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WILL LABOUR NOW CAVE IN TO CALLS TO FREEZE FUEL DUTY?

  Harriet Harman on this morning's TODAY programme implied as much.

It would be a pathetic piece of populism, and a craven failure to be taking any serious green action whatsoever if, in a bid to restore its flagging support, Labour were now to freeze the planned fuel duty increase -- without compensating for doing so by taking other measures.

My own view is that it would be fine to freeze or even to reduce fuel duty -- SO LONG AS the government were introducing a serious green scheme to rein in Britain's carbon emissions, such as 'carbon rationing', instead. Tragically, however, the government has just announced last week its abandonment of its investigation into the possible introduction of carbon rationing: http://www.carbonrationing.org.uk/fora/threads/defra-deems-personal-carbon-trading-an-interesting-concept-ahead-of-its-time

Meanwhile, Government Ministers intend to lobby OPEC to increase oil production to meet supply in order to bring fuel prices down - so the world gets more CO2 and less reason to save energy!
Wonderful...

 

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