government is opting for (b) and they are right to do so.
Internationally, yes, we'll probably be top of the class for vaccine uptake.
We need to lead the world back towards the freedoms of normalcy. Those include the right to refuse a vaccine, and the right not to disclose your medical history to get into a domestic event.
That I even have to write this shows how far down the rabbit hole we've gone....
Leaving aside the costs to business does anyone actually understand the supposed purpose of “vaccine passports (for domestic hospitality etc”?
Is it to protect the unvaccinated or the vaccinated? If it’s the latter then the message needs to be made more strongly that protection comes from the vaccine, not from avoiding contact with unvaccinated (and possibly infected) people. If the latter, the message should be that you are acting at your own risk and you should get vaccinated.
It seems to me that the only real purpose is to reduce problems due to mandatory self isolation for all. Which is a stupid policy which is going anyway.
There's far too many arguments put forward aboput either vaccines working, or them not working - at the end of the day it's all about probabilities (And probabilities on a population level transpose to (Case) expectation).
If you have vaccine passports covid secure status verification then the probability of you being infected in a close unmasked* enviroment (Say a club) is less than without; the probability of outbreaks is lessened as the unvaccinated are excluded. r(t) reduces a little.
The current pushback from clubs is obviously because pretty much all of their punters haven't had time to be double vaxxed by the 19th; and it's the most hesitant group.
* Unless you're in the right room/night at Slimes or another club of that ilk
Perhaps we need to define "poor". How many leased BMWs can one fanily afford on universal credit?
The best answer is just to massively increase VED on more expensive cars. The mechanism is already there as there is a £335 VED surcharge on cars that cost more than 40 grand new for years 2 through 6 of the car's life.
Johnson is a cypher, people see in him what they want to see. The left hate him as he can be portrayed as the worst of right wing excess. Some see him as likeable, willing to call a spade a spade etc. our kind of chap... I think he's a clown, unfit for office. Does anyone know the real face, if indeed he has one?
Though actually it's closer to 6p than 8. And of course elec usage is likely to increase steadily as renewables replace fossil fuels - and spreading the levy in energy usage more widely would make sense.
But that's all consumption and domestic electricity is just over 1/3 of the total.
So we are back towards 20p per domestic kwh which is once again well into in the unfeasible zone.
Though actually it's closer to 6p than 8. And of course elec usage is likely to increase steadily as renewables replace fossil fuels - and spreading the levy in energy usage more widely would make sense.
And whilst that could be done, remember the fury the descended on the Major government when it tried to put VAT on domestic fuel bills?
The grim reality is that there aren't significant places where public spending can easily be cut (Overseas Aid is about the only popular cut out there, and the saving is peanuts), there are limits to how much you can hope for growth to pay the bills, so we fall back on which taxes we are prepared to pay.
A 1p levy on all energy usage might work ? Though would be rather more complicated.
The problem would be how to phase it in as vehicle fuel consumption drops. The money's got to come from somewhere, and a big drop in fuel tax to be replaced by something else would go against disincentivising fuel usage. A phased introduction of mileage charges seems fairly likely.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Please, don't let mere facts get in the way of Philip's narrative.
In many places, particularly in the South East, public transport is very poor or non-existent and poor people are forced to keep a car on the road, for example to be able to work. They will often be paying more tax than drivers of new, expensive cars.
particularly in the South East
It must be bad then if its worse than in the rest of the country.
I'd say that its rural areas which have the worst public transport services and one of the better things Corbyn did was to point that out.
Rural areas have the worst public transport services because they are rural areas…
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Driving is environmentally toxic and has externalities even in electric cars. With ice cars fuel duty was an easy way of getting redress. Now cars are electric other ways have to be found. VED to 2000 please
A very interesting article from Mike Smithson, as always, but before betting the farm on this basis there are a few qualifying factors.
A non specialist glance at the seat by seat education analysis which the article links to reveals this: If education levels are fundamental to whether or not you like Boris enough to vote Tory then put your money on Labour to win Arundel and the Tories to win Bootle.
As this is so wrong as to be absurd it is worth looking deeper into the factors in play. My suggestion is this; that the educated don't much like Boris and broadly support modish causes more than others because they are just as much into group think as everyone else, just as they were on Brexit, (but think they aren't of course). But when it comes to general elections other interests come into play. which is why Labour will scrape home in Bootle and the Tories will hang on by a fingernail in Arundel.
Though actually it's closer to 6p than 8. And of course elec usage is likely to increase steadily as renewables replace fossil fuels - and spreading the levy in energy usage more widely would make sense.
And whilst that could be done, remember the fury the descended on the Major government when it tried to put VAT on domestic fuel bills?
The grim reality is that there aren't significant places where public spending can easily be cut (Overseas Aid is about the only popular cut out there, and the saving is peanuts), there are limits to how much you can hope for growth to pay the bills, so we fall back on which taxes we are prepared to pay.
A 1p levy on all energy usage might work ? Though would be rather more complicated.
