Lets get Britain back on track!

This last week there have been a plethora of news stories on a number of subjects including giving more powers to local councils, changes to devolution, forcing faith-based schools to admit other religions and freedom of religious expression. My belief is that the very fact that these four issues have come up like this just go to show that it's time that what is currently known as "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" starts to change... and change to the benefit of the people who live here.

In other news this week it seems that our monarch, Queen Elizabeth 2nd, has cancelled several public appearances due to ill health. Why is this important to this blog? Well, notice that in her absence the country didn't fall apart. The places that she was due to visit didn't suddenly cease to exist, if anything things probably ticked along quite nicely, and that brings me back to the original purpose of this particular piece.

Our great country. Since before the time of the Romans these islands have been ruled by one king or another (apart from a brief spell in the 17th century that is). We learn in school that many of these were great rulers who did a lot for this country. Others were not so good; some were mad, others war-mongerers, some were just lazy. Unfortunatly if you operate a system whereby the job of running the country is passed down from father/mother-to-son/daughter you're going to get this occasionally. But is this something we can accept in the modern world? We live in a world where people want to have freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of movement. Increasingly, and thanks partly to the current war on terror, we're losing many of our freedoms. What most Brits don't seem to realise anyway is that technically speaking we don't have any of those rights anyway. If you were born in Britain you are not a Citizen, you are a Subject. Wether you like it or not, all of the important things here are "owned" by the ruling monarch. Her Majesty's Government, The Royal Mail, HM Customs and Excise, Royal Air Force, the list goes on. The democracy we see is an illusion, one that can be pulled out from under us at any time, and even though Elizabeth hasn't done so, who is to say that Charles will be so ready to let the government do what they want given his past record?

Unfortunatly, even if we removed the monarchy from the equation our current system of government is badly flawed too. Although we supposedly live in a "United Kingdom" things differ depending on where you live. If you live in Scotland you live in a region where laws can be made locally, your regional assembly has tax-raising powers, your money is printed by local banks, public rights of way don't exist. If you live in Wales you have a local assembly that has a few minor powers... but nothing of what the Scottish have and you don't even get to print your own money. Northern Ireland doesn't know where it stands most of the time. So you folks print your own money, but your regional assembly is so screwed up because one side refuses to speak to the other one most of the time. Those of us who live in England probably have the worst deal these days though... we're still run by a parliament which contains members from those other 3 regions of the UK who already have their own regional assemblies!

Add to this that the second chamber of our "national" parliament isn't even elected. It's members are chosen by the goverment of the day... not exactly what you'd call democratic.

At a more local level we all have some form of "regional government" in the form of our local councils. This isn't much better though. Many people don't bother voting in local elections and as a concequence we wind up with council chambers made up mostly of members of one of the 3 main national political parties; these groups will generally just be extensions of the national party and the mayor is usually appointed by those in power. There is no method of keeping executive powers in check and as a concequence local councils can run roughshod over all and sundry and do what they like - look at the 80's when we had "loony left" councils banning sports days in schools and now where we have the "loony greens" who want to tax us for not eating the packaging on our cornflakes packages and for parking our cars outside our own homes!

So, what do we need to do? In my opinion we need a complete top-down shake up of the whole system.

1. Scrap the monarchy. Our head of state should be elected. Some people think that this should be a "ceremonial" position, others believe that a President should be able to exercise some form of control over the elected assemblies. I personally prefer the latter, but in either case there should be no hereditary power and we should be able to vote for whoever is in this position... and their term of office should be a fixed period with the next election date known well in advance.

2. Reform the Commons and Lords. The former should remain largely as-is but the system of "whips" whereby a party can force it's members to vote in a particular manner should go, as should the "Parliament Act" which allows them to over-rule the Lords. As for those Lords, they need to go too. The whole assembly should be elected using a system where it is unlikely that the result would mirror that of the commons. Clearly the names must go, but something else we should have, like with the head of state is a fixed term for each assembly - overlapping so that one remains in power when the other changes. Snap elections shouldn't be allowed (other than perhaps for no-confidence motions) and we shouldn't be left guessing how long our government will be in office.

