We're all going to die...

The Kings Arms, York (in photo), it stands on the River Ouse, has done for hundreds of years and it floods every couple of years so that you need a scuba qualification to get served - its flooded so many times that they have a guage in the bar where you can see how high the water has reached in decades past.

We're all going to end up like the Kings Arms soon if you believe this report.

But, once again, I have a problem with the whole issue of our beloved Government standing on its soap box and bleating about global warming and how we're going to have to start paying the price right now.

You see our Chancellor Gordon Brown has been borrowing money on our UK credit card and its getting close to the time when he needs to start repaying some of it. This report suggests that we owe £25.4billion and in the Sunday Times yesterday it was suggested that £3.6billion of that needs to be found in the next financial year - the budget for which Gordon is preparing right now as I type.

So what an opportune moment to find a report that suggests that governments all over the world need to start cutting down on pollution right now, and how predictable that our governments response should be that taxation on the use of vehicles and other forms of gas emitting fuel (ie our electricity and gas useage) is the way forward - yes, the way to cut down on emissions is for use to use less because we can't afford to use it anymore.

Except that it won't work that way.

Gordon Brown will target vehicles that are fuel inefficient and that emit high levels of so-called "greenhouse gas" for extra tax levies - in short these vehicles tend to be the expensive 4x4's or SUV type vehicles that are so popular in inner cities - but in short, the sort of people who own these vehicles do so because they bought them through choice, like them, and if they are wealthy enough to pay £50K for them will happily pay another £1000 tax a year on them - which will do nothing for global warming but will work wonders for Gordon Browns budget deficit.

Yes, slap my wrists for suggesting that the huffing and puffing and posturing this week by the Chancellor is less to do with his concern for the environment and more to do with an ideal opportunity to cover up his overspend for this year by extracting more taxation from us - I'd believe him a lot more if he'd prove that all of the additional "climate levy" taxation was spent on projects to reduce personal vehicle use - like public transport for instance, like the Leeds supertram scheme that he dumped for instance - but I fear that we are more likely to see the climate change levy money spent on a huge spaceship to take us all away to a new planet than actually be used for anything practical.