The problem would be how to phase it in as vehicle fuel consumption drops. The money's got to come from somewhere, and a big drop in fuel tax to be replaced by something else would go against disincentivising fuel usage. A phased introduction of mileage charges seems fairly likely.
Looks like it could be curtains for Jair "I'm too macho for a mask" Bolsonaro. That photo of him on the hospital bed with a priest by his shoulder. Ouch. Maybe he's planning a miraculous recovery à la Pinochet from Alzheimer's. Good luck with that.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
Tax things you want less of, tax exempt (or subsidise) things you want more of. Price in externalities.
Most damage caused to roads is by HGVs, especially on local roads. We don’t want that. So tax the balls off them, if necessary to be replaced by smaller vehicles. Costs won’t change too much when the drivers disappear.
Things we don’t want: congestion. Things we do want: mobility. So dynamic road pricing. No need to tax the rural driver popping to the local shop. Meanwhile the person driving to Harrods…
We don’t like air pollution, noise and carbon emissions. So grade tax for all three.
We also don’t like inefficient capital allocation to underused assets. So incentivise car sharing by applying a zero income tax band to income from sharing your car. Will be even more important when autonomous driving gets here.
Think that’s it.
Unless you know something I don't (and I watch automation like a hawk) we aren't going to see fully automated driving anytime soon.
Define soon. I have full confidence that the private sector will achieve it earlier than the Whitehall is operationally ready to implement dynamic road pricing.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Please, don't let mere facts get in the way of Philip's narrative.
In many places, particularly in the South East, public transport is very poor or non-existent and poor people are forced to keep a car on the road, for example to be able to work. They will often be paying more tax than drivers of new, expensive cars.
Perhaps we need to define "poor". How many leased BMWs can one fanily afford on universal credit?
You can buy a beat up old banger for less than a single month's lease on a BMW.
Johnson is a cypher, people see in him what they want to see. The left hate him as he can be portrayed as the worst of right wing excess. Some see him as likeable, willing to call a spade a spade etc. our kind of chap... I think he's a clown, unfit for office. Does anyone know the real face, if indeed he has one?
AFAIK none of his ex-wives (etc) have written a book, or even given a long interview on 'their time with Boris'. I've always assumed that that was because, in the case of the wives, the divorce settlement included a 'commitment to silence'
Though actually it's closer to 6p than 8. And of course elec usage is likely to increase steadily as renewables replace fossil fuels - and spreading the levy in energy usage more widely would make sense.
And whilst that could be done, remember the fury the descended on the Major government when it tried to put VAT on domestic fuel bills?
The grim reality is that there aren't significant places where public spending can easily be cut (Overseas Aid is about the only popular cut out there, and the saving is peanuts), there are limits to how much you can hope for growth to pay the bills, so we fall back on which taxes we are prepared to pay.
A 1p levy on all energy usage might work ? Though would be rather more complicated.
The problem would be how to phase it in as vehicle fuel consumption drops. The money's got to come from somewhere, and a big drop in fuel tax to be replaced by something else would go against disincentivising fuel usage. A phased introduction of mileage charges seems fairly likely.
Though actually it's closer to 6p than 8. And of course elec usage is likely to increase steadily as renewables replace fossil fuels - and spreading the levy in energy usage more widely would make sense.
And whilst that could be done, remember the fury the descended on the Major government when it tried to put VAT on domestic fuel bills?
The grim reality is that there aren't significant places where public spending can easily be cut (Overseas Aid is about the only popular cut out there, and the saving is peanuts), there are limits to how much you can hope for growth to pay the bills, so we fall back on which taxes we are prepared to pay.
A 1p levy on all energy usage might work ? Though would be rather more complicated.
The problem would be how to phase it in as vehicle fuel consumption drops. The money's got to come from somewhere, and a big drop in fuel tax to be replaced by something else would go against disincentivising fuel usage. A phased introduction of mileage charges seems fairly likely.
Tax what you don’t want, incentivise what you do. We’re going to have to make far more efficient use of of the grip and plant capacity than we do now. Which means encouraging electricity use in the night and discouraging it in the day. The opposite of what you propose.
There’s far too much one dimensional thinking by British governments on squeezing the fiscal pips, without considering the wider impact of tax and spend.
AFAIK none of his ex-wives (etc) have written a book, or even given a long interview on 'their time with Boris'. I've always assumed that that was because, in the case of the wives, the divorce settlement included a 'commitment to silence'
Jennifer Arcuri seems closest to trying to cash in on her story
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Actually that's not especially true. A great many do and fuel taxes take 10% of their income if they do.
Most don't. Car ownership among the lowest income groups is around one-third.
And that third are paying 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, which is an incredibly regressive tax on them.
Currently fuel duty is justified based on the emissions of the fuel, but if there's no emissions on fuel then why should a third of the poorest in society see a tenth of their income go in taxes for something that doesn't have the externalities anymore?
You can buy a beat up old banger for less than a single month's lease on a BMW.
