This Country Winds Me Up

[Bludger]

I've just read the below news article and it just goes to confirm my suspicions that the UK government is as bent as a 5 bob note

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/31102006/32...te-report.html

When I lived in Australia, me, my family, my neighbours, my friends and basically everyone was regularly recycling bottles, cans, paper, etc.

Australians have been committed to recycling for the last 20 years. The Government doesn't tax Bio Fuels. Children are encouraged to play outdoors instead of plugging into their games consoles. The public transport system is one of the best in the world, and thousands of commuters leave their cars at home and jump on an electric train to get to work.

Basically, I have never lived in a country where the people are so committed to saving the environment. The government is also committed to climate change by developing solar energy and reducing taxes on Bio Fuels.

The UK government on the other hand thinks that increasing taxes on Bio Fuels, air fares, car tax, fuel tax and numerous other taxes is going to make people change their ways. Paying £62 extra for airline tickets to go on holiday is not going make anyone decide to stay at home. Increasing Bio Fuel tax will stop people using Vege & Biodiesel because the cost outweighs the benefit. The people who can afford gas guzzling cars like Jags, X5's, Cayenne's & Bentleys couldn't give a stuff if their car tax goes up £20 because their company pays for their car, their tax & their petrol. The only people it will affect are the people on a budget who use their 4x4 for work or pleasure.

Yet again, this report is the governments way of justifying massive tax rises to compensate for the £8 billion deficit the government will be faced with when they ban smoking in public places. The logic being that the goverment has already spent or allocated the revenue that would be raised through tobacco sales over the next five years. They stand to lose 600, 000 smokers who only smoke socially in pubs, etc. They have to raise this money somewhere, so they increase taxes on big cars, council tax, Bio Fuels and everything else.

I'm a non-smoker, but if people want to smoke, then let them. If they want to pay £5 for a pack of fags, then let them.

This governments two faced attitude to climate change is worse than countries like Australia who are questioning reports like these.

My apologies for the length of this RANT, but it just makes me so mad !!!

[RAPTOR]

AMEN!!!!!!!!

I've just read the below news article and it just goes to confirm my suspicions that the UK government is as bent as a 5 bob note

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/31102006/32...te-report.html

When I lived in Australia, me, my family, my neighbours, my friends and basically everyone was regularly recycling bottles, cans, paper, etc.

Australians have been committed to recycling for the last 20 years. The Government doesn't tax Bio Fuels. Children are encouraged to play outdoors instead of plugging into their games consoles. The public transport system is one of the best in the world, and thousands of commuters leave their cars at home and jump on an electric train to get to work.

Basically, I have never lived in a country where the people are so committed to saving the environment. The government is also committed to climate change by developing solar energy and reducing taxes on Bio Fuels.

The UK government on the other hand thinks that increasing taxes on Bio Fuels, air fares, car tax, fuel tax and numerous other taxes is going to make people change their ways. Paying £62 extra for airline tickets to go on holiday is not going make anyone decide to stay at home. Increasing Bio Fuel tax will stop people using Vege & Biodiesel because the cost outweighs the benefit. The people who can afford gas guzzling cars like Jags, X5's, Cayenne's & Bentleys couldn't give a stuff if their car tax goes up £20 because their company pays for their car, their tax & their petrol. The only people it will affect are the people on a budget who use their 4x4 for work or pleasure.

Yet again, this report is the governments way of justifying massive tax rises to compensate for the £8 billion deficit the government will be faced with when they ban smoking in public places. The logic being that the goverment has already spent or allocated the revenue that would be raised through tobacco sales over the next five years. They stand to lose 600, 000 smokers who only smoke socially in pubs, etc. They have to raise this money somewhere, so they increase taxes on big cars, council tax, Bio Fuels and everything else.

I'm a non-smoker, but if people want to smoke, then let them. If they want to pay £5 for a pack of fags, then let them.

This governments two faced attitude to climate change is worse than countries like Australia who are questioning reports like these.

My apologies for the length of this RANT, but it just makes me so mad !!!

[Sancho]

Interesting.

When I lived in Australia, a number of different things struck me:

- Almost everyone considered an engine smaller than a 3.0 V6 to be totally inadequate. A 5 litre V8 was considered perfectly normal.

- People drove the tiniest distances. When I used to get the train to work for an hour followed by a 10 minute bike ride or 40 minute walk, everyone thought I was absolutely barking.

- The public transport (this is in Sydney) was absolutely shambolic. It made me long to go on the Underground. That's how bad it was.

- The Government was considering building a de-salination plant to pull salt water out of the sea and process it (a ridiculously inefficient process). No-one seemed to care about the fact that ALL of the storm (i.e. fresh) water from Sydney is discharged directly into the sea instead of being recycled.

