Friday, 15 September 2000

European fuel taxes

Listening to:

Couperin, Nouveaux concerts. I feel as if I’ve typed this one in quite few times as I’ve been doing this log. I don't think I listen to it that much. I think it must sense when Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings are coming up so that it can leer up in my subconscious and get itself selected for playing at just the right time. Oh yes, semi-sentient CDs.

A neat story, logged by David Chess a few days ago, about a strange PC bug whereby your computer starts to play Für Elise.

So, is Europe going down the gurgler or what? Many (most?) of the countries of Western Europe seem to have been afflicted with wide-ranging protests about the high price of petrol. People have blockaded refineries, and the supply of petrol has been seriously reduced. Yesterday, the radio said that 75% of petrol stations across the UK had no petrol.

Perhaps even more astonishing is that 91% of people seem to be in favour of the protests. We don’t own a car, so maybe this makes us too insensitive to the problem. There are loads of articles at the Guardian. Characteristically, the Daily Telegraph is convinced that high taxes on anything are fundamentally wrong, and says that they're unfair on British hauliers. This is nonsense, as I will attempt to explain next time.

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