I can lease a 216i for less than £250/month. If you can get a functional car that doesn't need work and provides long term reliable transport for less than that it's by sheer luck.
Though actually it's closer to 6p than 8. And of course elec usage is likely to increase steadily as renewables replace fossil fuels - and spreading the levy in energy usage more widely would make sense.
And whilst that could be done, remember the fury the descended on the Major government when it tried to put VAT on domestic fuel bills?
The grim reality is that there aren't significant places where public spending can easily be cut (Overseas Aid is about the only popular cut out there, and the saving is peanuts), there are limits to how much you can hope for growth to pay the bills, so we fall back on which taxes we are prepared to pay.
A 1p levy on all energy usage might work ? Though would be rather more complicated.
The problem would be how to phase it in as vehicle fuel consumption drops. The money's got to come from somewhere, and a big drop in fuel tax to be replaced by something else would go against disincentivising fuel usage. A phased introduction of mileage charges seems fairly likely.
Why limit it to domestic ? In any event, such a tax is unlikely given the problems around phasing it in.
Things we want. A more diversified economy. Reduced reliance on imported manufactured goods in an evermore unstable and less globalised world.
Things we don’t want. Manufacturers upping sticks because they are uncompetitive, due to the government taxing a key factor of production (power), which other governments are openly subsidising.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Please, don't let mere facts get in the way of Philip's narrative.
In many places, particularly in the South East, public transport is very poor or non-existent and poor people are forced to keep a car on the road, for example to be able to work. They will often be paying more tax than drivers of new, expensive cars.
Yes - "public transport poverty" is a noted thing.
And rural taxis are disproportionately used by the very poor and the very rich, while those in the middle self-drive.
The hatred of some for Boris is visceral and deep. Yes, he's pompous, full of himself, and acting out a role, but he hardly rates as Hitler or Stalin. The only sensible thing he's done is to appoint someone sensible to head the vaccine task-force, but some people hate him for doing that.
In some ways, he's an effective politician, despite his faults. That may explain some of the anger. Being educated can bring a misplaced arrogance.
I dislike the man, but he might be better than a rabid idealist with daft views. I'm sure BoJo's principles will bend with the wind.
I think this is going to go down like a lead ballon outside those who aren't big fans of Boris government. Adding a £200-300 to families food bills.
Is that carelessly worded or are you saying Boris's sugar and salt taxes will be hated by Boris-supporters? If the latter, you may be right, but surely it implies they will not be introduced.
Sorry...been working too many hours straight.
I am saying those that will probably like this policy, don't like Boris and no intention of ever voting for him. Where as his current support base, e.g. the likes of your white working class, inspires to have a middle class lifestyle, types, isn't going to like the sound of £200 extra on his food bill nor the nanny stating.
Cool. In that case, it probably won't happen.
You would think so, but the current government seem to make lots of irrational and often counterproductive decisions (for their own ratings).
Remember the government are really pushing ahead with the eco stuff, that isn't going to be winning them many red wall voters. Again something that non-Tory voters want e.g. electric vehicles coming in much sooner, but it won't make them vote Tory while Boris is in charge.
Oldies heavily skew Tory, they are scared of covid, and Boris is saying open everything up, masks they are optional, etc.
Disagree
Electric vehicles being accelerated >>> Urgent need to provide government incentives to secure manufacturing >>> well paid secure jobs for red wallers >>> located in appropriate seats >>> well paid secure jobs for Tory MPs
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Actually that's not especially true. A great many do and fuel taxes take 10% of their income if they do.
Most don't. Car ownership among the lowest income groups is around one-third.
And that third are paying 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, which is an incredibly regressive tax on them.
Currently fuel duty is justified based on the emissions of the fuel, but if there's no emissions on fuel then why should a third of the poorest in society see a tenth of their income go in taxes for something that doesn't have the externalities anymore?
If people drive cars that do not burn fossil fuels, then they will not pay the taxes levied on fossil fuels. That is obviously a good thing.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Please, don't let mere facts get in the way of Philip's narrative.
In many places, particularly in the South East, public transport is very poor or non-existent and poor people are forced to keep a car on the road, for example to be able to work. They will often be paying more tax than drivers of new, expensive cars.
Yes - "public transport poverty" is a noted thing.
And rural taxis are disproportionately used by the very poor and the very rich, while those in the middle self-drive.
I have been quite astonished at the cost of rural taxis since moving from the city. That’s if you can manage to arrange one.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Please, don't let mere facts get in the way of Philip's narrative.
In many places, particularly in the South East, public transport is very poor or non-existent and poor people are forced to keep a car on the road, for example to be able to work. They will often be paying more tax than drivers of new, expensive cars.
Perhaps we need to define "poor". How many leased BMWs can one fanily afford on universal credit?
You can buy a beat up old banger for less than a single month's lease on a BMW.
The problem with beat-up old bangers is that they rely on fossil fuels and so are going to incur high taxes.
Unfortunate imagery, as detailed in the pile-on, though I can't help wondering how many of those cancelling their subscriptions had subscriptions to cancel.