3. Reform regional government. If Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland want their own regional assemblies then fine, they should have them. But so should England - without being split into "regions", and all 4 assemblies should have the same powers. There should be a level playing field. In the same way local government should be reformed. County councils should remain as should town councils, but the latter should have an elected mayor who has powers of veto over decisions made by the council and should have a fixed term of office. Neither the council of the mayor should be able to act alone in the manner that Ken Livingstone seems to have done in London.

Doing this will create a "Federal Republic" and so many other things will have to change. The name will have to go, our national anthem will have to change and we won't need to argue any more about who's head gets printed on the money.

More than this though, we need to take some other steps to ensure our government doesn't get taken over by certain interest groups. Religion in public life needs to be banned! It should be illegal to preach religion in schools paid for by tax payers money (although I'd be open to faith-based schools getting grants, but by no means full funding!). People running for public office should not be allowed to stand on religious grounds and people working full-time for these bodies should be bound by the same rules - no preaching from the office. What church you go to and what you do in your own time is your business, but I should not have to ask for my children to not be taught religion in school, I should not have to fight to send my children to a good school because I don't believe in the school's particular brand of "God", and I should not be told I cannot work or shop on a Sunday because somebody else thinks I should be in church!

Finally, and most importantly, what we really need is a written constitution and bill of rights. It's ironic that, although a vocal portion of my countrymen are anti-Europe, that we actually have more rights as EU Citizens than we do as British Subjects. I'm actually quite annoyed that my first chance to have a written constitution has been scuppered by all those Sun- and Mail-reading zealots who seem to think we've got the best system of government in the world. But basically we have no rights; we get what we see because the monarch of the day chooses not to argue... but that could change at any time and we have no way out if it all goes wrong!

I for one look forward to the day I live in England, part of the Federal Republic of Britain. I live in hope that we can also be a fully functioning part of Europe, driving our cars in km/h, buying our litres of petrol in Euros. Of course I want us to still be speaking English and having our own elected government.

What I want most of all though is to live in a properly democratic country without having to sell up and move abroad. Is that too much to ask? Clearly it is!

When will my identity be mine?

Another visit from the postman, another pile of junk mail. It seems that no matter how hard we try, we will never get rid of the constant intrusions into our lives?

When we turn on the TV or radio we expect the commercial breaks. We purchased these items with the full knowledge that what we want to view is partly funded by adverts and so we can accept this. However when we move into a house and have a phone installed we are the ones paying the rent and/or mortgage. One thing we expect in our own homes is privacy... but that's something we're certainly not getting.

In this on-line world we're all getting more experienced at being careful on the Internet. However no matter how hard we try we still wind up getting piles of spam in our inboxes. The internet is largely unregulated so there isn't that much we can do except refusing to do business with spammers. In the real world, however, businesses are restricted by laws and so one would expect that our personal details can't go very far. Or you would think so!

Over the last few years I've become a little obsessed with those little boxes on application forms. You know the ones... "Tick this box if you do not want us to share your information with other companies". The box always gets ticked, without fail. On line it's a bit harder... one company, Littlewoods, says on it's privacy page (and I'm paraphrasing here) "If you buy something with us on-line we will share your details with other companies, both inside and outside the EU". I've not found an opt-out yet. As you can guess I'm not going to do business with them anytime soon, but the reason I looked at their web site is that I recently got one of their mailings through my letterbox. The letter was addressed to me by name (first initial last name) but was addresses to the wrong gender. It did, however, have the correct address on it. This is very odd because I moved house 6 months ago; clearly I've had to tell people I've moved and so with the banks, telephone companies, satellite TV and such I've done just that. I've also had to inform a few "select" retailers that I deal with too, but in all cases I've always been very clear - do NOT share my address with other companies.

