Bio-Taxed

Gordon Brown's promise to increase still further the road tax on Chelsea Tractors is probably a good move - but it still misses the vital point. CO2 emissions are as a result of burning fossil fuel and surely the right thing to be doing is to encourage the use of biofuels.

At the moment a driver who uses biofuels currently pays the same road tax as does one who uses fossil fuels - and also has to contend with a punitive level of tax which generally makes biofuels more expensive than fossil fuels.

Cleaner vehicles attract lower levels of tax - which is fine, but we now have a situation where drivers producing CO2 using fossil fuels are paying less tax than ones who don't because they are using biofuels.

Where is the sense in that?

Green budget - NOT!

The thing about headlines is that if you look read the small print you normally find that they are a load of b@ll*x! - and this latest budget is now exception.

What you don't find unless you really look for it is a small statement that the differential on rebated road fuels will remain the same. What this actually means is that the tax on biofuels is going to be increased in line with petroleum fuels.

I spend most of my evenings helping friend of mine to run his fledgling biodiesel business. Cold nights spent standing at taxi ranks persuading taxi drivers to use biodiesel because it's green. Trying to peruade them that it won't damage their engines - that it will run OK in their taxis. So far we've managed to keep the price a couple of pence a litre below the pump price for normal diesel - but we've been hanging on hoping and praying for a reduction in the road fuel duty that will make the business viable.

All around us we hear of small businesses trying to set up and make biodiesel but having to shut down because of financial pressures.

The last setback we had was a sudden increase in the price of rapeseed oil - the biggest single cost in the equation. Prices fluctuate a lot and without a decent margin there's not a hope of competing with petroleum diesel? So is Mr Brown helping the development of clean grean biofuels. Like hell!

And another thing - did you read the bit about income tax exemption for people who install micro wind turbines and get paid for the excess electricity they generate? Find me an electricity company that will pay you ANYTHING worth talking about. How about a bit of legislation forcing the electricity supplers to pay the going rate for wind turbine owners. But then that would mean upsetting the big electricty suppliers and we can't have that can we?