I think a pile on is something different.
It’s when a public figure (an Owen Jones for example) attacks an individual on line and all his followers pile on as part of that directed attack
This just looks like a lot of people individually finding the cartoon unpleasant
The hatred of some for Boris is visceral and deep. Yes, he's pompous, full of himself, and acting out a role, but he hardly rates as Hitler or Stalin. The only sensible thing he's done is to appoint someone sensible to head the vaccine task-force, but some people hate him for doing that.
In some ways, he's an effective politician, despite his faults. That may explain some of the anger. Being educated can bring a misplaced arrogance.
I dislike the man, but he might be better than a rabid idealist with daft views. I'm sure BoJo's principles will bend with the wind.
Why do people who write glowingly about the Prime Minister feel it necessary to add the rider that they personally don't like him. Is it supposed to add weight to the eulogy?
He's virtually bankrupt in his private life and he's going to do the same with the public finances. He splurges on vanity projects left, right and centre. Someone should confiscate the credit cards before he does even more damage.
Not many international trips at a time when international travel is restricted….
Why do people who write glowingly about the Prime Minister feel it necessary to add the rider that they personally don't like him. Is it supposed to add weight to the eulogy?
It's the BoZo fanboi equivalent of "I didn't inhale...:"
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Actually that's not especially true. A great many do and fuel taxes take 10% of their income if they do.
Most don't. Car ownership among the lowest income groups is around one-third.
And that third are paying 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, which is an incredibly regressive tax on them.
Currently fuel duty is justified based on the emissions of the fuel, but if there's no emissions on fuel then why should a third of the poorest in society see a tenth of their income go in taxes for something that doesn't have the externalities anymore?
If people drive cars that do not burn fossil fuels, then they will not pay the taxes levied on fossil fuels. That is obviously a good thing.
Well precisely but some are saying that fuel duty (which is going to trend to zero revenues in the future, leaving a £30bn black hole in Treasury finances) should be replaced by other taxes on drivers.
Punishing drivers for moving away from using fuel. It's like having an ex-smoker tax to replace tobacco duties.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Please, don't let mere facts get in the way of Philip's narrative.
In many places, particularly in the South East, public transport is very poor or non-existent and poor people are forced to keep a car on the road, for example to be able to work. They will often be paying more tax than drivers of new, expensive cars.
Perhaps we need to define "poor". How many leased BMWs can one fanily afford on universal credit?
You can buy a beat up old banger for less than a single month's lease on a BMW.
The problem with beat-up old bangers is that they rely on fossil fuels and so are going to incur high taxes.
Yup - I've already heard some interesting remarks on the way that people running companies are getting to buy high end electric vehicles for the square root of FA, and are *encouraged* to use them for personal stuff.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 73p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £185m
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
The very poorest in society tend not to have cars.
Please, don't let mere facts get in the way of Philip's narrative.
In many places, particularly in the South East, public transport is very poor or non-existent and poor people are forced to keep a car on the road, for example to be able to work. They will often be paying more tax than drivers of new, expensive cars.
Perhaps we need to define "poor". How many leased BMWs can one fanily afford on universal credit?
You can buy a beat up old banger for less than a single month's lease on a BMW.
The problem with beat-up old bangers is that they rely on fossil fuels and so are going to incur high taxes.
Well precisely which is why fuel duty is such a regressive tax. Get it now?
But in the future all vehicles will be zero emissions.
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
Johnson is a cypher, people see in him what they want to see. The left hate him as he can be portrayed as the worst of right wing excess. Some see him as likeable, willing to call a spade a spade etc. our kind of chap... I think he's a clown, unfit for office. Does anyone know the real face, if indeed he has one?
AFAIK none of his ex-wives (etc) have written a book, or even given a long interview on 'their time with Boris'. I've always assumed that that was because, in the case of the wives, the divorce settlement included a 'commitment to silence'
Morning, OKC!
Or maybe there is a superinjunction. How would we know?
You can buy a beat up old banger for less than a single month's lease on a BMW.
I can lease a 216i for less than £250/month. If you can get a functional car that doesn't need work and provides long term reliable transport for less than that it's by sheer luck.
You need about £1500 and a bit of luck to find an ok car that may go for a year or two without significant work. Your best option is to get a new Dacia Sandero: £120 a month with £120 upfront payment on PCP. Good for 5 years with a warranty etc.
The trouble with green taxes is that they are going to hit this kind of deal and make car ownership more expensive for the masses. There will be a yellow vest style revolt. It could do Boris a lot of damage and he will probably end up backtracking as is his way.
Johnson is a cypher, people see in him what they want to see. The left hate him as he can be portrayed as the worst of right wing excess. Some see him as likeable, willing to call a spade a spade etc. our kind of chap... I think he's a clown, unfit for office. Does anyone know the real face, if indeed he has one?
AFAIK none of his ex-wives (etc) have written a book, or even given a long interview on 'their time with Boris'. I've always assumed that that was because, in the case of the wives, the divorce settlement included a 'commitment to silence'
Morning, OKC!