So, how did Littlewoods get my new address so quickly? Well, I've not had any dealings with Littlewoods or any company connected to them in the last few years which leaves only one possible culprit - a month or so before getting this junk mail I returned an Electoral Registration form. I didn't give my local council permission to sell my details, but they regularly ignore things I say to them anyway. They're happy to deprive me of over £1000 a year in council tax and they (grudgingly!) collect my rubbish, but that seems to be about it. Anyway, I've written to both Littlewoods and my council to ask what's happened. We'll see!

As to the telephone... well that's a different matter. I thought I'd got that one cracked a few years ago by registering with the Telephone Preference Service. This organisation is supposed to add your number to a "Do Not Call" list which is checked by companies before calling you. Only problem is, with outsourcing to India (and other countries) that this list holds no legal weight... so they can carry on calling regardless! There is also one additional flaw in that this list does not apply to market research. I was flabegasted to find this out... I have specifically told the marketting community that under no circumstances do I ever want to receive a phone call for any reason whatsoever, but they can still call me if they just want to ask me what I think of them! Guess what my answer is?!

So, what can we do to stay safe? It seems not a lot. I refuse to speak to salesmen who stop me in the street or knock at my door. Anybody who phones gets reported to the TPA. Any time I fill in a form I check the small print to make sure my details can't be shared (and tick the relevant boxes if necessary). Anything I get in the post which has my address on it gets shredded (although this creates intreresting problems from a recycling perspective since my council won't recycle this - they tell us to put junk mail unshredded into a recycling bin!).

But still the junk arrives!

References:
BBC News: Votors' details for sale - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/336978.stm
BBC News: Sale of Electoral Roll challenged - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1528152.stm

Metric sign of the times

The stupidity and gullibility of some of my fellow Brits never ceases to amaze me and it winds me up that a small and vocal minority can manage to pull the wool over so many people's eyes so effectively. Today my eye was drawn to a story on the website of the British Weights and Measures Association (BWMA : http://www.bwmaonline.com/index.html). Now don't get to thinking this organisation is a government department or a proper company, it is merely a bunch of folks doing what it is within their legal and democratic right to do, campaign for something they strongly believe in. Unfortunatly, if you sit and think for a few minutes, you realise that there are many flaws in their thought processes. I think the first thing that tells you the sort of people they are is where they seem to indicate that you should go out and deface metric signs!

The thing that caught my eye today was a story about a chap from Essex called Mr Adam Doggett. It would seem that back in 2001 he managed to drive his car under a low bridge, one so low that it damaged the roof of his car. He made a complaint to the local authority and, since it seems that the maximum height sign was "misleading", paid up for repairs. So, why were the BWMA interested in this? Well, it would seem that the sign in question was metric.

Lets look a little closer. Mr Doggett was at the time 36, only a couple of years younger than me and so (by his own admission) educated in the metric system. The complaint he made was that the sign, which indicated max safe height as 1.4m, wasn't something he understood. He apparently knew that his car was 4 ft 9 inches in height but didn't know that 1.4m was actually only 4 ft 7 inches.

Well, here's the problem isn't it. It was just plain wrong to have a sign showing metric heights. Or this is what the BWMA want us to think. In this case though I have to agree with them, but not for the reason you might think. The problem is that as Mr Doggett was correct to point out, even though he'd been educated in metric, once he'd left school there was little need for him to use it. It is still mandatory to show height, width and length restrictions in imperial units and metric is only optional (except on length where it is illegal). What makes this all more of a farce is that Mr Doggett was driving a Suzuki Jeep, a vehicle manufactured in Japan, a country which uses the metric system. It is most likely that although this vehicle was more than 10 years old that the owners manual shows vehicle dimensions in metric (being an older vehicle there may have been conversion to imperial for the UK market).

