How can both be equitable?

I thank Peter Webb for his kind remarks (8/1/15).

The economist, Adam Smith, said taxes should be ‘certain, convenient, economic and equitable’, but likening the 1380 to the Scottish Poll Tax is mischievous.

The former was renewal of a one-off tax to fund a French war, but now placing a ‘per capita’ tax on the feudal working class, so far exempt national taxation.

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Hugely aggrieved over feudal issues, this triggered Wat Tyler’s peasants’ revolt.

The Scottish revolt was politically driven by socialist freemen resentful at ‘English Tories’ imposing taxes, even if beneficial to low-paid Scots.

How can a ‘tangible wealth’ (income) tax and a ‘perceived wealth’ (rates) both be equitable when Band E pensioners pay double that of a Band B lottery millionaire?

Granville Bantick can’t blame hill-sheep for our floods!

Predictable flooding can indeed be managed through forethought, soakaways, sluicing and dredging (‘lex marisci’) by Catchment and River Boards.

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But environmental matters are an EU competence managed since 1996 by the Environment Agency whose primary duty is water pollution control and protecting the natural environment, allowing nature and cyclical climates to take their course.

King Canute politicians (who refuse to acknowledge there has been no significant global warming for 10 years) insist they can control nature and climate so at their IPCC/Paris political summits they set, using selected computer models, an arbitrary political limit of +2oC warming!

Duncan Lee misrepresents me!

I never said solar– and wind-power are ‘futile’ – they have their place, such as third world economies and yachts, but can’t generate sustainable on-demand power for industrial economies unless their (tax-payer subsidised) output can be efficiently stored.

So far, it can’t – so nuclear and fossil (Germany’s new coal-fired) power-stations must run ‘24/7’, regardless.

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One ‘zero CO2 emission’ wind-turbine is calculated to have caused 250-tons of new man-made CO2 (smelting alloys, extracting the dynamo’s rare-earth magnetic-ores, concrete foundations...) before it generates, so given Britain’s wind-turbines work only 27 per cent of the time (11 per cent solar), it’ll take 35 years to ‘reclaim’ that man-made CO2, yet its designed life is only 25 years!

What is a solar panel and storage battery’s toxic/CO2 footprint?

Barry M Jones

Bixley Lane

Beckley

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