Or maybe there is a superinjunction. How would we know?
Boris Johnson was involved in at least one injunction.
On the educated topic...let us not forget the more educated you were the more likely you were to think Corbyn was a good answer to the countries woes....just saying
Those with degrees tend to be more likely to be Remainers so it is no secret they dislike Johnson, hence he does better in Red Wall white working class seats like Hartlepool while he has seen movement away from him in graduate heavy seats like Chesham and Amersham. However the trend of graduates away from conservatives and the white working class towards conservatives is a trend seen across the western world, not least in the US with Trump but also in Europe and Australia and Canada too. Sweden being about the only exception.
In fact recent research has shown that the vote for western conservative parties tended to come from the most educated and highest earning in the 1970s but while conservative parties still do reasonably well with the rich and higher earners they now do best with the least educated.
Leftwing parties by contrast in the 1970s did best with the poorest and least educated, now the centre left in the west does best with graduates having lost the white working class and union block vote, though still doing better with those on lower incomes. https://twitter.com/MattGrossmann/status/1398640527373971456?s=20
Johnson is a cypher, people see in him what they want to see. The left hate him as he can be portrayed as the worst of right wing excess. Some see him as likeable, willing to call a spade a spade etc. our kind of chap... I think he's a clown, unfit for office. Does anyone know the real face, if indeed he has one?
I see him as likeable but untrustworthy, and mostly unfit for office because of his inability to take responsibility for his mistakes. But still much better than his main opponent in the 2019 GE.
I do wonder if we've been lucky that Johnson won in 2019. I mean, Hunt or Stewart may have dealt with Covid better, but I've got no doubt that Corbyn's handling it would have been an absolute disaster.
He's virtually bankrupt in his private life and he's going to do the same with the public finances. He splurges on vanity projects left, right and centre. Someone should confiscate the credit cards before he does even more damage.
Not many international trips at a time when international travel is restricted….
But the plane has other uses
I recall, when Cameron introduced the idea of using the jets as a low cost solution to a jet for government use, how upset the hacks were.
They were all lined up to deliver a tirade about government luxury on the tax payer, and found they got a seat and a packet of peanuts.
The articles written about this were hilarious - obviously re-written to remove the demands for gold fittings and champagne (to not appear insanely entitled) while still gritting their teeth that it wasn't super luxury....
Johnson is a cypher, people see in him what they want to see. The left hate him as he can be portrayed as the worst of right wing excess. Some see him as likeable, willing to call a spade a spade etc. our kind of chap... I think he's a clown, unfit for office. Does anyone know the real face, if indeed he has one?
AFAIK none of his ex-wives (etc) have written a book, or even given a long interview on 'their time with Boris'. I've always assumed that that was because, in the case of the wives, the divorce settlement included a 'commitment to silence'
Morning, OKC!
Or maybe there is a superinjunction. How would we know?
If there were a superinjunction then any of his political opponents could use Parliamentary privilege to break the injunction and the media could report that.
Why has not one of his political opponents done so? Only logical answer is there is no superinjunction.
I don't write glowingly about Boris. Being a good politician isn't a compliment in my eyes. It means he's false. That I can live with.
I've a PhD in science which means I used to know a little about a very narrow subject. I'd never advise anyone about how to live their life. No one with any sense would take notice anyway.
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
That's a very specific list. Not that I am complaining about the first item on it, of course.
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
It hasn't but if get £800 a car from duty on fuel and need to get that money from somewhere there really isn't that many options.
Road pricing will have to be investigated as the other options are worse in different ways
Fuel was taxed because fuel had externalities and was environmentally toxic.
Now that drivers are switching away from fuel, there seems to be a desire to keep raising revenues from drivers rather than simply accept that fuel has gone and that society as a whole needs to pay for its costs.
Its like having if smokers all quit smoking placing a tax on ex-smokers to replace tobacco taxes.
Motorists should still pay some form of tax to, as a bare minimum, fund the road network.
Absolutely that is reasonable. VED raises nearly as much as is spent on the roads. Fuel duty raises about £40bn more than is spent on the roads.
Keeping VED and having approximately half a penny per kWh would replace all of fuel duty and be "fair". Drivers would be paying via when they refuel their electric cars and would still pay more tax from that than is spent on roads - but the rest of society would pay its fair share too.
again - adding it the electricity isn't fair on those who don't have a car, it's regressive because it impacts people who don't currently pay that tax.
And it needs to raise £28bn to offset the tax fuel duty collects (2019/20 figure - last years was surprisingly £21bn)
Just because the justification for the tax has gone that doesn't mean the need for the money disappears.
Why's it unfair on those who don't have a car? Considering almost all of the money raised isn't spent on the roads, why should they be exempt from paying taxes?
The need for the money to fund the NHS or pensions or whatever else you want to spend on is not the same as the need for the money to come from drivers.
And taxing driving is far more regressive than taxing electricity. Poor drivers pay an estimated 10% of their disposable income on fuel duty, that's currently justified due to the green externalities on fuel but if they cease to use fuel why should they remain so heavily taxed?