I personally find I have the opposite problem. The owners manual for my car shows it's dimensions ONLY in metric units. Like Mr Doggett I was educated in metric, but over the years I have tried my hardest to use metric where possible and so the fact that my car's dimensions are 4311mm x 1999mm x 1684mm and the weight is 1540kg is not an issue for me. I undestand these quantaties and I am not about to rush off and convert these to feet, inches and lbs in the same way as Mr Baggett was not about to do the other way around. My problem is that although all weight limit signs are now supposed to be in tonnes, in some places this is not the case (stand up Cambridgeshire where I have seen more signs with "tons" than anywhere else and even one sign with both!). What is worse is that, even though we have thousands of foriegn drivers on our roads, metric height and width limit signs are optional and thanks to pressure from the "loony foot brigade" many local authorities have stopped putting these up. Many private car parks show limits in metric but not in feet and inches (although some do both).

What this all boils down to is the fact that back in 1974 our government decided we'd all use metric, legislated for our schools to teach it, then failed to be decisive on conversion. If our roads had gone metric back in the 1970's as was originally intended then Mr Doggett would no doubt have not damaged his car. In addition the BWMA would not exist; there would be a few sad old men who would hark back to old times when Britannia ruled the waves and feet and inches were king, but they would only find comfort in the few nuts who probably also want us to convert back from Pounds, Shillings and Pence. We wouldn't wonder what all the fuss was about because it would be long past and we'd all be down the pub drinking our 1/2 litres of beer complaining about the price of the doorstep litre of milk and debating the benefits of increasing the motorway speed limit to 130km/h.

Let me leave you with a final thought on this subject. Given that my car is 1999mm wide, if I approach a width limit of 6 ft 6 inches will my car fit through? I only ask because when you do see a metric equivalent it is often given as 2 metres, but according to my conversion 6 ft 6 in is only 1981mm and so my car will likely be damaged! This is what happens when you try to cater for choice of units!

Don't be fooled by the Black Box!

If you're currently considering saving money on your car insurance by installing a "pay as you drive" black box, I urge you on behalf of all motorists to thing of the concequences before you do as you may be helping the government to change the way we drive, and not in a good way.

At least one insurance company is now offering a box for £50 which, when installed in your car, will allow your insurer to bill you by the mile instead of having to pay a fixed premium. In addition, if you are a young driver you will get a further discount if you promise not to drive at night and the same box will tell them if you do. The potential difference in your insurance cost might sound good now, but this box can also be used for other things.

What about road pricing? We've been hearing a lot about this recently and it's not the sort of thing they have in France where you pay at a toll-booth and in return get very good, very well maintained roads. What our govenment is talking about is scrapping road tax, reducing fuel tax, and then charging us by the mile based on when we drive and which roads we use. Good if you only do a few short journeys during the day, but if you use your car to get to work, take the kids to the nearest school (sometimes a long way if you're in rural areas!) or visiting family then prepare to pay through the nose.

You might be interested to find out that one of the companies involved in developing the black box for road pricing is also a major insurer. One of the companies bidding to get involved in road pricing is Norwich Union, for many years the one company who would insure just about anybody. Oddly enough Norwich Union now known as Aviva who also own the RAC, an organisation who in the past we have trusted to defend our rights as drivers. Is this a conflict of interest? Either way they stand to profit.

On to the black box itself. We're being told that the reason behind insuring your car through a black box is to save money and (given the young driver option) to improve road safety. We're then told that the reason behind road pricing is to reduce traffic levels and improve the environment. In the longer term there will be other uses for these black boxes. First they will be used to monitor our speeds so that speeding tickets can be issued without all the mucking about with cameras. When the number of tickets issued goes through the roof it will then be decided that the same boxes should be used to control our speed so that we can't break the speed limit.

But won't all this be good for road safety and the environment?

