Britannia Radio

The Taxpayers' Alliance produces reams of hard - and to the 
government, unwelcome - facts.  The headline figures are of the 
newspapers but the articles contain the facts.

The extra scandal - which they do not deal with - is the fact that so 
many of these taxes are totally hidden.  When you pay your 
electricity bill there is no mention that hidden in the cost of what 
you've used are 3 taxes ALL forced on us by the EU.  Since it is only 
the price of electricity (or gas) that is given we have no indication 
that a part of this cost goes to subsidise windfarms and more to meet 
EU levies on carbon emissions .    The windfarm subsidy with only a 
modest number of turbines so far costs us £36 a year each but will 
rise steeply as new turbines come into use.  This subsidy is set to 
rise from the present £900 million a year to £6 billion by 2020 and 
that will make the hidden charge in your bill go from £36 a year to 
£240 a year.

The provisions against the - non-existent - global warming are 
costing us dear.    Why doesn't the Tory party demand that these are 
shown on the bill?  Why?  Because they are party to the great Global 
Warming Swindle too.

Also your council tax bills contain a hidden charge for Landfill Levy 
(EU imposed)  too.  This will vary greatly  from council to council 
but over England & Wales averages £36 per household.  THAT's why they 
bully us mercilessly to recycle!

It's depressing isn't it?  You might think the answer is to vote UKIP 
but while they may have recently woken up up to this scam they will 
not be in a position to DO anything!   Somehow we've got to waken up 
the Tory MPs, most of whom  along with much of the population,  are 
also Carbon Footprint fetishists!

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DAILY EXPRESS    28.8.08
GREEN TAX CON COSTS YOU £783
By Gabriel Milland

FAMILIES are being ripped off by an average of £783 a year through 
Gordon Brown's bogus "green" taxes, it emerged yesterday.

Hard-pressed households are being forced to pay far more than 
necessary in motoring taxes and council tax bills as well as a raft 
of other measures allegedly imposed to cover the cost of pollution.

In total, taxpayers had to hand over £19.6billion too much in so-
called green taxes last year - and lower-income households are being 
hit hardest, said a report.

Last night the Prime Minister and Chancellor Alistair Darling were 
accused of exploiting environmental concerns to justify a punishing 
new round of stealth taxes which critics branded "unfair and dishonest."

Tory MP Philip Davies said: "More and more people are realising that 
green taxes have nothing to do with being green. They're just an 
excuse to tax us more.

"They've got more to do with a greedy Government that is trying to 
fill a black hole in its finances." Researchers from the TaxPayers' 
Alliance used estimates from international experts which calculate 
the financial cost of carbon emissions to compile their report.

Spokesman Matthew Sinclair said: "Green taxes are set far higher than 
is necessary to pay for our carbon footprint, which loads an unfair 
burden on to hard-pressed families and businesses.

"With the credit crunch squeezing budgets, people can ill afford this 
extra tax grab. It's dishonest and unjust.

"The Government are talking about raising taxes even further, but our 
conclusions show that green taxes should be kept as they are or cut."

The biggest green tax in the last financial year was fuel duty, which 
raised a total of £24.9billion. It is set by the Treasury and paid at 
the pump.

Vehicle Excise Duty, due to soar  for many drivers depending on the 
carbon emissions of their cars, was next with £5.6billion.

The Landfill Tax on rubbish raised £0.9billion, the Climate Change 
Levy - a tax on industry's use of energy - added £0.7billion to fuel 
bills while the Renewables Obligation, which forces power companies 
to buy more expensive energy from "green" sources such as wind, added 
£0.9billion.

The study excluded Air Passenger Duty because flights are not 
included in the United Nations assessment of national carbon emissions.

However, the researchers estimated that air travellers were being 
charged a total of more than £100million a year in duty.

With the £8.8billion spent on roads removed, that created a total 
green tax bill of £24.2billion last year, up from £22.7billion the 
previous year.

But the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change assessed the 
total cost of Britain's entire output of greenhouse gases at 
£4.6billion for that year. It means we paid £19.6billion too much in 
green taxes, or £783.34 a household.

The Government's own assessment of the "social" cost of greenhouse 
gases, based on guessing how much warmer temperatures will supposedly 
cost the country in storm damage, infectious diseases and flooding, 
is £16.3billion. Even that lower figure still means families being 
overtaxed by £7.9billion, equivalent to £315.81 a household.

Green taxes also penalise different areas of the country differently. 
People in Maldon on the Essex coast pay £607 above what they should, 
while residents of Camden in central London pay £62 extra.