They aren't exempt from paying taxes but you've just increased the level of tax on the very poorest people in society.
Oh and unless I'm missing something the tax on each kwh needs to be 8p not 0.5p... 0.5p would raise £1.8bn
The very poorest in society are being taxed more thanks to fuel duty if they drive.
Do you think that its right that some of the poorest in society are paying 10% of their disposable income to fuel duty while some considerably wealthier in society are getting the state funding their train journeys? If the externalities of fuel are removed by drivers switching to clean vehicles, why is it right that such a regressive situation should continue?
I'll take your word for it on the kwh. Last time we discussed this, that number was calculated and seemed to be accepted by all in the discussion and I'm just going from memory but I don't have time now to go through the calculations again.
Oh I just went to google asked for the UK's 2020 electricity consumption figures and did some maths. and discovered I missed placed a zero
It's 8p that needs to be added not 73p but that's still a 50% increase in electricity prices...
Now advantage is that is doable but it means those with cars are going to be taxed twice and you can't remove fuel duty as longer term we need those cars off the road.
Those ICE cars will come off the road eventually anyway - wear and tear will see to that. One of the problems with governments is that they always want to push these sorts of changes through too quickly. We should be wearing out the current generation of ICE cars rather than scrapping them early with remaining residual life - scrapping cars with useful life left is almost always far worse for the enviroment than the emissions produced by using that residual life.
One of the big issues (to my mind) with electric cars is that the running costs (which for an ICE are heavily taxed) are all pretty similar, regardless of if the car is a 100mile range Zoe or a fully loaded Tessla. Currently, both road tax and fuel duty effectively differentiate between cheap small cars (as run by the poor), and large luxury cars, so if you want to run a V12 Bentley you pay far more tax a mile than if you run a 1.0 Yaris.
It's very difficult to see a way of extracting similar amounts of tax from electric cars which doesn't involve stiffing poorer drivers, particularly those who don't drive high milages. One could make VED a function of the new purchase price and vehicle age (so it decreases from full whack at new to zero at say ten years old), which would help a bit, but if we load the equivalent of fuel duty onto that, it means that high mileage drivers do very well and lower mileage ones do badly. And the motor industry will be furious because it will incentivise people to keep hold of old cars going rather than buying new ones.
If we go for road pricing on a pence per mile basis, leaving asside the huge privacy issues (which are why it's totally and utterly unacceptable), is it fair and reasonable that the man in a 10 year old Zoe pays the same tax as a man in a brand new Bentley? It also perversely incentivises city driving (short distances in slow traffic won't cost much, even if they take a lot of time and contribue loads of congestion) whilst stiffing rual communities where often there is a need to drive much further, even if the journey times are shorter and the roads almost empty.
The poor are also going to be stiffed again on range - they will end up unable to do occasional long distance trips without muliple stops to charge, where they will get stiffed further by the rip off rates demanded by supercharging points.
All in all, electric cars are probably going to be the most regressive thing to happen to the country in the last 50 years. It's rather a pity that no-one in government appears to have given this any serious thought before blundering ahead with a strategy of electriying everything.
Of course, the government could just not tax and spend as much (this is my prefered solution), but that seems to be particularly unfashionable to suggest at present.
Leaving aside the costs to business does anyone actually understand the supposed purpose of “vaccine passports (for domestic hospitality etc”?
Is it to protect the unvaccinated or the vaccinated? If it’s the latter then the message needs to be made more strongly that protection comes from the vaccine, not from avoiding contact with unvaccinated (and possibly infected) people. If the latter, the message should be that you are acting at your own risk and you should get vaccinated.
It seems to me that the only real purpose is to reduce problems due to mandatory self isolation for all. Which is a stupid policy which is going anyway.
As I pointed out yesterday 46% of men between 18 and 30 in Tayside have not been vaccinated at all. Something just under 7m adults have not been vaccinated in the UK. This is a clear and obvious medical risk and will create a pool of infection, hospitalisation and death going forward. Pretty much all of these people will now have been offered a vaccine but have declined or not bothered.
Do we (a) think that current rates are actually top of the class internationally and accept this risk or (b) try to incentivise the laggards to get their jabs after all? The government is opting for (b) and they are right to do so.
Or we just let nature take its course for people who have refused the vaccine. If some of them die then it's the choice they've made.
Comments
Of course, it may not be necessary at all but this is about what he thinks best.
They have a story about themselves and their country that the people want to hear.
Blair had an act. Reagan had an act. And so on.
T. May did not have an act ... and she must rank as the most woeful PM of modern times.
SKS does not have an act ... but then SKS is not a successful politician
So 0.5p would raise around 11bn - so replacing fuel duty would need about 1p on electricity per kWh.
(for the avoidance of doubt, I'm just joking, I don't think Tories are generally nasty)
You cite humanities and social sciences as being havens of left-wing thought. I think that is true, but for the reasons above. They encourage you to consider the shades of grey in life. There are few absolutes. Your personal assumptions are challenged. You have to have think.