Simple answer, no. Speed limits in this country are already being set too low and road policing has moved away from skilled traffic officers to speed cameras. Regardless of what you're being told by the scamera partnerships around the UK the number of deaths and injuries on our roads is actually increasing. Deaths amongst road workers has gone up in the last 2 years, the same period in which motorway roadwork speed limits have been reduced from 50mph to 40mph and speed cameras have started to be used. At the same time the number of speeding tickets being issued (and the resultant income from fines!) has increased. In the years since speed limiters has been fitted in HGV's the number of crashes in those vehicles has gone up (the site at http://www.cybertrucker.co.uk/has some good information on this phenomenom). Through all of this though local authorities are still telling us that the answer is more cameras and more action to slow drivers down. As a concequence we're spending more time looking at our speedometers instead of the roads. Speedometers are often inaccurate by up to 10% so people tempers get frayed when people drive through speed cameras much lower than the speed limit actually requires. There is already bad enough misunderstanding of the speed limits are set in the UK (my TomTom SatNav lists many speed cameras incorrectly, probably because of poor reporting because of this misunderstanding). Unfortunatly drivers are going to cry out for speed limiters to avoid breaking speed limits!

Even if you believe all the climate change hype, these black boxes are going to do very little to help. It has been proven that the vehicles thought to be damaging the environment are actually cleaner than those which are supposed to help (anybody stuck behind a half empty bus belching black smoke will know this!). The people who will be penalised will be the hard-working public who will be forced off of the best roads onto country roads during peak periods putting traffic back into the villages who in the past campaigned for bypasses so that their children could safely cross the roads. Those who can afford the road charges will most likely be those who can also afford the big gas guzzlers. These people are the same ones who run the insurance companies and the others involved in road pricing. These people are rubbing their hands right now thinking of how they will have made our motorways emptier so they can get from A to B in less time while we all play sardines on the already creaking public transport system.

Let's go Euro! (Money that is)

Ok, so if you're a Sun reader (or Mirror, Mail, Times or Express even!) then your first reaction is probably going to be "Oh no, not another loony Europhobe!". Perhaps you're right, perhaps not, but from my viewpoint you've just been brainwashed by those who have the most to loose from our participation in the Single European Currency.

Many of us will remember Black Wednesday. That day back in 1992 where various events forced the UK to pull out of the ERM (Exchange Rate Mechanism) which was used to peg our currency to within close range of other European currencies... a sort of "pre-Euro". Even now a lot of people say that fateful day is a good example of why we should keep the pound and let the rest of Europe go it's own way. Well, that was then and this is now; there is a big difference between the ERM and the Euro and the latter of these seems to be quite strong and is proving itself a success. So much so that Britain can only suffer while we cling to our "little islander" mentallity.

Lets take a look first at the benefits that we could all get from using the Euro in the UK... well for a start we wouldn't loose money in commission and exchange rate fluctuations whenever we go for a "booze cruize" or take a trip to the Costa del Sol or Disneyland. We could buy goods on-line from our European neighbours without having to worry about our banks slapping on a £1.50 charge for each "foriegn" transaction (yes folks, Lloyds Bank do this and I have the bank statements to prove it!). We could more easilly compare prices across borders, very useful for those in Northern Ireland who want to nip across the border to fill up their cars on the cheap. The same benefit would apply to those outside the UK who want to visit our great country; they would have more money to spend on tourism. Irish truck drivers passing through on their way to France would be more likely to stop for lunch if they knew they wouldn't have to swap their € for £. More foreign businesses would set up shop here knowing that they would be less susceptable to exchange rate fluctuations.

So, what is the problem? Why are we told the Euro is so bad? It's simple... too many people with vested interests.

First of all we're told that we would loose the ability to set interest rates that suit our economy. Ok, so one size doesn't fit all, but the problems setting an interest rate that suits Portugal as well as Germany is no different to setting an interest rate in London which suits Belfast or Edinburgh! As it was on day 1 of the Euro, interest rates in the Eurozone are still lower than they are here in the UK.

Next we're told that it would be a step towards losing soveriegnty. What a load of rubbish... the UK isn't a democracy any more than I'm the world figure skating champion so what difference would it actually make to us as a nation? So the Queen's head wouldn't be printed on our bank-notes, but then it wasn't before 197o anyway and still isn't on banknotes printed in Scotland and Northern Ireland! Oh, and that brings up an interesting point - how many of you have handed over a Scottish or Irish tenner and been told "Sorry, I can't accept this"? Irish and Scottish notes aren't legal tender anywhere else in the UK and thanks to a strange legal quirk only coins are actually legal tender in Scotland! Well, what's the point of having a "single currency" in the UK when you can't use it half the time. At least if you've got a pocket full of Euros you know that the same notes and coins you got from a cash machine in Athens will work just as well in the pub in Dublin!

