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Rae Blair's avatar

Clear, concise and to the point. Thanks Jackie.

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John Marshall Bryden's avatar

Thanks for yet another excellent post, Jackie. I only recently had a wobbly on this growing urban rural thing, which we are also witnessing in Denmark, and which has burst out anew in the USA.

I remember when scottish ambitions for indy started to emerge seriously again in the 1980's 1990's, the votes and seats came first in the rural areas, and not in the big cities. I actually did the numbers at the time, but have lost the analysis. Scotland, like the rest of the UK, has become a very centralised democracy. Power has moved to the centre thanks to local government reforms, quangos, police reorganisation, and public transport provatisation, among others. Cities are where power and money lies. On green matters, i am with Andy on the matter of wood burning stoves. I am with you and SNP on the bottle tax. There is a strong urban bias in many "green" policies too. This is most of all demonstrated in planning, housing, land and taxation policies. It is very clear to most of us who bother to think of these things that it is mostly consumers and not producers who are the problem. You can tax farmers, but as they are price takers and not price makers, they cannot pass taxes on to consumers as large corporate monopolies do. Consumers neanwhile keep spending on cars, oil, plastic, air travel, and so on. Most climate-unfriendly consumption is by urban consumers, because they are richer.

Carbon taxes should be on climate-unfriendly consumption! That is absolutely clear. It is not happening, of course, because of politicians fears of a backlash. Meanwhile, the whole ship is sinking, and the lifeboats are becoming ever fewer.

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