Maths, physics, engineering degrees, those based on numbers, probably have a higher degree of right-leaning students. Because they are neat. 2+2 always equals 4. There are always measurable, repeatable, outcomes. They are essentially 'Common sense', if you will.
I don't thing that's necessarily a bad thing, just an inevitable result of what subjects differing personality types are drawn to study.
You're about right.
Maybe it’s as simple as this.
It takes one, to know one.
And of course elec usage is likely to increase steadily as renewables replace fossil fuels - and spreading the levy in energy usage more widely would make sense.
My wealthy academic friends in the University towns are the ones who bike or belong to car pools & car shares.They rarely need to drive.
It would be interesting to see some actual data, but @Philip_Thompson is not obviously wrong.
You have to be fairly old; born in about 1970 at the earliest, and probably before about 1960 to avoid ROSLA.
You also had to have the skills and interests to leave school and presumably walk straight into an entry-level job.
People with that life story and at that life stage are pretty much the centre of the Red Tory narrative- bring back decent factory jobs (like I had), turn back the culture war clock (to my youth). But they're not numerous.
Which matches roughly with the figures I get from https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/electricity-section-5-energy-trends
My point being that we are in a time of great uncertainty throughout the entire population. Or in fact it should be throughout the entire population. Those who think they are certain are the biggest fools.
Next one is in Italy, and there'll be a third somewhere, yet to be determined.
The grim reality is that there aren't significant places where public spending can easily be cut (Overseas Aid is about the only popular cut out there, and the saving is peanuts), there are limits to how much you can hope for growth to pay the bills, so we fall back on which taxes we are prepared to pay.
It must be bad if its worse than in the rest of the country.
I'd say that its rural areas which have the worst public transport services and one of the better things Corbyn did was to point that out.
Apart from age (already done, and the generational value shift) it's also down to the fact that your economic experience is very different if you're highly educated, as is your ability to ride change waves and insulate yourself from any problems that result from it.
I'm sure Communism will continue to be applied, in differing forms, in the decades to come. As will fascism/National Socialism/extreme right-wing populism. Call them what you will, they're all cheeks of the same arse.
Don't trust seemingly cohesive political systems based on a few, again seemingly simple, beliefs!
We need to lead the world back towards the freedoms of normalcy. Those include the right to refuse a vaccine, and the right not to disclose your medical history to get into a domestic event.
That I even have to write this shows how far down the rabbit hole we've gone....
If you have
vaccine passportscovid secure status verification then the probability of you being infected in a close unmasked* enviroment (Say a club) is less than without; the probability of outbreaks is lessened as the unvaccinated are excluded. r(t) reduces a little.The current pushback from clubs is obviously because pretty much all of their punters haven't had time to be double vaxxed by the 19th; and it's the most hesitant group.
* Unless you're in the right room/night at Slimes or another club of that ilk
Team GB women’s footballers will take a knee ahead of their games during the Olympic tournament - a unanimous squad decision.
Also meet the three players who will be sharing the captaincy - Steph Houghton, Kim Little & Sophie Ingle. Decision made by head coach Hege Riise
https://twitter.com/SarahDawkins23/status/1415582034693656576/photo/1
Make that £2k with a £4k band for 80k cars, etc.
"You don't have to wear one, but we expect you to wear one."
The left hate him as he can be portrayed as the worst of right wing excess.
Some see him as likeable, willing to call a spade a spade etc. our kind of chap...
I think he's a clown, unfit for office.
Does anyone know the real face, if indeed he has one?
So we are back towards 20p per domestic kwh which is once again well into in the unfeasible zone.
Though would be rather more complicated.
The problem would be how to phase it in as vehicle fuel consumption drops. The money's got to come from somewhere, and a big drop in fuel tax to be replaced by something else would go against disincentivising fuel usage. A phased introduction of mileage charges seems fairly likely.
Relentless sexual conquest, 15 grand for a holiday, 90 grand for a sofa and wallpaper...
A non specialist glance at the seat by seat education analysis which the article links to reveals this: If education levels are fundamental to whether or not you like Boris enough to vote Tory then put your money on Labour to win Arundel and the Tories to win Bootle.
As this is so wrong as to be absurd it is worth looking deeper into the factors in play. My suggestion is this; that the educated don't much like Boris and broadly support modish causes more than others because they are just as much into group think as everyone else, just as they were on Brexit, (but think they aren't of course). But when it comes to general elections other interests come into play. which is why Labour will scrape home in Bootle and the Tories will hang on by a fingernail in Arundel.
In any event, such a tax is unlikely given the problems around phasing it in.
There’s far too much one dimensional thinking by British governments on squeezing the fiscal pips, without considering the wider impact of tax and spend.
Currently fuel duty is justified based on the emissions of the fuel, but if there's no emissions on fuel then why should a third of the poorest in society see a tenth of their income go in taxes for something that doesn't have the externalities anymore?