Let's look for a moment at the people who don't want us to switch to the Euro.

The newspapers are the ones most vocal about this issue. Particularly the ones owned and operated by a certain Mr Murdoch. An Australian by birth and now a citizen of the USA. So, why is his organisation so dead set against our use of this currency?

Then there are the likes of the UK Independance Party and certain large factions in the Conservative Party. Funny thing is that the people generally most vocal are those who are either not short of a few quid or stand to lose power if the Pound is scrapped.

Many of the more vocal people most likely have ties to the banks and businesses and perhaps have money invested in Jersey, Gurnsey or the Isle of Man. Well, it's quite easy to see why the banks would lose out... just think of all the money lost in commission if we were to convert. Many businesses would probably gain in the longer term, but in the short term losses (forgetting conversion costs) would probably be quite large as many UK consumers would find it easier to see price differences between goods sold here in the UK and the rest of Europe and would vote with their feet. Longer term benefits would be seen however as businesses started to realise the benefits of having zero exchange rate fluctuations and zero bank charges for conversion.

I mention here the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man quite intentionally. As with other UK dependencies such as Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands, these territories have their own currency, pegged at parity with the UK pound. However unlike their French equivalents which have the same status as any other region of France, they aren't members of the EU and as such would not automatically qualify to use the Euro as their main currency. These principalities would have two choices - either continue to use their own currencies but float them freely on international exchange markets with the obvious problem that they then become the target of currency speculators, or formally apply to use the Euro. In the latter case however these islands would lose their status as tax havens because of strict EU monetary policy, and the politicians, bankers and businessmen who keep their money on these islands would lose out big time.

So, finally we start to see what is stopping us from benifiting from the use of the Euro in the UK. Oh, and just a final point - I'm most certainly not a socialist and so I have no anti-business motives in what I write here. I am a strong supporter of free enterprise, but it has to be just that, free. Every business should be able to operate on a level playing field and if that means killing the tax haven then so be it. Those of us who work hard and pay our taxes should be able to use the rest of our money for our benefit, not for the benefit of the few who clearly strive to deprive us of OUR soveriegnty in the name of the Pound Sterling and all it stands for.

What a load of rubbish!

When the Labour Party took over from the Conservatives here in the UK in the late 1990's we were assured that there would be no return to their left-wing "tax-and-spend" policies of the 1970's. We were lead to believe that this "New Labour" would be open, progressive, modern... well, it's been an interesting 9 years and we've seen a lot of changes, not only in this country, but in the world as a whole.

Over the years we've had to put up with retoric telling us why we have to pay taxes. Clearly in times of war money is needed to make arms and in the years after WWII we were told more and more money was required to help build our defenses against a potential Soviet attack and the threat from Comunism. Then about 15 years ago the USSR collapsed, all of their allies opened up, Germany was re-unified and we all thougt that we'd benefit from a potential "peace dividend". Oh how wrong we were.

For some reason our governments like to tax us. Ok, so there are some things that need to be paid for and I willingly accept that. Somebody has to maintain our roads and street lighting. We need to maintain armed forces, police and the other emergency services. The National Health Service has to be kept running. Rubbish has to be collected. There is a need to fund the basic infrastructure of this country so, ok, we pay our taxes. However this doesn't seem to be enough.

Obviously, if the government wants our money it needs excuses. In the last few decades a great excuse has been evolving. Greenpeace used to be seen as a bunch of nutters in many respect. When "Swampy" and his pals tried to stop a bypass being built he got local support but not because of real environmental issues but because nobody wanted their peaceful lives disturbed by a noisy road. The trouble was that back then people didn't look at the bigger picture (in this case that bypasses actually helped the environment by taking poluting traffic out of smoke-filled towns and allowed cars to run in a less poluting manner). Gradually though, being green has become hip... green is the new black so to speak... and now our government is using this as an excuse to deprive us of more of our hard earned cash.

