Fresh-air tax with a whiff of a swindle thrown in
WOULD you call an extra £20 per day – added on top of your car loan, fuel, insurance and servicing – a ‘moderate additional cost’ for driving to work?
If not, you wouldn’t like the ‘Building Scotland’s Low Emission Zones’ document I’ve waded through. It should be called ‘Waging War on Motorists’.
It’s a consultation document on improving air quality, though the consultation is already over and I bet you, like me, know not a single driver who contributed.
This follows the SNP’s consultation on fracking. An incredible 99 per cent of 60,000 respondents were agin, meaning pressure groups knew of the survey but the man in the street was kept in the dark.
The emissions tome is also pressure group biased with gems such as: ‘… to support modal shift to active travel and public transport… and support placemaking…’ Wasn’t ‘modal’ the German general in the Battle of the Bulge? And ‘placemaking’? Are we setting the table for dinner?
The frontispiece features Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham, Transport Minister Humza Yousaf and Aileen Campbell – Google says she’s Minister for Public Health and Sport – smiling beatifically as only those whose commutes are taxpayerfunded can. (And we motorists have not forgotten that Mr Yousaf trimmed his transport bills by driving without insurance and so became a convicted criminal.)
Amid deliberately daunting data is the pious message that motorists must pay more to drive to and from work to clear the air. Heaven forfend you should think this is a grubby money-making/ public sector job creation scheme!
But, surprise, surprise, the money raised would flow to local authorities. Plus, you bet there would be lots of jobs in enforcement and a user-unfriendly exemptions process.
We’re told enlightened Europeans breathe easy thanks to emissions zones but ‘must pay a moderate daily charge which it (sic) typically less than £20 per day’. The SNP favour a penalty scheme that punishes polluters, not European pay-as-you-drive, but that’s now…
Tax is up, inflation is up, fuel is up, insurance (yes, you too Humza) is up, parking is up, council tax is going up… and now perhaps ‘a moderate’ £400 a month on top.
For, to use a transport metaphor, the cart is being put before the horse. Public transport is a shambles. I have a train station a two-minute stroll from home but the service is unreliable and the timetable is designed to pamper train drivers, not service the 24-hour economy.
Buses are plentiful, but scheduled for MSPs’ family-friendly hours and not us on the back shift.
Other countries have tackled the issues differently.
Los Angeles transformed its air quality by putting pressure on vehicle manufacturers, not by turning drivers into cash cows.
Now every vehicle on California’s freeways has a catalytic converter behind a high-efficiency engine while, in parallel, public transport has been fitted for the 21st century. Diesel? Trucks only.
The lane behind our office in the heart of Glasgow is a mix of overflowing bins, broken glass and human filth and is haunted by rough sleepers and the substance addicted.
The SNP-controlled ‘City Government’ seem unwilling or unable to do anything about it, but I bet they adore Building Scotland’s Low Emissions Zones and its promise of another revenue stream from the hard-working.
Without front-loaded investment in public transport, emissions zones – penalty or road charge – are a selfrighteous tax on jobs and ambition.
CONGRATULATIONS to Norwegian Airlines after one of their Boeing 787 Dreamliners set a New York to London record for subsonic aircraft – a brisk five hours and 13 minutes – when tailwinds pushed it to 776mph. I was aboard a Dreamliner last year and Atlantic tailwinds wafted us to Edinburgh Airport an hour early. This caught the airport on the hop, so we sat for half an hour on the plane while steps were sourced and then spent 40 minutes staring at an unmoving baggage carousel. Flying, even at pace, is lovely – if you’re not in a hurry to get anywhere.