I also recall the ongoing discussion of providing rural areas with a 'minimum standard' of internet access (currently mooted at 2Mbps), paid for by charging everybody else more money in some way or another. Not content with buying up all the cottages and becoming arch-NIMBYs to prevent anything useful ever being done in the countryside (like for example, actual farming); smug back-to-the-land organic Guardian-reading types now want me to pay towards their frigging broadband so that they can all sit at home on the evenings and enjoy multi-megabit access to news forums, Wikipedia and the like so that they can further spread their own particular brand of corrosive bullshit.

In light of this, I have come up with a list of things that *I* consider enjoyable and essential to civilised life, that I *demand* that everybody else in the country subsidise for my benefit. To do otherwise would be, I dunno, denialist, or portray an absence of inclusive thought or put the cultural and economic future of the nation at risk, or something like that.

1) Decent sausage and bacon sandwiches.
On certain industrial estates around the west midlands, there is a real problem obtaining a good quality sausage and bacon sandwich; and at the outlets that do sell such foodstuffs often have lengthy queues at lunchtime for some reason. I propose that a tax be levied on tofu, rocket and soy beans for the purpose of funding a new network of butty huts to bring the fortifying goodness of a decent meat sandwich to all corners of the country. The tax should also fund a new government agency to monitor and regulate the quality and price of said sandwiches, and also the queues to obtain them.

2) Internet radio
For too long, the heroes of our independent non-commercial broadcasters have gone unsung and unrewarded. They work tirelessly to bring delightful programmes such as 'The SHAPE of things to come" and "The Friday Night Smoke" to the ears of countless dedicated and grateful listeners. Unsullied by commercial concerns and unencumbered by BBC bureaucracy, internet radio collectively serves millions of listeners every week. It's high time that the stations and DJs who have worked so hard for so long are justly recompensed for their sacrifices.
I propose a £5,000 per head annual tax on every person who has ever posted a '#savebbc6music' hashtag on Twitter. This will enable everyone involved in internet radio to buy a desperately needed new computer, and will also fund an army to protect us on the day that apparently Rupert Murdoch will turn into a giant robot (with machine guns for arms) that will attempt to destroy every media outlet of any kind not directly controlled by him (a Guardian comment warned me that this could happen). It's our only hope. To refuse to support this tax is supporting Murdoch robot murder. Think about that.

3) The late night availability of cigarettes and biscuits in Birmingham
For too long people in this fair city have been unable to obtain reasonably priced cigarettes, biscuits and rolling tobacco within walking distance between midnight and 7am on weekends. This has led to unbelievable anguish and suffering as people have had to let their night-time hunger go unsatisfied, or roll their extra large night-time 'cigarettes' from unsuitably dry tobacco.
To resolve this issue, I propose a £1,000,000 tax on every arsehole with a sense of entitlement who campaigns endlessly for some fucking thing or another that they appreciate to be subsidised to the tune of millions of pounds by some other poor sod (or alternatively everyone). The tax is to be quadrupled for each of those people who claims that their opponents are 'shills' for some shadowy organisation or another.
The money raised by these taxes (some billions of pounds) will fund an elite team of butlers, a fleet of delivery vehicles and a network of warehouses to store, distribute and provide said goods during the designated hours. It's our only hope..

Now, speaking as someone in small business, payroll isn't any particular headache; for our 7-or so staff we spend about 0.5 man-hours per week processing pay; of which very little is actually involved in calculating tax (our payroll software does that automatically. We spend an hour here and there (up to say 8 man-hours in a year) sorting out any problems that arise with HMRC, inputting new tax codes etc. It generally wouldn't be any quicker or easier to do without deducting tax.

The other implications of the government having direct access to one's bank accounts are rather worrying*. I forsee situation where tax disputes are 'resolved' by the disputed monies being drawn directly and instantly, leaving the person in question skint while trying to prove their tax case to an uncaring HMRC who already hold the money anyway! No doubt this is where mch of the '£1bn' of increased government revenues under the scheme would come from.

Personally I'd rather have a little bit of extra bureacracy than the ever-creeping increasingly powerful state having a direct line to my bank, and thats even speaking as a proposed 'beneficiary' of this scheme.

*This already happens; people have had their bank accounts frozen or drained by the government pendng tax or criminal investigations, leaving them with no funds to pay for legal representation in the cases in question. Institutionalising government access to bank accounts can only make this situation worse.