A total of just five local authorities in the country do not pay 
excess taxes - compared to 429 that do. The TaxPayers' Alliance also 
found that the taxes hit poorer people hardest because they use the 
biggest proportions of their income to run an essential car or heat 
their homes.

The taxes also damage the competitiveness of business. Faced with 
extra costs, employers prefer to move their factories to countries 
where they will not be hit by green taxes, removing any incentive for 
them to go greener.

The TaxPayers' Alliance also point out that despite the massive 
burden of green taxes, there has been little progress in cutting 
emissions. They have held steady at 555million tones for the last 
three years, up on the total of 549million tones in 1997 despite the 
tax increases.

The report says: "People pay for electricity, motor fuel and other 
goods subject to green taxes with income that has already been taxed, 
companies that pay green taxes also pay corporation tax, and most 
green taxes are accompanied by VAT." A Treasury spokesman said fuel 
duty was not a green tax. Traffic, noise and other environmental 
pressures - not just carbon dioxide - explained why fuel was taxed 
heavily.

"The estimate of green taxes is wrong as it includes taxes used to 
fund core public services rather than simply offsetting the cost of 
CO2," he said.

"For example, while fuel duty recognises the environmental costs of 
driving, it also pays for important public services, including new 
roads and public transport and efforts to tackle child poverty."
===========================
TELEGRAPH   28.8.08
Households paying £800 too much in green taxes, says report
By James Kirkup, Political Correspondent


Households are paying hundreds of pounds more in "green taxes" than 
is justified by the environmental cost of their carbon emissions, a 
new study claims today.

The Taxpayers' Alliance has calculated that every household in the UK 
is paying as much as £800 a year more in environmental taxes than is 
necessary.

Its analysis claims the Treasury made £20 billion in "excess" revenue 
from environmental taxes last year - from supposedly "green" levies 
on motoring, energy bills and waste disposal.

The report is the latest attack on the Government's use of green 
taxes and will strengthen suspicions that ministers are using the 
environment as a cover for revenue-raising measures.

The TPA said its figures showed ministers were "wrapping revenue-
raising tax hikes in a green banner." However, the Treasury rejected 
the group's figures as misleading.

The study focuses on five so-called "green" taxes: fuel duty; Vehicle 
Excise Duty - or car tax as it is commonly known; the landfill tax 
paid by council tax payers; the climate change levy and the 
renewables obligation.

These final two are both levied on utility bills and are intended to 
fund investment in renewable energy sources.

The TPA report calculates that in 2007/08, the Exchequer took a net 
£24.2 billion from those taxes, after the costs of maintaining the 
roads network are subtracted. The equivalent financial "cost" of 
Britain's carbon dioxide emissions is significantly less, it says.

According the methods used by the United Nations' Intergovernmental 
Panel on Climate Change, the UK's emissions in 2007 did £4.6 billion 
worth of damage to the environment.

By that figure, Britain paid £19.6 billion too much in green taxes 
last year, or £783.34 per household.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs uses a 
much higher figure, based on the Stern Report by Sir Nicholas Stern, 
a former Treasury economist. It says that the cost of Britain's 
emissions is £16.3 billion. [The Stern report is the very report 
which has been proved catastrophically wrong in its claims about 
Global Warming and is, in any case, desperately out-of-date now that 
global cooling is occuring -cs]

But even using that total, the annual "excess" green tax revenue is 
£7.9 billion or £315.81 per household.

Matthew Sinclair, the author of the TPA report, said green taxes were 
putting an "unfair burden" on families and companies.

He said: "With the credit crunch squeezing household budgets, people 
can ill afford this extra tax grab. It's dishonest and unjust for 
politicians to wrap revenue-raising tax hikes in a green banner. The 
Government are talking about raising taxes even further, but our 
conclusions show that green taxes should be kept as they are or cut."

By far the biggest "green tax" cited by the TPA is fuel duty. Levied 
at 50.35 pence per litre, the tax raised a gross total of £24.9 
billion for the Treasury in 2007/08

The Treasury strongly disputed the TPA's calculations last night, 
insisting that fuel duty should not be considered a "green" tax 
because it is not imposed purely to reflect the environmental impacts 
of fuel consumption.

Still, the TPA report is not the first to suggest that road tax 
revenues exceed environmental costs.

In July, an academic study commissioned by the Institute for Fiscal 
Studies concluded that road fuel duty is already well above the level 
that can be justified by the damage done by vehicles' CO2 emissions.

Ministers are also under intense pressure over a plan to raise road 
tax by as much as £245, a plan justified as "green" despite the 
Treasury having no estimate of how much carbon dioxide it will save.

A Treasury spokesperson said: "The estimate of green taxes is wrong 
as it includes taxes used to fund core public services, rather than 
simply offsetting the cost of CO2.

