EU tax on Britain

As we know despite all of it's fancy retoric the EU is failing to tackle climate change (unlike the US). The system that it planned to set up seemed at the time a very good idea, create a market so that fossil fuels would be used by the people that needed it the most distributing this scarce resource (the amount of CO2 emmisions that the climate can stand) in the most efficient way possible. Unfortuantly it was up to the EU to manage it.

Once through the Brussels looking-glass, a visionary idea for creating a market in carbon has so far turned out to be nothing but a tax on Britain with no effect on greenhouse gases. Last year, the first year of the scheme, 21 out of the 25 member states made a mockery of it by handing out permits for more CO2 than was emitted. The upstanding UK had handed out fewer permits relative to its emissions than anyone else.

What could have been a good system for dealing with climate change becomes just yet another way of fleecing money out of Britain by the rest of the EU. "UK companies had effectively handed about £470 million to rivals abroad." Yet more for the EU to drag down our growth rates yet further.