Yes, let's keep voting within bounds. No one over 65 should get a vote in case they have started to lose their marbles.
Flying will have to become more expensive, especially for frequent flyers, to avoid climate chaos and keep the UK within its carbon targets, the government has been warned, while going ahead with a new runway at Heathrow would all but rule out airport expansion in the rest of the country. Ministers are likely to have to choose among options including hikes to air passenger duty, new levies on frequent flyers and changes to air taxation relative to rail and road in order to limit burgeoning demand for cheap flights in the next few years. “Most of the environmental damage from air travel is caused not by annual family holidays but by very frequent leisure flights by those at the top end of the income spectrum. A frequent flyer levy is the fairest and most effective way to keep aviation within safe limits, while protecting access to some air travel for all.”
Er....this also applies to us Frenchie. How do Premier League teams travel to away matches which are further away ? How did our Horns travel to Manchester ? I don't think they did it by coach and stopped off at the chippy on the way back as in bygone times. Every week we have teams and supporters travelling by plane - can the Champions League, or Europa League, be called environmentally friendly ? Football is not immune to criticism when EUFA forces 2 teams from London to play each other in places like Baku.
I agree with a frequent flyer levy, but that is not enough - we need to improve the other alternatives at the same time. As long as it is cheaper and more comfortable to fly from Cologne to Berlin then we have a problem - we need to work in cohesion with rail services to improve their services at a reasonable price. This can only be done if such services are under national control. I would begin by banning all inland flights - Scandinavia has done this already and Germany is on the way to doing it. If you want to go from Stockholm to Oslo then you cannot fly any longer - but this can only be done with a state owned, efficient and cheap rail service.
Quite simple to administer I would have thought. Seeing as I am logged in and out of the country when I come over to make sure that I am not avoiding tax laws, there is no problem there. When did support for government measures have any bearing on what actually happens? If people were educated enough to realise what damage they are doing over a period, opinion could well change.
A UK government would only consider restricting freedom of choice and potential financial harm to the economy if there was overwhelming public support for ideas such as this. This is presently not the case and is unlikely to be in the future.
Got it in one... capitalism profit and the machinations of all the profiteering media come before the imminent danger to our planet.. Just what Trump is doing...
This is not a matter of having overwhelming support amongst the public (mostly created by the media anyway) but with keeping in line with international treaties. If the EU brings in a kerosene tax, or a levy for frequent fliers then it will raise the price of flying between Britain and the rest of the continent regardless of what Britain does.
Obviously the EU will have to override the views of the European countries that desperately rely on tourism. Par for the course.
What is needed are more working groups on tourist management SH. We are beginning to see those regarding the negative effects of mass tourism at world heritage sites, and in some cities such as Barcelona, Amsterdam and Venice. Also the resistance is growing in other areas where locals are becoming like foreigners in their own country - such as in Majorca, or parts of the Caribbean. We also have to look at the question of who exactly profits from tourism - does the money really go to the local population ? On some islands in the Caribbean, tourist enclaves are behind wire keeping the locals away - these are all inclusive holidays where even their food is imported. In Amsterdam they are so pissed off with the millions of drug and sex tourists, together with British stag night groups that Dutch tourist agencies are no longer selling Amsterdam as a destination and are trying desparately to relocate tourism to other parts of the country. The effects of tourism on the environment are one thing, the other aspect is when it destroys local cultures, and infrastructures.
So you have absolutely no concern for millions of workers currently employed in the tourist industry? Many European countries are currently unable to solve their unemployment problems, your suggestion will simply make these woes much worse.
If I can quote you one example SH. My last home in the UK. was in Exmoor (more precisely Porlock). Every year Exmoor's population doubles through tourism - in other parts of the South West it is worse than this. A major side effect of tourism of this scale is the buying of second houses by tourists who fall in love with the area. This forces house prices up and out of the reach of locals (who are some of the lowest paid in England). The other effect is that houses are not lived in for more than a few months per year with has a negative effect on the infrastructure of the area. In the 1970s the local school in Brendon had 40 pupils - it closed a few years ago with only 6. Towns or villages full of houses which are only lived in for 4-5 months per year. In the meantime Porlock has the highest percentage of pensioners in the UK. The tourist industry in the area is dominated by Butlins in Minehead - they do not employ local staff, but rather have people from the dole queues of the midlands coming down 'just for the season' who return to those dole queues afterwards. Those young men still in the area make their living from building work on houses which they could never afford themselves before eventually leaving the area. I would guess that the same picture is repeated in Cornwall, and many parts of Devon. In fact this picture could be replicated in any number of tourist areas. There was a time when fishing and quarrying (Somerset still provides most of the stone in England) were the dominant industries and tourism was secondary, but that has all changed. Tourism changes infrastructures and creates a dependency upon itself which is self perpetuating - how did islands like Crete, Sardinia or Ibiza survive before the onset of tourism - they managed.
The difference is the UK does not suffer from unemployment. This is a serious problem in many Southern European countries but also including France. My daughter owns a holiday home in Spain. On purchase she gave the Spanish government 10% of the purchase price to spend as it wishes. She has employed Spanish builders, decorators etc and bought furniture and home furnishings from Spanish shops. There are hundreds of locals employed within the complex. There are thousands of other Spanish workers in the vicinity who benefit from the spending power of second home owners and rental guests. The locals have suffered enough with the horrendous flooding, taking away their livelihoods is certainly not what they need.
