Comment posted Orkney & Shetland MP confident on Spring fuel price cut for islands by Anne Baird.
The cost of delivering things to remote areas is always mentioned. What is never mentioned is that those things provided by rural areas – which covers everything from milk and eggs to electricity and oil – are ALSO more expensive in the areas they’re produced in. This argument seems only to work one way.
The sane answer is to do what they did with the humble stamp – total costs create the price and the price is the same for everyone. Other than city dwellers should be paying a higher price for milk, fish and electricity. These things are produced within yards of MY home and I fail to see why city dwellers aren’t asked to pay transport costs just as we are.
Anne Baird also commented
- And while I’m at it, the majority of fish in the central belt are in heated tanks in people’s living rooms.
- I recall the swinging handbag and her obsessive fights with the EU. It doesn’t alter the fact that upgrading was funded by other countries and it wasn’t here. Given a choice between raising standards and razing this country to the ground she chose the latter.
And she didn’t leave it there. I also distinctly recall that she negotiated a £52 million cut in the EU’s third world budget whilst congratulating live aid for raising £5 million.
It’s not just nationalists who abhor Thatcher. It’s anyone with a soul. - Without getting into debate about exactly where what milk goes, the fact is that I’m looking at cows, sheep, the sea and wind turbines and my friends in the city have to drive a distance to see any of these.
Transport costs are only ever charged one way and it’s been going on so long no-one challenges it. There is, however, no logic in saying that largely unproductive cities are the places it’s cheapest to produce. They’re distribution centres at best and I challenge the notion that this single merit entitles them to the best price for everything.
I agree that the sea of regulation is a killer for farmers here, but that’s one of the problems of being in the UK. While farmers in other countries got exemptions or funding to assist them with meeting new rules, we got Thatcher saying “It’s all the EU’s fault”. That convenient excuse has bedded down and ruined many a farmer.
- It seems quite reasonable to me that a chip and pin card could be provided that identified the owner as being entitled to a particular rate for petrol. I’ve never understood the “Oh it would be difficult to administer” mob. I know not what the cost is of producing such cards but it seems to me that people would be happy to pay a small fee for a card that would pay for itself within a short time.
And yes, we’d like it extended to Kintyre please. No doubt my Lib Dem MP is putting that campaign in his leaflets as I write;-)
Recent comments by Anne Baird
- New administration for Argyll and Bute Council
Neil, The party has designed its rules so your scenario is not possible. There can only be one SNP group and that will be the group abiding by party rules and standing orders. - New council administration appears not to be what it seemed
Neil, If you listen to one side of a story you’ve joined a faction. If you listen to both sides you’ll find the truth. - Proposed posts for proposed new council coalition administration
Gordon Blair cannot be bought. - New council administration appears not to be what it seemed
Graeme, you do the SNP no justice by reducing very serious matters to personal insult. There is no Cowal cabal. There is no plot. There are rules, and there are sanctions for those who break them. It’s a sad day when this happens and some dignity and humility are required. - Behind the lines: SNP Constituency Association Convenor resigns, Russell isolated
What is your aim with articles like this? There is not the slightest shred of truth in it. Bob Allan hasn’t resigned and is very unlikely to do so any time soon. He hasn’t even pondered it. Why would you publish that without checking? You have email addresses and phone numbers and it would have been easy to do thatThis serial invention is so far from your forensic work that I wonder if you don’t need to seriously reconsider where you get your information.
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It seems quite reasonable to me that a chip and pin card could be provided that identified the owner as being entitled to a particular rate for petrol. I’ve never understood the “Oh it would be difficult to administer” mob. I know not what the cost is of producing such cards but it seems to me that people would be happy to pay a small fee for a card that would pay for itself within a short time.
And yes, we’d like it extended to Kintyre please. No doubt my Lib Dem MP is putting that campaign in his leaflets as I write;-)
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This whole thing is a farce. 5p is rubbish when you are paying 162.3p a litre – the implementation is merely another layer of imposed cost for someone, and it gives our useless politicians a fig-leaf. The correct procedure is to create a competitive market, as for all other energies (gas, electricity etc.). It costs more to deliver electricity to a remote household than to a town-centre – but the burthen is shared. Come off it Danny, this is a cheap trick.
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For Kevin Byrne: And all the Commons could do yesterday was approve an anodyne motion asking the Chancellor to consider not implementing the 3p per litre fuel duty hike planned for January – driving pump prices even higher.
