10 � goverment tax per flight

[Thunderchild]

I recently booked a flight for my dad and found myself paying a 10 � goverment tax.

If memory serves this tax was imposed in a so called attemtp to limit the number of people flying because of the "ecological damages" flying causes. OK I agreeit is now eco that millions of people per day go speeding around the world in jet planes,

but it begs the question: What is that money being used for ? for each flight 10 � per head is charged on an average plane of 180 passenger capacity thats 1800 pounds how many hundred of planes fly a day how many thousands of planes fly a month how many millions a year.

If the tax was imposed in the name of being "green" is that money being used for "green" sources of energy ?

[Cakeboy]

If you want an idea of numbers of flights, there were over 2m flights across UK airspace last year. Obviously, not all of those landed or took off from the UK, but certainly 75% of them did so assuming 100 per plane it's over 1.5bn in tax.

Another nice easy way of making some money and as for the money being allocated for green use, I highly doubt it. It goes into the Treasury and comes out somewhere and it would probably take a lot of digging to find out where

[Thunderchild]

hm I think its time we protest ! how can we do that I WANT to see the money spent on green initiatives at the rate is pilling in we will have much more green power in just 1 year SO how do we go about doing some shouting ?

[Thunderchild]

no its 1800 pounds per plane so according to your recs that 36.000.000.000 pounds yes ladies and gentlemen 36 Billion pounds lets see some returns for that money !

[Cakeboy]

Thanks for covering my maths, I'm only an Air Traffic Controller, I can't be expected to add up as well :o)

[Thunderchild]

not a problem so your them man with all the figures wow, I'm just fed up with the moeny dissapering into wars etc when a small portion of it even would be a great help for good there is no lack of money for the goverments its that they are misusing it

[kempie]

Dont forget that motorists contribute in excess of �40 billion each year from taxes and duty (VEL and fuel etc.) of which only around �8 billion is used for roads and public transport expenditure. So there's another �30-odd billion in the Treasury coffers being misdirected.

[Thunderchild]

great how do we tell Mr Brown that we want that money spent on REAL green initiatives ?

[kempie]

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/

[Thunderchild]

thanks very interesting are you all ready to come over and sign I'll come back with a link in a minute

[Thunderchild]

ok its in the works and awaiting approval I'll create a thread with a link when and if I get confirmation that it has been accepted

[Loosehead]

It's just the way it works, there are hundreds of different tax streams, I doubt any of them are used exclusivley for the area they are based on. It's mainly just a big pot for everything, if for example all the tax for motoring was spent on roads etc then we would have roads old gold and very little NHS for example. Orr we'd have to pay more national insurance. The goverement will get it's money regardless of the source and it's rather naive to expect money to be ring fenced for use only in the area from which it's collected.

[Loosehead]

"roads of gold"

[Thunderchild]

the money was deemed to be in relation to the unecological nature of jet planes, even a small sum of that money would make a huge difference but NONE at all is used, when was the lat time you heard of the goverment having a solar or wind powerstation opened you will never hear of it

[Thunderchild]

lets face it with increasing prices of fuel and their inevitable exuation somewhere in the foreseable future and in view of the damage we are doing it is time to start making an effort if tomorrow we ran out of gas/oil what would we use for power ?

[kempie]

I would not call it na�ve at all.

If you want to increase expenditure for the NHS have a tax specifically for that purpose and increase that - perhaps call it something like National Insurance.

If there is a surplus of monies collected from other 'specific' taxes then the rates are too high and should be reduced.

There is no justification for this method of stealth taxation.

[Thunderchild]

precisely from one day to another 10 pounds from every flight goes to the goverment and they make 35 billion pounds a year 50 % of that money should be p0ut towards building "green" powerstations, after all if we keep using oil and gas for power it will run out sooner and then what will planes run on if they want to keep collecting that tax they'd better make sure planes can be fueled for as long as possible....

of course there are also all those taxes in london on traffic where does that money go ? I hope it goes into a VERY GOOD park and ride system, have they built extra car parks outside london so you can "PARK AND RIDE" are they putting on as much public transport as possible ? me thinks not

[Loosehead]

Fair enough Kempie but in reality the government finds it a lot easier to use taxation both as a revenue gatherer and as tool to limit/control behaviour. If we adopted what you suggest then National insurance would be 25% and fuel would be 40p a litre (just ilustrative estimates pedants). Cigs would be 50p a pack and prescription charges would be gawd knows what. Motoring, drinking, smoking etc would all be encouraged, no doubt accelerating the eco problems too.

The problem Tchild is that the governement is only paying lip service to Eco projects because they are not a solution to anything merely a sop to well meaning eco warriors et el. Now if they spent the 36bn mentioned above on some new Nuclear power stations then they could reduce dramatically the reliance on fossil fuels, that would make a huge dent in the polution problems.

[Thunderchild]

from the little I've seen of mans commitment to saftey over profit Nuclear is a very bad idea, and no you can't send the waste to the sun, a rocket going wrong and blowing up would be devastating, you only heer of rockets and shuttles with people on board blowing up and crash landing. what if one went off with nuclear waste on board. where else will you send the nuclear waste ? in case you didn't know solar panels are a viable solution not to the whole problem but part of it and no they are not as exspensive as they need be if you want to buy a panel in this country you pay 850 � up but I can order the same panel from austrailia for 350 � so go figure why its supposed to not be a good solution like you say petrol would be 40p a litre (actually 25p) without goverment tax so I guess they don't really want to promote green power.....

[Loosehead]

who said anything about putting nuclear waste into the sun? Anyway I'm not trying to start a debate about Nuclear power per se, what I'm saying is that the renewable sources are no where near enough to supply needs. Now I will concede that more R&D would change that but at the moment, if we want power at affordable costs then Nuclear is the only way. Cold fusion would be handy though! Solar panels would be great in the Sahara, are you in the UK? you must know what our weather is like, even if we had Saharan weather we don't have the land mass, Wind? not practical, we'd have to cover the whole countryside with eyesore windmills and endure a century of legal battles. Wave? potential but still too much effort to get any serious energy out. Sorry mate, but you can't have it both ways, if you want to remove fossil fuel usage then you are going to have to embrace Nuclear Fussion. The safety issues are well addressed, look at a our froggy friends, they have 70% nuclear power, no serious accidents.

[Thunderchild]

well to start with we have vast super markets and shopping centres which can be covered, all these supermarkets that while making 5000 � profit per MINUTE are declaring that they care about the environtment when a small part of thier revenues could get them free power.

I do live in england I know the weather is not the best but its not impossible I'm not saying its the only solution but it would help.

so where are we going to put the nuclear waste ?