- Most people had some kind of heating (normally individual electric heaters, rather than a far more efficient gas system). They had no insulation in their walls, no double glazing, no nothing.

- A lot of people had swimming pools. They are very nice, but they use an awful lot of energy to heat and filter.

- There were a number of extremely fit, healthy people there. Most, however, were fat and lazy. Australia has a very high level of obesity, second only to the US I think.

- I used to work for a property developer, advising them on potential new markets and writing bids to acquire land from the Government. The section I wrote in the bids on 'green' issues was absolutely laughable everytime (we were recognised as the 'greenest' developer in Australia). Basically it came down to digging ditches to reduce water run-off and encouraging people to recycle. That was it.

We've been recycling in the UK for at leats 20 years too. When I was a kid, we made weekly trips to the bottle bank, kepy big piles of newspaper in the cupboard for monthly recycling, composted all our food sc raps etc etc. Recycling, which uses a lot of energy anyway, is the least of our or Australia's worries; it's just about ensuring we have enough resources to keep packaging things, rather than anything to do with climate change.

Australia is opposed to any kind of action on environmental issues because its economy is heavily dependent on coal exports, forestry and manufacturing. The UK is an environmental 'renegade' because we don't have any natural resources to speak of and aren't any good at manufacuring anyway, so we can be.

We are also in the position, which Australia is not, of having an extremely dense population which makes us more concerned about pollution. We have a tiny island producing 60 million people's worth of filth, they have an entire continent producing 20 million people's worth.

As far as public transport goes, I can only imagine you lived in Perth, where it is indeed excellent, and not Sydney, where it's appalling or anywhere else where it is adequate at best.

And on the smoking, the money they lose on the tax revenue will be re-couped through savings on the NHS.

[Sancho]

Two things I forgot to mention:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow...6/1658637.htm#

and

Don't get the wrong idea, I love Australia and Australians, but it is absurd to say they're 'committed to saving the environment'.

[kitesurf_phil]

What winds me up about the whole envinmental issue is that our government want to use the stick against ordinary people in the form of taxes and fines, rather than dangle the carrot. You would see a proliferation of solar panels, wind generators and van loads of insulation and double glazing materials going into residential properties if the government reduced Council Tax for more envinmentally friendly homes. If they made bio fuels tax free there would be businesses springing up all over the place to convert vehicles to bio fuels.

On the other hand, the government do not come down heavily enough on businesses that flout environmental guidelines. The firm I work for has blue bins all over the place proudly printed with, "WE RECYCLE," which is very impressive for visitors. Every night the cleaners come in and empty both the recycle bins and the ordinary bins into the same black sacks, which are ultimately transported up the M1 and end up in the landfill at Brogborough in my home county of Bedfordshire. They don't even recycle the printer/photcopier paper. All the rubbish outside the majority shops and restaurants in London is mixed.

30 years ago we had recycling of glass. Milk came in glass bottles from the LOCAL DAIRY and were collected by the same float that delivered them. Now it comes in plastic or cardboard cartons - at least 50% comes from France by lorry and ferry. All beer and fizzy drink bottles had a deposit on them, were returned, cleaned and re-used.

Another thing nobody is addressing is food miles. Every year dozens of orchards are destroyed in this country, so the supermarkets can import cheap, tasteless apples from France, Africa and New Zealand. If you are buying leeks before December they come from Turkey. The list goes on and on.

[TonyN]

30 years ago we had recycling of glass. Milk came in glass bottles from the LOCAL DAIRY and were collected by the same float that delivered them. Now it comes in plastic or cardboard cartons - at least 50% comes from France by lorry and ferry. All beer and fizzy drink bottles had a deposit on them, were returned, cleaned and re-used.

Another thing nobody is addressing is food miles. Every year dozens of orchards are destroyed in this country, so the supermarkets can import cheap, tasteless apples from France, Africa and New Zealand. If you are buying leeks before December they come from Turkey. The list goes on and on.

Bingo on both points.

How much $$$$ the product is wrapped in often sways my decision to buy it now, along with where it comes from.

[Apache]

I remember recycling glass pop bottles when I was a kid - probably at least 30 years ago. We got 2p a bottle (schweppes I think) for them and used to hassle the neighbours for bottles too! We could make 50p between us on a good day!

[Apache]

Bingo on both points.

How much $$$$ the product is wrapped in often sways my decision to buy it now, along with where it comes from.

Yep, I commented to Vicki the other day about the ludicrous amount of packaging on everything from food to vaccuum cleaners. Nobody seemes a$$ed to do anything about it though.

[TonyN]

Yep, I commented to Vicki the other day about the ludicrous amount of packaging on everything from food to vaccuum cleaners. Nobody seemes a$$ed to do anything about it though.

Buy fresh local stuff from the market, in a brown bag (hopefully made of recycled paper) then it goes on the fire or in the recycling bin.