Highlights include the projection of images onto a glacier, the opening of a CO2 cylinder (profound) and the collection of poppies. It is unknown what the 'carbon footprint' of the carbon-footprint-awareness junket was (seemingly always the case).

£150,000 of your and my money well spent then.

Full details here: http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2009/11/artists-for-gaia.html

Once you've read it, read it again; it's rather good.

Well, fancy that. It's another bunch of nest-feathering, rent-seeking, thieving, public sector cocksuckers who want to take your cash and spend it on themselves. Fuck right off, Alcohol Health Alliance - you're not getting one more penny from me.

Quite right, sir.

You may also want to read these articles; "Drink limits 'useless' " and "How 'safe drinking' experts let a bottle or two go to their heads" (both from The Times).

Guidelines on safe alcohol consumption limits that have shaped health policy in Britain for 20 years were “plucked out of the air” as an “intelligent guess”.

Says it all, doesn't it? Remember that these are the "limits" that the government bangs on about endlessly, and the "limits" that our supposed exceeding justifies all kinds of authoritarian nonsense.

Postscript: Upon reading this again, I realised that this all reminds me of another type of 'limit'; imposed arbitrarily by persons in power (often who have no experience of what they are 'limiting') and with endlessly discussed 'dire consequences' for those who dare to exceed these 'limits'. Can you guess what I'm talking about? Answers on a postcard please...

I'd like to take this opportunity to outline how this taxation adds up, over a year, for the typical car or lorry (semi-truck, for Americans).

Note: Today's GBP-USD exchange rate is $1.6266/£1. 1 UK gallon is 4.55 litres. 1 US gallon is 3.75 litres. All 'gallons' are UK gallons unless otherwise stated.

Cars:

I'll assume an 'average' car to be a 1.6 Ford Focus (petrol), which I am reliably informed achieves an average of 37mpg, and travels 12,000 miles per year.

Per year, this car will use 324 (UK) gallons of petrol, which at 4.55L/gallon comes to 1,476 litres. At 1.049p/litre (next week's price), this comes to £1,548.32 annual fuel cost ($2,518.50). The fuel duty (tax) alone comes to £829.36 ($1,349.04). The VAT (at 15%) is £201.95. The actual tax-free cost of the fuel is £517.01 (or 35p/litre, or $2.14/US Gal). Depending on which way you like to look at it, this means that 66% of the pump price is tax, or that fuel is taxed at a rate of 200%.

For those who prefer a per-mile figure, fuel comes to 12.9p/mile, fuel taxes are 8.5p/mile and untaxed fuel is 4.4p/mile.

Added to this is the annual Vehicle Excise Duty (commonly known as "road/car tax") which for this car is £150/year. This tax is levied, basically, on the official fuel consumption of the car (full details here) and for some cars (with the worst fuel economy) can be up to £405/year.

In total, running this car costs £1,181.31 in (fuel and road) tax alone, per year.

Lorries/trucks:

For these calculations, we'll assume a 40-tonne (gross) articulated lorry, travelling 60,000 miles per year at an economy of 10mpg.

Gross mass is the maximum combined mass of the vehicle and load combined. The 60,000 mile per year figure is from page 8 of this. 10mpg is an optimistic figure for a 40-tonne lorry, and is a fudge based on the economy of a lorry that I know very well. I have seen figures claiming average economies as low as 6.7mpg, but I'll assume 10, which makes the tax figures following lower than in reality.

At 10mpg this lorry will consume 6,000 gallons (27,300 litres) of diesel per year.  At pump price, this comes to £28,637.70 /year. Of course, (most) businesses reclaim VAT so a more accurate figure is the VAT-free cost of £24,902.35/year. The fuel duty alone comes to £15,339.87 per year.

Do you want some per-mile figures as well? Pump prices: 47.7p/mile, VAT-free: 41.4p/mile, fuel duty only: 25.6p/mile, untaxed fuel: 15.8p/mile.

There is VED to pay as well, for this lorry it's £1,850 per year.

In total, in fuel tax and VED alone, this lorry costs £17,189.87 per year in tax.

For both vehicles, annual testing fees, maintenance and other costs are extra. The lorry costs do not include the cost of (and taxes on) the driver, depot, safety compliance, etc etc etc.