The spin being put on new and robotic junior treasury minister, Chloe Clark’s toe curling statement that the debate ‘was not the time to change the duty but a time for listening’ – is that Osborne may plan to scrap this additional tax burden in the pre-Christmas budget. This would be the last chance to do so before its supposed introduction.
What is quite wrong is the failure to discuss and enact an asymmetric fuel duty system where areas like the Highlands and Islands, with no public transport alternative to the motor vehicle and the courier vans, are exempt – not only from this new hike but with a substantial duty discount on the present level.
The UK has to earn tax revenues from something and it is far from unreasonable to hike fuel duty in the populous south, well served by public transport.
The overall loss to the exchequer of discounts and exemptions for the Highlands and Islands, given our slender population and ageing demographic, would be relatively little.
Making the issue an ‘all in or all out’ one disadvantages us ever more, because it ties us into what would be a substantial tax revenue loss.
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The cost of delivering things to remote areas is always mentioned. What is never mentioned is that those things provided by rural areas – which covers everything from milk and eggs to electricity and oil – are ALSO more expensive in the areas they’re produced in. This argument seems only to work one way.
The sane answer is to do what they did with the humble stamp – total costs create the price and the price is the same for everyone. Other than city dwellers should be paying a higher price for milk, fish and electricity. These things are produced within yards of MY home and I fail to see why city dwellers aren’t asked to pay transport costs just as we are.
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All the milk sold in Kintyre comes from Central Scotland , as does most of the fish . If you want to buy local , you will have to persuade a local farmer to retail his/her milk . Alas the farmer retailers have all disappeared from Kintyre drowned in a sea of regulation , paper work and high cost .
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Without getting into debate about exactly where what milk goes, the fact is that I’m looking at cows, sheep, the sea and wind turbines and my friends in the city have to drive a distance to see any of these.
Transport costs are only ever charged one way and it’s been going on so long no-one challenges it. There is, however, no logic in saying that largely unproductive cities are the places it’s cheapest to produce. They’re distribution centres at best and I challenge the notion that this single merit entitles them to the best price for everything.
I agree that the sea of regulation is a killer for farmers here, but that’s one of the problems of being in the UK. While farmers in other countries got exemptions or funding to assist them with meeting new rules, we got Thatcher saying “It’s all the EU’s fault”. That convenient excuse has bedded down and ruined many a farmer.
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And while I’m at it, the majority of fish in the central belt are in heated tanks in people’s living rooms.
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Nice idea about islanders needing a discount card to fill up on the mainland but the truth is that the 5p cut won’t take us anywhere near mainland prices anyway. As Kevin points out Colonsay is already at £1.62 a litre, Islay is at £1.52 – Lochgilphead Tesco is I think £1.36? Or was last time I was there – I would still be (gladly) filling up at ‘undiscounted’ prices before heading for the ferry! A 5p cut is meaningless when based on such inflated prices – better a standard price as Anne suggests – and yes Kintyre should benefit too!
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Am I the only one that sees this? Why can’t politicians grasp the fact that if they slashed the duty on fuel, this country would bounce out of the recession its in?
Give us more money to live on eejits! We’ll spend it and everybody wins!
Sorry, not in a very good mood today. Just as well I’m not at Kilmory.
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Quite how nationalists can still blame “Thatcher” for every ill afflicing Scotland is beyond belief .
Mrs Thatcher’s government fought many of the regulations coming from Europe , remember the swinging handbag ? and succeeded in winning a massive rebate from the EU.
As for funding , just take a look round Kintyre at the massive sheds and other projects funded by the taxpayer for the benefit of dairy farmers at the expense of other equally valid projects denied assistance .
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QUIT MOANING ABOUT DAIRY FARMERS.
And what “..other equally valid projects denied assistance ” are you referring to?
Quit beating about the bush.
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I recall the swinging handbag and her obsessive fights with the EU. It doesn’t alter the fact that upgrading was funded by other countries and it wasn’t here. Given a choice between raising standards and razing this country to the ground she chose the latter.
And she didn’t leave it there. I also distinctly recall that she negotiated a £52 million cut in the EU’s third world budget whilst congratulating live aid for raising £5 million.
It’s not just nationalists who abhor Thatcher. It’s anyone with a soul.
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Nothing like a free ticket to have a go at Thatcher! I can even find a tenuous link to the article as it mentions milk!
