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Tuesday, 27 May, 2008

  • Newsnight
  • 27 May 08, 05:11 PM

From tonight's presenter, :

Are green taxes dead?

lorries_nn_203100.jpgAre green taxes a luxury we can no longer afford? In the face of an economic downturn, should society be ditching the green agenda or sticking with it?

Lines of lorries are clogging the country's main arteries today in protest over the rising cost of fuel, their drivers demanding the government scrap the planned 2p rise in fuel tax.

At the same time the Chancellor Alistair Darling is facing the fury of Labour MPs over his plans to increase road taxes on older, more polluting vehicles. He'll be addressing their concerns in a meeting next week.

With the cost of fuel, travel and food rising - and house prices falling - people are feeling a big squeeze. So, should the government ease the pain in the short-term by scrapping the green agenda, or is it more important to protect the planet for our grandchildren?

Comment on this issue here.

PTSD

We have an exclusive and deeply disturbing report from Afghanistan about the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder among troops and the US military's efforts to deal with this rapidly growing problem.

Since the war on terror began 60,000 US troops have received an initial diagnosis of PTSD, and the US is waking up to the fact that the level of the illness amongst returning veterans is becoming a social ill. Two hundred murders have been committed by veterans - and most victims are their own family members. Newsnight has been given exclusive access to the taskforces now on the frontline trying to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder.

MPs' expenses

Did Tony Blair display some fancy footwork over his expenses? Following a High Court ruling that MPs' Additional Costs Allowance - in other words, expenses for second homes - would not be exempted from FOI requirements, some receipts and invoices are causing a stir.

Have we a right to know exactly what MPs are spending - or should they get a 拢23,000 lump sum for the second home and spend it any way they want, as is expected to be recommended by a Commons committee?

Pollack playback

And we'll be revisiting some of Sydney Pollack's finest moments. The director, actor, and producer has died at the age of 73, leaving behind a string of great films - among them, They Shoot Horses Don't They?, Tootsie, The Electric Horseman, Three Days of the Condor and Out of Africa - which took seven Oscars in all.

His most recent big screen appearance was in Michael Clayton opposite George Clooney, but on occasion he made appearances in popular TV shows, from Will and Grace to The Sopranos.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    Will Kirsty be wearing her

    " Cannes Cannes" dress ?

  • Comment number 2.

    FORGET RIGHTS - THERE IS DESPERATE NEED

    Blair was a visceral charlatan. With my particular skills, I was shouting this from,the rooftops during his reign, but charisma - the most dangerous quality in any being - drowned me out. Blair was a prime example of how party politics promotes and adores precisely the type of person decent governance should abhors. It is vital his full chicanery be exposed and the CAUSES OF BLAIR be taught to 3 year olds (that's hyperbole folks). We must NOT 'move on' as all the lesser charlatans will urge. Party politics is pure ordure and must be shown for the dung it is.

  • Comment number 3.

    Whichever second home allowance scheme MPs go for they shouldn't be able to profit from the potentially huge capital gains they can make from a rise in property prices.

    With a bit of simple tax planning they won't even have to pay capital gains tax after what could be a long parliamentary career in a 'safe seat'.

  • Comment number 4.

    Claiming back expenses that MPs incur as a result of their job is fair enough. But it already goes too far - they're given 拢23,000 every year to spend on stuff they need because they're an MP, but when they stop being an MP they get to keep it! Now they want to spend the money on whatever they like. This is completely unacceptable! They have forgotten that they work for us, and it's our money they're spending.

  • Comment number 5.

    I hope that newsnight can manage a more balanced debate on today's fuel and road tax protests than Channel 4 News. They had Jon Snow, an eco-fascist and a stock market parasite, no point guessing what the outcome was. If you do not support road charging vote with the market and cancel your RAC policy ASAP.

  • Comment number 6.

    Can we have something about the Tories forced labour plans?

  • Comment number 7.

    You summarize the two sides of the argument of "Are green taxes dead?" as follows:

    "So, should the government ease the pain in the short-term by scrapping the green agenda, or is it more important to protect the planet for our grandchildren?"


    This implies certainty about the short-term pain of not scrapping the "green agenda", meaning further road and fossil fuel taxes and all other efforts to limit carbon emissions, and an equal certainty about a greater or equal pain for our grandchildren if we abandon such measures.

    The first pain is indeed certain. The second is not. As has been shown by the biofuels disaster, and is very likely in the case of other proposed measures, our grandchildren are likely to be much worse off and in a much scarier, less stable world if the current "green agenda" goes ahead, unchecked by prudence, reason or just by common sense. Granted, whatever we do there may also be a bit of pain in store due to climate change, perhaps warming, perhaps cooling. But because our models of the climate are so inadequate even in sixty years we may well not know if any of the warming or the cooling was caused by us. But, if we happen to live long enough, we can feel guilty about it, after the event, if we really want to.

