"New car tax rates for 2009"

Great! Let's have some jealousy surcharges that will achieve absolutely nothing as follows:

1) If you already own a 'gas guzzler', and decide you don't want to pay the higher charge, you can always sell the car. But the second hand value will be depressed by the fact that the purchaser assumes the liability for the higher rates. So you have already lost your money, and you might as well stick with it.

2) Second hand values are now falling faster than normal because consumers are tightening their belts a bit, so no doubt the price of new cars will fall slightly as well to maintain the equilibrium. As to 'gas guzzlers', if the list price is £30,000 now, then once the new rates come in, the showroom will have to drop the price by about £770 to compensate the purchaser for the additional VED in the first five years or so.

Finally, once a car is on the road, the actual cost of petrol is only a fraction of the overall running costs, so having decided to stick with your old car (scenario 1) or bought a new car for slightly less (scenario 2) you might as well continue whizzing round in it.

Disclaimer - I do not own a car and don't believe in all this 'man-made-climate-change' nonsense, it's the middle of March and it's still bloody freezing!

Caveat - the fact that this tax will raise money without changing people's behaviour is, I suppose, A Good Thing (a bit like Land Value Tax), but they are still hypocrites of the highest ordure.