Easy.

[Apache]

Buy fresh local stuff from the market, in a brown bag (hopefully made of recycled paper) then it goes on the fire or in the recycling bin.

Easy.

We dont have a local market. We do have an idependent veg shop & butchers in the village that I try to use rather than the supermarket. Stuff tastes much nicer into the bargain.

I recycle cardboard boxes at a prodigious rate though. I reckon sooner or later they'll stop me because I recycle too much and will want me to pay to do it!

What is with these people?!

[kitesurf_phil]

We have a fortnightly recycle bin collection and a weekly normal rubbish collection. Our normal rubbish bin goes out fortnightly, as it is less than 1/4 full each week. The recycle bin is less than half full when it goes out because we try to buy stuff with minimal packaging. We are supposed to have a brown bin for biodegradable rubbish but that goes into the composter or the wormery. The wormery also saves our angling mad neighbour a fortune in buying bait.

I think it is high time we went the way of the USA and Canada in banning polythene carrier bags. Over the pond they use paper/cardboard pacakaging which, if not recycled, is at least biodegradable. It winds me up when I drive round here and every tree and hedgerow is festooned with tattered carrier bags which have taken off in the wind.

[BUSHWHACKER]

B****cks to re-cycling my houshold waste, that's what I pay council tax for!
If they want me to recycle, then reduce the tax and provide bins/containers for it, otherwise in means buying black bags to put the different waste products in! What genius thought that one up?

[Sancho]

B****cks to re-cycling my houshold waste, that's what I pay council tax for!
If they want me to recycle, then reduce the tax and provide bins/containers for it, otherwise in means buying black bags to put the different waste products in! What genius thought that one up?

I think we're probably starting from the premise that the Council recycles. I have a green box that all the recycling goes in, then the Council splits it up and recycles it. They gave me a free compost bin too.

[Bludger]

Sancho,

We seem to be on two sides of the same central argument.

I agree with a lot of what you have said with a few exceptions.

- Since the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, the public transport system has become very efficient to the point where it is quicker to get from the South of Sydney to the North by Train & Bus than to drive.

- Over the last 3 years, the biggest selling car in New South Wales was the Hyundai Exel or Accent as it's called over here. this is a 1600cc car. I agree, there are a hell of a lot of V6 & V8's out there, but gradually the tide is turning.

- Coal burnming power plants are a major pollutant the world over, and the reason Australia is more reliant on them than most is because they have vast natural resources. If the UK had massive natural coal deposits do you think they would be investing in gas pipelines from Russia and Importing massive quantities of crude oil? I don't think so.

You are talking about hundreds of years of industry separating the 2 countries. The UK used up what natural resources there were decades ago. If this report had come out back then, then the UK would have been to worlds biggest polluter.

Australia is in the position where they are reliant on fossil fuels, but are also actively seeking newer, greener ways to keep the country ticking. However, so far, nothing has come along which is economically better, and lets face it, no government on the planet is going to take Environment over Economy.

My beef is not aimed at the population of the UK, because a lot of people feel the same about the environment as we all do on this forum. A lot of people make an effort in their day to day lives to do something or not do something which will have an effect on the environment.

You would go a long way to find someone on the street who actively does things that affect our environment. Fly Tippers do it to save money - I don't condone it one bit, but if companies are being taxed to the point of bankruptcy, they are going to cut corners one way or another.

I am just p*ssed off with governments unherhand tactics in an attempt to raise revenues by shafting the hard working people of this country. This recent report shows some alarming statistics which the government use as a justification to increase taxes yet again. It has been said in endless threads on here about a sustainable, renewable energy source such is waste vege oil, yet the government taxes it to a point where it is not economically viable.

If governments were truly interested in reversing climate change, they would incentivise BioFuel use and would be developing the technology to make this kind of fuel available to everyone.

But we all know that the people who really run the country are the massive petrochemical conglomerates that stand to lose billions if these fuels were used widely.

The article at the top of this thread is impying that the Australian Government is totally against measures to stop climate change. What John Howard is actually saying is that there is no point taking the sort of measures that the UK govt is planning, if the biggest polluters on the planet are not willing to agree - Australia included.

But if everyone is going to get on board, then Australia will be forced to follow suit. But that means standing up to BP & Exxon, which will never happen. They are too deep in the politicians pockets for that to happen.

It is a sorry state, and I feel sorry for our children, as they will have to live with it.

And on that note,

FOR SALE: 1 soapbox
one careful owner, VGC
cost: 1 planet ono.

[RAPTOR]

The goverment hold the key.....they give and take with the same hand and thats the problem, if they really wanted to cut down on the Greenhouse gasses there are a thousand ways to do do it and increasing taxes on the working class is not one of them..we need