The UK government’s proposed 3p-a-mile electric vehicle tax lays bare its true nature: it is a Treasury revenue-raising exercise masquerading as environmental policy. Far from a green initiative, this mileage-based levy exposes a systemic geographic and political disparity that disproportionately punishes rural Scotland and Wales to the benefit of London and the South East.
Consider the stark regional financial disparities. Under this proposal, drivers in densely populated, heavily polluted urban centres with extensive public transport networks, such as London, will pay an average of just £33 a year. Conversely, drivers in rural Scotland and Wales—who rely entirely on their vehicles for essential travel across vast geographies—face averages of over £156 a year, with a standard 8,500-mile driver paying upwards of £255.
What this mileage-based tax completely ignores is the environmental heavy lifting performed by these rural landscapes. The extensive forests, mountains, and peatlands of Scotland and Wales act as vital carbon sinks for the entire UK. UK woodlands currently hold roughly 150 million tonnes of carbon in their biomass and sequester millions more annually. Furthermore, through the process of evapotranspiration, these vast green spaces act as natural air conditioning, significantly cooling the wider UK climate and regulating regional temperatures.
To understand the inherent value of these rural spaces, one only has to look at the continent. European cities are currently investing millions in urban tree-planting initiatives, desperately trying to mitigate the 'Urban Heat Island' effect that traps emissions and drives up deadly urban temperatures. The irony here is profound: a tax purportedly born of environmental concern now financially penalises rural drivers who live amongst and navigate natural carbon sinks, whilst effectively offering a massive discount to drivers contributing to the very urban heat islands that the rest of Europe is spending fortunes to cool.
However, the inequity extends far beyond the roads and into the very power grid that charges these vehicles. Both Scotland and Wales are significant net exporters of electricity. Through vast wind, hydro, and renewable energy infrastructure, they generate considerably more power than they consume, exporting the surplus directly to England to meet the massive energy demands of cities like London. Despite powering the UK, neither Scottish nor Welsh consumers receive a discount on their electricity bills. In fact, due to the structure of the national grid, rural consumers frequently pay higher standing charges for their electricity than the consumers in the urban areas that absorb their exported energy.
This presents a stark picture of two UK nations being disproportionately squeezed. They generate the clean electricity and their landscapes absorb the carbon, yet their residents are forced to pay the highest transport taxes and energy premiums simply because of their geography.
The ultimate pay-off of this policy failure is highly political. For decades, a prevailing Westminster narrative has accused Scotland and Wales of being heavily subsidised by England. Yet, when one examines the actual flow of resources—clean energy flowing south, whilst punitive mileage taxes and high energy standing charges flow north and west—the narrative is exposed as nonsense. Policies like the 3p-a-mile EV tax serve as undeniable fuel for Scottish and Welsh independence movements, providing empirical evidence of an economic union that extracts resources from the rural periphery merely to subsidise the urban core.
When they get rattled, Labour seem to lose any common sense. Proscription for the SNP (and probably Plaid) to follow?
‘Healy didn’t only agree, but went further, declaring that “the continuation of the Scottish Nationalist Government in Scotland is a threat to our security”.
Later, he refused to use the same language about the Chinese Government.’
@Wen 🙄 Even the toxic Tories were not prepared to go this far with their rhetoric. They did it by putting Sturgeon under police investigation which dragged on for years and found nothing. On the other hand, such dangerous and short-sighted comment should ensure a massive vote for #SNP and #ScottishGreens for the forseeable future. #ScottishIndependence
Cycling boosts health, the planet, and the economy! 🚲
✔️ 92,000+ km of EuroVelo routes across Europe
✔️ Nearly 10M bikes made in the EU yearly
✔️ 1.35M cycling-related jobs
With our European Declaration on Cycling, we are committed to boosting cycling across the EU, including through:
🦺 Safe cycling networks in cities
🚌 Better links with public transport
🔋 Deployment of charging points for e-bikes
🚴 Bike highways connecting cities with rural areas
Stylised map of Europe formed by colorful interconnected cycling routes, representing all the EuroVelo routes across Europe. Three bicycle icons are placed across the map. The text reads: 'Two wheels. One Europe. Endless possibilities.' A logo of the European Commission is shown in the bottom right corner.
Again, people you turn on, to court fascist votes, are not LIKELY to want to support you politically.
You lost 10M fucking votes. TEN MILLION.
So maybe all those people are all secret fascists even tho giant swathes of them are literally going to be harmed by fascism.
Or JUST MAYBE, it's because they could tell they were fucked either way and didn't see the value in supporting bougie ass "liberals" prepared to throw them to the wolves for a miniscule handful of cracker suburban votes
@AnarchoNinaWrites the strategy that "votes of the left are in the bag, they have nowhere else to go, so we can just triangulate right indefinitely" has been tried both by the #Labour party (in the UK) and by the #SNP (in Scotland). For Labour, it lost them millions of votes. For the SNP, it lost them #ScottishIndependence, which is their raison d'etre. But both parties are still playing the same stupid game – because both are chasing donations from #kleptocrats.