Would A Meat Tax Be A Good Idea?

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Sep 222023
 

Now that Sunak has reversed a policy that didn’t exist in the first place – taxing meat – the question is whether it would be a good idea or not?

I can already hear the howls of protest from meat eaters, but bear with me …

Firstly there are all sorts of good reasons to discourage meat eating – environmental reasons and health reasons chief amongst them.

Secondly we should encourage the occasional consumption of high quality meat rather than constant consumption of low quality meat. This might mollify some of the British farmers – at least those who have very sensibly concentrated on quality rather than quantity.

So what we want is a flat rate per kilogram of meat – perhaps 25p per kilo of mince which would make Quorn mince a relatively cheap option, but not make much difference to quality mince.

Make meat a luxury not a necessity (because it isn’t).

Filthy Roaring Beasts Rushing Along The Scar

A Word To The ULEZ Whiners

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Jul 302023
 

Or perhaps more than just a word given the level of dumbness displayed by the usual ULEZ opponents.

  1. It isn’t solely a Labour policy; the ULEZ zone in central London was first introduced by a Tory major (Boris Johnson) and extended by the current Labour major. The Tory opposition to ULEZ during the Uxbridge by-election was a cheap political stunt to distract from the atrocious record the Tories have in central government. Which seemingly worked on the more gullible.
  2. The penalty charge for the ULEZ zone is only paid by the most polluting vehicles – diesel cars older than 8 years old and petrol cars older than 17 years. Which is a tiny minority of the cars on the road.
  3. This isn’t targeting the poor; the poor in our society can’t afford cars at all. Besides there’s a scrappage scheme which pays people to scrap the smellier cars.
  4. This isn’t about CO2 emissions; it’s about NOx emissions.
  5. And frankly none of the objections (even if real) come close to outweighing the advantages of fewer deaths from pollution.
Ceci n’est pas une cabane de plage

Why Do Vegan Substitutes Look Like Meat?

 General  No Responses »
Feb 162023
 

One of the things that keep cropping up whenever vegan food crops up in social media, is why does it always resemble meat? Or “faux meat” as I call it.

It doesn’t.

As a vegetarian of over 30 years (and thus aligned with vegans; even if I’m not a “good vegan”), I very rarely eat faux meat; and when I do it’s out of curiosity. Not to see how closely they resemble meat, but to see if they were a viable choice.

V* (meaning vegetarian and vegan) food doesn’t need a meat substitute. There’s plenty of fine choices out there that don’t miss the rotting corpses a bit.

So where does this belief come from? There’s three possible reasons why faux meat choices exist :-

  1. New v*s miss certain meat dishes and seek faux meat to fill the gap in their diet. Fair enough.
  2. Meat eaters who for one reason or another seek to swap out meat for a meat-free alternative. Fair enough.
  3. Companies who market these products as being what v*s actually want. Whether they’re right or not kind of depends on how large groups 1&2 are.
Ducks swimming on water in a line.
Ducks In A Row

20mph Speed Limit and Prioritising Vulnerable Road Users Considered Harmful

 General  No Responses »
Feb 132023
 

(‘bad’ language ahead)

Bollocks.

Reducing the speed limit from 30mph to 20mph reduces the fatality of hitting a pedestrian or cyclist from 40% to 5%. Slower speeds are fundamentally safer on crowded urban roads, and small country lanes – everyone has more time to react and even in the worst case where a collision occurs, the accident is more survivable.

There are those who claim the lower speeds will slow them down – tough! That continually looking at the speedometer is more dangerous – get used to lower speeds. All of the excuses I have seen amount to selfishness.

And similarly the opposition to prioritising vulnerable road users – letting pedestrians cross at junctions, giving cyclists at least 1.5m of space when overtaking, etc. all amount to motorists’ entitlement. You aren’t more important, you don’t pay for the roads, and the safety of cyclists and pedestrians takes priority to your convenience.

Who Are You Looking At?

Do Motorists Pay For The Roads?

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Feb 092023
 

No.

There is something that certain entitled motorists keep banging on about – “road tax”. There hasn’t been a road tax since 1937; it’s currently called vehicle excise duty and the income (£8 billion) goes into the general taxation fund. It sounds like a lot, but is just a drop in the overall public spending budget. And it isn’t reserved for spending on roads.

And local roads are mostly paid for out of council tax – in other words the roads that cyclists and pedestrians actually use are paid for out of local taxes.

Which has an interesting side effect – a motorist on a local road is likely to be a local road user, but a significant proportion will be visitors. Meaning that they haven’t paid for the road. Whereas a cyclist or a pedestrian is more likely to be a local.

Meaning that on any road that isn’t a motorway, the cyclists and pedestrians pay more for that road than the motorist.

Posts leading out to the sea.
Into The Water; Stillness and Motion
 Older Entries