Similarly, it would appear the UK is out of money, and we're not thinking about conserving but still trying to run it on oil: taxing the oil companies more, so we can reduce fuel duty, so we can run our cars more.
- Friends of the Earth don't like it: "In the face of a global oil crisis, this Budget will increase the UK's oil addiction".
- The oil and gas companies don't like it: "With more than 50% of Britain's gas now imported, it is vital for our energy security and for the economy that investment [in the North Sea] is maintained to ensure we extract all of the untapped hydrocarbons we can" and burn them... until we finally pull our heads out of the tar sands and realise too late that we don't have any hydrocarbons left.
- And Robert Peston says: "If the likes of Shell and BP don’t complain that this will undermine their efforts to squeeze the last drop of oil and gas out of the North Sea for the benefit of the UK, I will drink a litre of their finest unleaded petrol [I think he's safe]. Also, it is not clear how the government can be sure that the oil companies won’t push up the pump price to recoup the extra tax - which would defeat the point of the exercise." Quite.
So the "greenest government ever" has just announced policies that will encourage continued pollution of our skies (plus, running our cars more = greater burden on the NHS through pollution and RTAs), and turning over our land to concrete. Smashing!
It is communities such as yours which are modelling the way we should all go. This is not a return to a former way of life 'on the land' as religious rather a radical re implementation of a collaborative and integrated way of living in integrity with creation and each other.
ReplyDeleteHaving now been without a car for 18 months, travelling to work by train and walking, my general sense of well-being and health has increased, there is one less car on the road and I have developed an increasing sense of nature by observing the seasons change through the train window. This in turn has increased my sense of what we have and we continue to do to creation. And thus for me, my sense of God.
We need more Mucknells! Hilfields! and Tymawrs!
There are a few good things in the budget too - the new green investment bank to have an extra £2bn and starting operation in 2012. And that thing about gift aid and leaving legacies to charity. But to say "we will be the greenest government ever" and ten minutes later "we will cut fuel duty" - what does he understand by "green"? And it seems that the prime objective for this new budget is to tempt big businesses back to the UK, as one would expect.
ReplyDeleteI wish Ed Miliband had given a more convincing riposte than sneering at the Klosters trip.
Will probably be going to the London demo this weekend, though...
I doubt that one penny a litre less at the petrol pump is going to change the way people think about their cars or cause them to drive extra miles. Isnt it really mostly to show that the government are aware that fuel prices are, for the present at least, more unsustainable than the fuel itself?
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