Things we don’t want. Manufacturers upping sticks because they are uncompetitive, due to the government taxing a key factor of production (power), which other governments are openly subsidising.
"$500" said the boatman
"$500! Are you for real!
"It's of great historical interest. Jesus walked across it"
"I bet he did at $500 a boat ride"
(Jacky Mason)
Welcome to a world that works better.
Welcome, @TeamViewer 🤝
#MUFC #BringingYouCloser https://twitter.com/ManUtd/status/1415585676356169731/video/1
Man U's new shirt sponsor a software company famous for having malware embedded in their product...
Awesome
In some ways, he's an effective politician, despite his faults. That may explain some of the anger. Being educated can bring a misplaced arrogance.
I dislike the man, but he might be better than a rabid idealist with daft views. I'm sure BoJo's principles will bend with the wind.
Electric vehicles being accelerated >>> Urgent need to provide government incentives to secure manufacturing >>> well paid secure jobs for red wallers >>> located in appropriate seats >>> well paid secure jobs for Tory MPs
It’s when a public figure (an Owen Jones for example) attacks an individual on line and all his followers pile on as part of that directed attack
This just looks like a lot of people individually finding the cartoon unpleasant
But the plane has other uses
Punishing drivers for moving away from using fuel. It's like having an ex-smoker tax to replace tobacco duties.
But in the future all vehicles will be zero emissions.
I mean I'd rather have the backing from people who attended the University of Life than those that went to the Universities of Oxford, Hull, and Brighton.
Or maybe there is a superinjunction. How would we know?
The trouble with green taxes is that they are going to hit this kind of deal and make car ownership more expensive for the masses. There will be a yellow vest style revolt. It could do Boris a lot of damage and he will probably end up backtracking as is his way.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/may/21/boris-johnson-fathered-child-affair
In fact recent research has shown that the vote for western conservative parties tended to come from the most educated and highest earning in the 1970s but while conservative parties still do reasonably well with the rich and higher earners they now do best with the least educated.
Leftwing parties by contrast in the 1970s did best with the poorest and least educated, now the centre left in the west does best with graduates having lost the white working class and union block vote, though still doing better with those on lower incomes.
https://twitter.com/MattGrossmann/status/1398640527373971456?s=20
I do wonder if we've been lucky that Johnson won in 2019. I mean, Hunt or Stewart may have dealt with Covid better, but I've got no doubt that Corbyn's handling it would have been an absolute disaster.
They were all lined up to deliver a tirade about government luxury on the tax payer, and found they got a seat and a packet of peanuts.
The articles written about this were hilarious - obviously re-written to remove the demands for gold fittings and champagne (to not appear insanely entitled) while still gritting their teeth that it wasn't super luxury....
Why has not one of his political opponents done so? Only logical answer is there is no superinjunction.
I don't write glowingly about Boris. Being a good politician isn't a compliment in my eyes. It means he's false. That I can live with.
I've a PhD in science which means I used to know a little about a very narrow subject. I'd never advise anyone about how to live their life. No one with any sense would take notice anyway.
One of the big issues (to my mind) with electric cars is that the running costs (which for an ICE are heavily taxed) are all pretty similar, regardless of if the car is a 100mile range Zoe or a fully loaded Tessla.
Currently, both road tax and fuel duty effectively differentiate between cheap small cars (as run by the poor), and large luxury cars, so if you want to run a V12 Bentley you pay far more tax a mile than if you run a 1.0 Yaris.
It's very difficult to see a way of extracting similar amounts of tax from electric cars which doesn't involve stiffing poorer drivers, particularly those who don't drive high milages. One could make VED a function of the new purchase price and vehicle age (so it decreases from full whack at new to zero at say ten years old), which would help a bit, but if we load the equivalent of fuel duty onto that, it means that high mileage drivers do very well and lower mileage ones do badly. And the motor industry will be furious because it will incentivise people to keep hold of old cars going rather than buying new ones.
If we go for road pricing on a pence per mile basis, leaving asside the huge privacy issues (which are why it's totally and utterly unacceptable), is it fair and reasonable that the man in a 10 year old Zoe pays the same tax as a man in a brand new Bentley? It also perversely incentivises city driving (short distances in slow traffic won't cost much, even if they take a lot of time and contribue loads of congestion) whilst stiffing rual communities where often there is a need to drive much further, even if the journey times are shorter and the roads almost empty.
The poor are also going to be stiffed again on range - they will end up unable to do occasional long distance trips without muliple stops to charge, where they will get stiffed further by the rip off rates demanded by supercharging points.
All in all, electric cars are probably going to be the most regressive thing to happen to the country in the last 50 years. It's rather a pity that no-one in government appears to have given this any serious thought before blundering ahead with a strategy of electriying everything.
Of course, the government could just not tax and spend as much (this is my prefered solution), but that seems to be particularly unfashionable to suggest at present.
https://www.nhsinform.scot/covid-19-vaccine/invitations-and-appointments/who-will-be-offered-the-coronavirus-vaccine