Were you truly wafted here from Paradise? No, Luton Airport

Apparently being able to leave Luton is a bad idea. So says Caroline Lucas:

Almost 90% of flights from Luton are taken for leisure - in other words British tourists taking their money out of the country to spend abroad. Expanding Luton is not good for UK growth…

That is to reify “the economy” a little too much. The aim of an economy - of a civilisation - is not to pile up the GDP numbers but that more people get to do more of what people want to do. Leaving Luton seems a perfectly acceptable desire to us so why shouldn’t more people do that? But rather more importantly, even if leaving Luton were not a perfectly acceptable idea to us it would seem to be what others desire to do. Therefore they get to do that and we don’t get to prevent them doing so. The usual name for this concept - we realise it’s difficult for some to grasp unfamiliar concepts but still - is “liberty”.

A political confrere of Ms Lucas, Sian Berry, also seems to have difficulties with the concept:

Expanding Luton will cause active economic harm to to places like Brighton! Since 2022 holiday spending in coastal regions has fallen by almost a third. We need a frequent flyer levy to put money into domestic tourism, NOT new terminals that fly money out of the UK.

Liberty, as a concept and also in its reality, means having to attract custom not force it. This before we even consider the rather Soviet overtones of insisting that people only holiday within the boundaries of the People’s Republic of Brighton.

But sadly, yes, it does get worse:

Richer people should be made to fly less so poorer families can holiday without worsening Britain’s carbon footprint, the country’s climate tsar has claimed.

Emma Pinchbeck, the new chief executive of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), said net zero meant flying should be considered a luxury, with airlines paying a price for the emissions they produce. However, she said it would be unfair to price lower income families out of air travel altogether.

Instead, the Climate Change Committee wants frequent fliers to be taxed more highly than those who fly just once a year. This would discourage richer travellers from flying as much, while not punishing the poor.

We think that Commissar is a better title here than climate tsar. After all, the Romanovs didn’t place limits upon people leaving the Empire, the Soviets - quite famously - did.

Ms Pinchbeck, who was appointed by Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, last November, said: “We’ve done some distribution impact analysis across wealthier and poorer households. Wealthier households tend to fly multiple times a year, so [would] carry more of the cost for this than poorer households. There [would be] a difference in the costs that accrue to the long haul flights, which tend to be taken by wealthier households.

“We’ve gone for a market based approach, because polluters should pay, and that gets you an impact on demand. But we balance that with the need to still allow people to take an annual family holiday, particularly lower income households who fly less.

“So actually, because it’s a pricing mechanism, high income households would be disproportionately affected compared with lower income ones.”

This is to fail to note that we already have a tax on flights, Air Passenger Duty. Which is deliberately and specifically calculated upon the CO2 emissions for a flight - albeit in bands. It was also brought in specifically to deal with the issue that aviation fuel is, under the usual international agreements, generally not taxed.

People who fly more and greater distances pay more APD. We’re done here.

How did we get to the situation where we’ve such people actually running the country?

Tim Worstall

For those not already gifted with the winning lottery ticket in life the headline is explained here.