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!