The problem now is as it was then... people aren't looking at the bigger picture. The greens tell us that our cars are causing so much polution that they're causing global warming, the answer is to increase tax on using them. Next our energy use at home is a problem, so tax it. Now our rubbish is causing problems so what do they want to do? Tax it!

So, lets look at the bigger picture. We're being told that Climate Change is the problem. Wether it's greenouse gasses causing global warming, CFC's destroying the ozone layer or landfills destroying our environment, there is always a problem. Climate change is clearly a problem, however it seems that some parts of the human race are looking at this through green tinted spectacles and unfortunatly it's become fasionable to go along with "Global Warming Theory" and other related issues. Yes, evidence does show that in some parts of the world sea levels are rising and that it's getting hotter and that ice is melting. Other evidence also shows that we're going to see a mini ice-age in the next 10 years or so. The trouble is that we're being brainwashed by the tabloids into thinking this is wholy caused by the car, the plane and the power station. What a load of rubbish!

Over billions of years our planet has changed. It's gone through both warm and cold periods. The last ice age only ended 2700 years ago and I've heard it said that some actually believe that it hasn't properly ended, so if the earth is warming up then isn't it all part of some natural cycle? Of course it is and over the same billions of years many races of creatures have been born and have died. Many have evolved and as a concequence have survived some of these changes - and this is why we are here! As part of our evolution we've become intelligent, we've become industrialised, we've learned more and more to use the resources around us. Yes, we've done some damage in the process and as a race, we humans need to learn from these mistakes, but to say we're solely responsible for a disaster that's going to happen in the next 100 years? I think not!

If our use of fosill fuels is so much of a problem then why has the planet continued to change over the centuries? There was a mini ice-age several hundred years ago and there are stories that tell of the River Thames freezing. This happened BEFORE major industrialisation happened and BEFORE the car, so what do you blame that on? Nature!

I will admit that yes, we are abusing many resources on this planet and we do need to learn to manage them better. We will eventually run out of oil and we need alternatives to this, but the answer isn't to tax people who are using the oil because this just gets them annoyed. The answer is to find real viable alternatives. It's no use factories churning out electric or hybrid cars that cost twice as much and perform half as well as our existing modes of transport because nobody will buy it. How many of us switched to unleaded petrol in the hope of cheaper and cleaner motoring only to be told "Sorry folks, unleaded is now bad too". How many switched to Diesel because it's cheaper and more economical to use just to be hit again by higher prices?

Now we're being hit by the same "green taxes" in the home. Back in the 1980's there was a push to building oil-fired power stations because they were cleaner than coal. So, in 1997 when we got a change in government this policy was reversed - not for environmental reasons, but to save the jobs of coal miners! At the same time it was decided that nuclear power would be phased out. Nuclear power has the benefit of being able to produce a large amount of energy with little or no carbon emissions. There are problems disposing of the waste products but as an intelligent race us humans should one day come up with a solution. Unfortunatly, again we're not. The answer seems to be to increase taxes on electricity, gas and heating oil in an attempt to stop us from using the stuff. We still have to heat our homes and feed our families and run our businesses so the tax income from this is guaranteed!

Now we come onto the latest scam to get more tax - rubbish collection. For many years local authorities have been introducing recycling schemes. I have no problem with this in principle, but it has to be done so that it works, not just because it looks good. In many cases it works. The problem now is that the same local authorities want to weigh our rubbish and charge us accordingly. This is all well and good... but in many cases we don't have a choice in what we throw away. We're being forced through taxes to use electrical goods that are cheaper to use - but we can't throw our old stuff away. We're being asked to make our homes more enviromentally friendly by installing energy saving light bulbs but then we have to throw away all the plastic packaging that comes with it. We are now being told as consumers that even though we have to buy certain products and we have no choice over the way those products are packaged, that we will now also have to take financial responsibility for disposing of the packaging.

What a load of rubbish!