    For now, though, only two pains are certain. If we follow the "green agenda" there will, as the programme suggests, be short-term pain. And there will also be the pain of reduced living standards and global stability for our grandchildren. What to put in the balance with this? Well, the current guilt feelings of the greens and their followers about the modern world will perhaps mean that their pain is reduced if we in the developing world manage through such measures to trigger a global recession and lose ground massively to emerging economies like China and India. Everyone else's pain, in this generation and the future, will be increased. Especially in the "bottom billion" of the world's poorest. That is the choice on offer.

  • Comment number 8.

    When are news presenters going to get it into their thick skull that the main trust of the green agenda is to facilitate ethnic cleansing by stealth. It could perhaps be more appropriately described as Corporate Ethnic Cleansing.

    Increased transport costs are destroying the rural economy, take Settle in North Yorkshire for example. Settle once boasted a exclusive paper recycling mill, much of which was locally sourced, two loads a day from Nelson 25 miles away. One would expect that a paper recycling mill would be booming with the present " green " recycling industry allegedly on the up. But no, it closed down last year, and the finishing plant is using twice as much transport and is now under threat being worth more dead than alive to property developers.

    There would be little chance of the redundant workers finding employment locally, so they would need to travel at least 16 miles and back to the nearest town. I suspect that they will have been forced to move out in many cases, but their are plenty of ten bob fat cat property speculators waiting to move in. The cheapest slum is 180k so whatever their manual job the indigenous locals can't afford to buy anywhere.

    There are a couple of 50 quid a week single person no room to swing a cat around flats owned by Alan Bennet, but they are totally unsuitable for a family. I suspect that all the remaining council housing is dead man's shoes.

    The Corporate Ethnic Cleansing has been compounded by employment agencies, most local companies require you to work for the agency as a trial. I suspect that they screen applicants by post-code and filter out those their corporate masters decide. There are proven cases of where agencies employ Poles before the locals.

    It looks like the ten bob fat cats have taken over the local council,
    The Lib-Dem controlled Settle Town Council intend to impose a weight limit through the town centre, according to someone with local knowledge the extra pollution generated will be as follows.

    " By diverting all hgvs via gigg will add 650000 miles a year, an extra 130000 galls of fuel,release hundreds of tonnes of carbon etc into the atmosphere, add 拢1.5 million extra expense to the economy whilst endangering hundreds of schoolkids lives. "

    The proposed diversion route goes right past the main high school, the 拢1.5 million is false economic growth as far as the indigenous population is concerned, all the money will go to oil companies and other corporate interests.

    Almost Settle's equivalent of the proposed new third runway at Heathrow.

    It will totally destroy the economics of the three quaries in north Ribblesdale, Dry Rigg, Arcow and Horton, perhaps the largest employers in the area when you take into account the road haulage for such.

    The eco fascists are also planning to put a 50Kw water turbine in the weir on the River Ribble, which it is said will stop the migratory fish getting up the river. Angling is quite a nice little earner for the small farmers, so get rid of that and it puts on more pressure to quit and sell out. The health fascists could probably close the creamery with thier low fat fads, then the plan will be complete.

    Its obvious why the local eco-fasists want a small scale generator, they can take it over for local use only when the grid collapses due to excessive reliance on wind farms.

    Perhaps its high time that farmers / hauliers got themselves recognized as a ethnic group.

    The last major employer at the village of Sabden in the Ribble Valley closed down due to a long standing weight limit on its main access roads.

    Road pricing is the corporate ethnic cleanser's dream !

  • Comment number 9.

    As someone who spent a considerable amount of his life as a salesman, I saw through Tony Blair way back when he first appeared on the scene and thought at the time ' wow this guy is a superb conman' sadly I was proved right and what a disaster he has been for this country.

    The one thing I can't understand is 'why has he not been prosecuted for taking this country into an illegal war' he and all those closely associated with him seem to be untouchable, so its not surprising he can get away with fiddling his expenses.

    So much for British Justice, what a fool he has made of us all.

  • Comment number 10.

    ZOOMING VEHICLES A JERKY POLICEMAN AND JUNIPER BESIDE US IN THE WILDERNESS - THAT IS NEWSNIGHT

    Newsnight, you never cease to amaze. You film blokes going spare with frustration and worry about the fuel price, and going out of business. Then you computerise the Juniper interview (could you not find an eponymous bush to add?) such that the vehicles go wild, and lurch to a halt, by turns. What was that about? What did it add? Surely part of the news was SLOW MOVING TRAFFIC? Hello? Are you now under the control of an infinite number of monkeys?

  • Comment number 11.