The lady who brought free milk for school children to an end when she was in Heath’s cabinet. She then followed that up by deregulating school meals which resulted in school meals deteriorating to ‘X’ and chips with the ‘X’ normally being hideously cheap (and massively unhealthy) burgers or sausages. She then insulted the education of the nation further by appointing Keith Joseph as Education Minister – one of the most odious politicians this country has produced in modern times who, through his fairly blatant support for eugenics, pretty much advocated sterilisation of parts of society which were not economically ‘sustainable.’
As for her management of the British economy – well I don’t think her adoption of monetarism in her early years did British industry and employment rates the world of good did it. She at least abandoned that once hundreds of thousands were out of work (and I thought the lady was not for turning). Once she had damaged British industry she turned her attentions to democracy, invented QUANGOs and ripped the guts out of a system which she despised due it making her government accountable for its actions – better to be able to pass the buck and also deny the British public what they actually voted for by centralizing power in Whitehall. She furthered this by removing the political independence that was the cornerstone of the Civil Service – after that she could control the publication of national statistics and funnily enough one of the first to go was the publication of stats on wealth and earnings (not seen again until the Labour government made the Office for National Statistics independent again).
So far she is dislikable but not drifting into the arena of meriting hate but do stick with me – there is plenty more to get your teeth into. We all love a bit of good old regressive taxation don’t we? Well she did at lease. VAT more than doubled and she broke into new territory by imposing it on utility bills for the first time ever in the UK. Of course she balanced the tax burden by…yep making income tax cuts. Take from the poor to feed the rich – she truly was a charming lady. The income tax cuts were also funded by astronomical increases in government borrowing.
But she did protect our nation by making massive hikes in the money invested in defence and the police force (largely to keep the police force onside whilst they were having to deal with ever increasing civil unrest which was, of course, a direct result of her government! So how were these investments funded? Quite simply by vast cuts in investment on the NHS, Education and social housing. Have I already mentioned that it was the poor who suffered? Oh yes I have. No harm in repeating it!
Oh then there was the Falklands, the Poll Tax, excessive privatization, massive increases in child poverty, crime rates soaring, doing all in her power to remove independent reporting on British television, Pinochet…
David Cameron points to the British family being ‘broken’ and points the finger at Labour for breaking them. He needs to look back to the repercussions of Thatcher’s change agenda to find the real root cause. What does sadden me is that subsequent governments (both Tory and Labour) have largely failed to properly address so much of the damage she did to the lives of everyday people.
She was, and no doubt still is, evil.
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Let er rip Integ! Brilliant stuff on the anti-Christ there.
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‘It’s not just nationalists who abhor Thatcher. It’s anyone with a soul’
Encore to that.
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Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher , is respected through out the world . I hardy think criticism from left wing nationalists is anything other than predictable .
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She was very highly regarded in Chile – before democracy was restored there!
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Only in someones tiny mind would thatcher be respected.
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I’m afraid the “tiny minds” are those who fail to see that Lady Thatcher is respected throughout the world , nowhere more so than Eastern Europe where her policy of standing up to the Soviets has resulted in the freedom of millions of people without a shot being fired .
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There always a large slice of irony about the Thatcher foundation supporting greater democracy in Central and Eastern Europe as it wasn’t something she supported in the UK when she was Prime Minister.
Not the first u-turn of her career though.
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Breath-taking historical revisionism there Kintyre1! So the fall of the Soviet Union was all down to Maggie (with Gorbachev just a bit player I suppose?). And as for “without a shot being fired”, I must have imagined Yeltsin on a tank and all of the subsequent bloodshed in Chetchnya and Georgia.
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Not to mention the small matter of the former Yugoslavia. And the new Iron Curtain between the EU and the other former-warsaw-pact-states.
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I wonder if a lot of ‘us Europeans’ still don’t realise the full implications of our collective failure to face up to the horrors unleashed – notably against European moslems – by Milosevic and others in the ‘former Yugoslavia’. The rest of the moslem world was watching, and I wonder how much of what’s happened since – notably in New York, London, Madrid, Afghanistan and Pakistan – is as much to do with our perceived inaction then as with the situation in Palestine? Our share of responsibility for what happened in Sarajevo, Srebrenica and a host of other places can’t be laid at the foot of any one political party, can it?. What’s being done in our name to help overcome tyranny in Libya might, hopefully, help to redress the balance.
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…although I think that the tragedy of the former Yugoslavia had a lot more to do with the death of Tito than the ending of the Cold War (and had very little to do with Margaret Thatcher!).
Yugoslavia was a warning to all of us as to just how thin the veneer of civilization is in Europe.
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