Once again the Chancellor has raised the tax on all motor fuels, and this despite the fact that the price of petrol and diesel had already risen to ridiculous levels.
It is time to say "Enough is enough." How many people realise that what we pay at the pumps is 84% tax. He is using the same old argument. "The polluter must pay." this has a very hollow ring when you consider the facts of the matter. We are told that we have to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that we are pumping into the atmosphere.
Most of the CO2 emission from the exhausts of cars, tractors etc., being heavier than most of the other gases that go to make up the atmosphere tends to stay at low levels and is rapidly taken up by growing plant life, during the daylight hours by a process known as photosynthesis. The carbon element, which is absolutely necessary to plant life, is absorbed and the oxygen is released to the air.
In my humble opinion one of the worlds worse sources of pollution if the jet aircraft engine. Come to think of it we didn't hear anything about global warming until its invention. Modern aircraft fly at very high altitude and their huge engines spew out masses of carbon dioxide, where owing to the balance of forces it tends to remain and build up year on year. Tests carried out by the R.A.F. many years ago proved that volcanic dust from long extinct volcanos stays circling the earth for periods of forty years or more.
Furthermore there is of course no plant life up in the stratosphere to absorb any of it.
Do these polluters pay? Of course they dont! There is no tax at all on aviation fuel, nor do they pay any V.A.T. on new aircraft. So much for the argument that the polluter must pay.
PERCY FERRIS
Fowey.