    Blair got away with so much side-stepping because he groomed too many sycophants to fall into his personal laptop computerising of truth and reality - he hopes to regain that power of control. Cherie, hysterically, continues to disrupt for him - forgetting, as usual, the Nation's needs. If any intelligent person couldn't see their games coming - by December 1997 - then, I give up. He came to us as a failed pop-star - no more. His method if Ugly Rumour spreading and planting - to avoid liabilities and sidestep truth- was no surprise. As to Cherie - the big BLARE babe - (C-her-i.e. in joined-up-matter cracking) she makes their personal mission even clearer - they really hoped to make us a Republic under their control. U.K. as HER Tony's playstation powered on her electric and batteries. New Labour was always a predictable farce. They patronise us as 'The People' in very insulting and patronising overtones (suggestive instruction from their collective psyche to belittle us into thinking as a mass-produced underling of their imagination...)- they avoid all issues - questions as the answers they all knead. Personal greed-needs overtook too many of them - and, since 666 is the standard rating of U.K. GOLD - I guess Godspell means that on U.K. - destroyed on our leaders 666 needs - for self-propelling purposes.l It is all sickening. As to his and her relentless references to his apparent ability to do 'it' 5 times a night .........no wonder he didn't have enough time to get his job in any order except his own......are all the Brit females supposed to pant after him now -and the male Brits envy him? Thicko fit in the thick of it....pathetic transparent people.
    He will always only be PRY MINISTER BLARE in my forthcoming Book....I, for one won't be reading his and her little READ books for anything approaching truth and sane reality. No 'know' apologies for that. They brought culture at all levels to its' very knees.

  • Comment number 12.

    Newsnights Speeding cars and trucks of total distraction.... its easy to get carried away in the editing suite and think your been creative but....don't do that again!

    I got an idea to get me self a new kitchen; become an MP. Manchester south could do with an independent, i think i'll stand at the next general election as a single issue candidate; bring back hanging, am sure to win (watch this space).

    Its always easy to be critical from a distance and rant about what is so wrong with the 主播大秀 regarding its general leftwing leanings. And someone such as myself who bends his knees at the alter of LittleJohn and reads the Daily Mail scriptures (from the working class perspective) but i was reminded tonight why i still watch Newsnight; the report that highlighted the combat stress disorder was excellent and Kirsty was firing on all four cylinders tonight; a good discussion was had on the green tax issue fault lines. What was Kirsty on by the way? can i have some please? is it herbal or did she just go for a run early on in the day and get the 'joggers high'?

    P:S pound signs always appears as a question mark on here. Something for the IT staff to get their heads around i think.

    Test: Pound sign- 拢拢拢拢

  • Comment number 13.

    blair got out before it hit the fan and Gordon is catching hell, but don't be too sorry as he signed the cheques and sat in on the meetings so it's chickens home to roost time but fur us as well because he will take us down with him. Dave won't even tell us what's in store because it will have us all wishing Tony was back because the soup kitchens are being dusted down and the forced 'work in the countryside' trains are being commissioned.......luxury? you've never had it so bad

  • Comment number 14.

    Much is being said (and not much done so far save a few 'initiatives' designed to serve the interests of the initiators more than anything else).

    Whatever one believes about AGM, climate change, etc, 'green' is here to stay, with all its confusing invocations and justifications.

    Trouble is, most still seem stuck in a rut of simply arguing the point of whether bad climatic things are happening and if so who or what is to blame. One presumes that those who advocate man IS involved are principally interested in what can practically be done to mitigate and/or reverse our probably negative impositions.

    So is it possible, and if so PLEASE can we then throw all we can at getting an answer to this once and for all?

    It's pretty critical. If there is man-worsened negative climate change, then self evidently it would make sense to stop making it worse. Even just to buy time (unless we just give up and go for the party of all parties to celebrate the end of the race).

    If, however, it is out of our control (even if we are making it worse), then maybe other strategies should be allowed for that do not involve p*ssing in the wind. Because we are talking best uses of vast amounts of money and resources here, with a potentially short planetary triage period.

    Around the time of the Milliband interview there was a piece by Environmental 'Analyst' Roger Harrabin. If I recall, in it was a claim that we'd need 1,000 more resources going into the predictive modelling to actually know what is going on.

    Despite being one who is more than dubious about the motivations of many researchers, I'd say that if this can sort it out once and for all... let's just do it, quick, so we can plan accordingly and act with confidence.

    Otherwise all I am seeing is a planetary death by a thousand cuts, from politicians whose sights extend a maximum of 2 years (Dear Lead...er...follower chooses that highly-read organ The Guardian to make his case for retroactive car taxes to shift workers facing the night bus in the Midlands), to media who dabble as it suits with often plain daft agenda-driven propaganda dressed up as green advocacy.

    ps: 12. At 01:14 am on 28 May 2008, Something for the IT staff to get their heads around i think.

    Good luck with that. Try seeding it in a 'Fantastic Jeremy' quote about something critical such as undies or ties, and you might get a reply.

    Odd, isn't it (plus question marks and, sometimes, apostrophes), as the screen shows fine? I think it's a Mac thing but as it doesn't always maybe there's a browser aspect in the mix. Safari: 拢拢拢拢.

 

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