Fuel Duty and Interest Rates

Here follows a thinly veiled rant about fuel prices.

 

I am sorry that fuel prices are going up. I wish we could all enjoy cheap, abundent energy without killing each other over it or destroying the planet. I also wish we could enjoy a wide range of high quality public services and reduce out tax bill.

 

Currently, the two problems are proving intractable. Don’t worry too much about it, I’m working on them and I’ll deliver a solution just as soon as I can.

 

In the meantime.

 

If you live in the country and drive a car, tough.

 

If you live in the country you have voluntarily taken on the risk of higher fuel prices. You did this in exchange for a) a way of living that suited you better than living in an urban set up, b) cheaper housing costs and therefore lower capital outlays, reduced interest payments and a reduced exposure to the risk of interest rate rises.

 

I chose to live in the centre of Edinburgh and I can walk to work, to the shops, to my son’s nursery. I have relatively little direct exposure to fuel prices. I paid extra for my flat. I have taken on an exposure to interest rates. I want to live in the city and avoid the risks of country living.

 

When interest rates go up will country dwellers demand that I receive a mortgage subsidy because I have chosen to take on addition debt?

 

A large part of the cost of motor fuel is taxation. By reducing this tax we must either cuts services or raise taxes, either now or in the future. Country dwellers and motorists, which services are you proposing to cut? Which taxes are you proposing to increase? Not mine I hope. When I paid additional stamp duty on my urban flat did you offer to sack one of your children’s teachers so I could avoid the tax? No? Hands of my kid’s school then.

 

A large part of the difficulty we find ourselves in is caused by our collective and individual failure to understand the risks we were signing up to. We should all do better next time round. This does not start by taking a risk you created for yourself and trying to export it politcally to other people. That sounds like a banker’s strategy.