"For example, while fuel duty recognises the environmental costs of 
driving, it also pays for important public services, including new 
roads [already allowed for - see above -cs] and public transport and 
efforts to tackle child poverty."

The TPA analysis also found that the gap between emissions and green 
tax payments "varies significantly" between suburban and rural areas 
and urban districts. Residents of rural areas may face much higher 
"excess" green taxes compared to residents of cities and towns.
===========================
CONSERVATIVE HOME Blog - Centre Right    28.8.08
We're already paying too much green tax

Last year the TaxPayers' Alliance released 'The Case Against Green 
Taxes'.  We compared how much we are being asked to pay with 
estimates of the social cost of Britain's carbon footprint and found 
that green taxes were already excessive.  Now, we've updated the 
numbers from 2005-06 to 2006-07 and 2007-08, included the 
increasingly expensive Renewables Obligation and produced estimates 
showing how every local authority area across the country is 
affected.  These are contained in the new report 'The Burden of Green 
Taxes' (PDF).

The new report's results paint a stark picture of the extent of 
excessive green taxes.  In 2007-08 Britons paid between £7.9 billion 
and £21.8 billion in excess green taxes, between £316 and £872 per 
household.  That is a substantial rise on the between £6.8 billion 
and £20.4 billion of excess green taxes in 2006-07.  Of course, the 
ranges are large which shows how much uncertainty there still is over 
the social cost of emitting greenhouse gases, but our results show 
that no mainstream estimate can provide effective intellectual 
support for green taxes at the level they are currently set in the UK.

When our last report was released there were criticisms from the 
Treasury, who accused us of being "doubly dangerous" for having the 
temerity to question both their logic and their revenue stream.  The 
Liberal Democrats insisted that it is only older estimates of social 
cost that suggest British green taxes are too high - despite an IPCC 
principal author having noted that the average estimate across the 
academic and official literature is falling over time - and that we 
hadn't included all the externalities associated with road transport 
- ignoring that we had already discussed that argument in our study 
and shown how it meant double-correcting externalities already 
controlled by regulations.  There is a more detailed discussion of 
this issue in the new report.

Rod Liddle recently wrote about last year's report in the Spectator 
and said he has "not seen those figures convincingly rebutted 
anywhere" and that he suspects "they are impossible to rebut".  Since 
last year, other organisations have used the same method to study 
individual taxes.  The Department for Transport recently found that 
tax on flights is now excessive and contributors to the Mirlees 
Review for the Institute for Fiscal Studies have come to the same 
conclusion about Fuel Duty and Landfill Tax.

Even at their current level green taxes are set too high, never mind 
if the political parties carry through on their threats to put them 
up even more.  Those excessive green taxes create a number of harms.

Motorists are being victimised in what Conservative Way Forward 
called the "war against drivers".  People in rural and suburban 
areas, who have to drive in the absence of the dense transport 
networks that only make sense in cities, are particularly hard-hit.

The elderly pay more to heat their homes, pushing more of them into 
dependence on benefits or fuel poverty.  By increasing the price of 
energy, green taxes may even contribute to excess winter mortality as 
putting the thermostat up becomes more expensive and some people take 
greater risks with their health.

Manufacturing industries are put at a huge competitive disadvantage, 
particularly compared to developing countries, which contributes to 
job losses and regional inequality.  Relocating industry from Britain 
to China doesn't help the planet much, either.

Beyond that, if green taxes are excessive but aren't creating the 
desired cuts in emissions - which have gone up since Labour came to 
power - then that suggests they may be fundamentally the wrong way to 
go about bringing greenhouse gas emissions down.  The failure of 
financial incentives to deliver changes in behaviour suggests that 
there are not cost-effective substitutes for emitting activities that 
people can be encouraged to switch to; the elasticities are too low.  
If people could, practically, avoid the substantial burden of 
Britain's green taxes and high market prices for fossil fuels then 
they would.

Policies aimed at reducing emissions should be directed, instead, at 
delivering new alternatives to make it more practical for people to 
respond to the many incentives to use less fossil fuel.  That means 
focussing on assisting the development of new technologies, perhaps 
through the means of prizes for delivering particular improvements, 
rather than trying to force people into replacing fossil fuels before 
alternatives are ready.

British green taxes are too high.  They are imposing an unfair burden 
on motorists, those living outside the cities and manufacturing 
industries.  Ordinary families, struggling with the effects of an 
economic slowdown, are being made to bear a heavy burden.  Despite 
that, little is being achieved in environmental terms.  Excess green 
taxes should be cut and plans for further increases in green taxation 
abandoned.