Dear Jeremy Hunt MP,
“Hunt, you silly boy,” as your Charterhouse housemaster must have said to you many times, “you’ve really done it this time.”
You are supposed to be MY “representative” in parliament. If the UK is a democracy, then YOU are supposed to fight MY corner. At the very least, you MUST do what is right for the people in your constituency, South West Surrey. If what the Westminster “blob” want to do – like force people in the UK out of our cars by bad regulation and heavy taxation – is contrary to the interests of the people who live in South West Surrey, then YOU must support US, not THEM. Yet you have “sold your soul” (if you have one) to the “blob.” Indeed, you have become an archbishop in that particular church. You have taken on the role of chancellor of the exchequer, the role that I call “Chief Thief.” You are supposed to be my representative, yet you are behaving as my enemy.
I recall the first (actually the only) time I met you, in October 2003, before you even became a parliamentary candidate. When you asked me what you might do for me, I asked you for your help in getting rid of IR35 – a bad New Labour tax law designed to hurt independent people, which your party at the time were seriously considering repealing. You simply cut me off with a disdainful look, and went on to the next person. Recently, instead of confirming Liz Truss’s proposed modest relaxation of IR35 (and even that was not enough to allow me to get working again!), you went in the opposite direction, and re-strengthened it.
Then there was the nine-page letter I wrote you in July 2008, giving you the facts about the “climate change” hysteria, and urging you to find out the facts for yourself and vote against the climate change bill, then in its second reading. You failed even to acknowledge my letter, let alone to refute any of the points I made. And you voted FOR the bill.
I have had a few e-mail contacts with you since then, and it looks as if you only respond to questions to which you have a prepared answer that suits YOUR world-view. But as an MP, you are beholden to consider, and to respond justly to, the views of ALL those you are supposed to represent as your “constituents.”
Next, as our American friends like to say, “these messages from your local station.”
Message from FairFuelUK
As one of many hundreds of FairFuelUK supporters in our South West Surrey constituency, I respectfully ask you to attend a Pre-Budget reception in Portcullis House arranged by the Fair Fuel APPG, to talk with MPs: Priti Patel, Craig Mackinlay, Jonathan Gullis, many others and of course Howard Cox founder of FairFuelUK plus other supporting groups calling for the current Fuel Duty level to remain frozen. Even better, for it to be cut in next week’s Budget.
* The Chancellor cannot ignore that the OBR’s 23% duty hike surprise after the Autumn Statement will add 2.3% to inflation, reduce GDP by 1% and cost 37,000 jobs. (Source Cebr).
* With a fuel duty policy that has proved so successful since 2011, it would be bizarre to change it. Fuel Duty is a regressive tax and hits the poor hardest.
* Why would any Chancellor sanction a tax rise that would shrink the economy, increase inflation, and add more to the dole queue?
I am told the Fair Fuel APPG’s Pre Budget-Reception will be in: Room R, Portcullis House at 3pm to 4:30pm March 8th. Please attend for 10 minutes.
And one more polite ask of you please:
At 2pm also on March 8th, just one hour prior to the Pre Budget-Reception it would be fantastic, if you’d join with Priti Patel, Jonathan Gullis, Craig Mackinlay and Howard Cox in delivering a petition to No 11 and No 10 Downing Street. This ‘don’t hike’ Fuel Duty petition has collected 121,870 Signatures from 1.7m FairFuelUK Supporters, in just a matter of days.
Thank you so much in anticipation of your support of hard pressed drivers in South West Surrey.
He’s really a piece of work. Arrogant and smarmy.
I don’t want to live in a car-centred society. I think a mistake was made when we created an infrastructure around the car. Drivers say they prefer cars because it’s a mode of travel that gives them complete independence and autonomy as to how they get around and where they go, but this benefit is an illusion. Your ability to get around as a driver depends on the building and maintenance of routes, the sourcing and delivery of fuel and the efficiency and maintenance of the vehicle itself – all of which depend on others. The only truly independent way of getting about is on foot or push bike – both should have been encouraged more. Cycle paths and safe pedestrian routes should have been built everywhere and cars for private use should have been kept out of major population centres. None of this would have impeded or inconvenienced car users one iota – and some of it would have helped them, for instance by discouraging cyclists from using roads.
Let me continue this rant, because I am not done. I have had to live in this horrible, selfish, obnoxious (and noxious) car-centred dystopia all my life and listen to people like you rave on about your right to ruin the countryside, poison me with lead and choke me to death. I support many of the things done by governments to discourage and dissuade driving because mass car ownership cannot be sustainable where there is no population control – especially in a political reality where mass immigration is assumed to be a good and necessary thing, even a moral imperative. Since you, and others like you, enthusiastically support mass immigration, it seems to me that we have a situation in which something has to give. More people means more space is needed because people need somewhere to live, somewhere to work, somewhere to play and be happy and gay, and somewhere where their food is grown and produced; they also need space for an infrastructure so they can get about. That being the case, I assume you won’t be happy until the entire countryside is tarmacked and built over with nice roads and car parks and rabbit hutch houses, and even then, you’ll still be complaining and writing letters to the Telegraph or Spectator, or some such publication, moaning about how there isn’t enough road for your iron horse.
I don’t agree with all of it, though. I don’t agree with efforts to make car ownership artificially more expensive than it needs to be, especially for people of ordinary means. That is an abuse. I also don’t agree with banning petrol- and diesel powered cars. That is something that should properly be left to market forces, as people should always have the right to decide this for themselves and innovators and automotive engineers should be left to come up with technical advances and solutions to address environmental problems within the rigors of the market. I don’t like cars, but there is no need to be bossy and dictatorial about it.
It does seem to me that there are bossy and dictatorial instincts to be found on both sides. The drivers’ lobby and people like you are bossily insisting that I should not have any countryside left and should breathe in your lead and smoke, and put up with a constant drumming background noise 24/7. If I don’t like it, I’m some sort of purple-haired lefty – apparently. Is it possible for you and people like you to acknowledge that a normal person might not like either the purple-haired lefties who want everybody to eat lentils or the insufferable drivers’ lobby who insist that there can be no reasonable, sane objections to the principle of mass car ownership?
I do, however, take on board your general running point about the moral legitimacy of restrictions imposed by a political state. I think this is a more serious – and practical – issue than nearly all of us realise and deserves closer examination. I do try (and sometimes fail) to apply a personal golden rule in political discussion, and this can be applied to all sorts of policy, not just this one area, and it goes something like this:
People who wish to see restrictions imposed on others should be willing to see those restrictions imposed on themselves under the same circumstances. Otherwise, their actions are not just hypocritical, but also of questionable legitimacy in moral terms. We should have to suffer the policies that we wish to impose on others. If we are unwilling to do this and live by our professed principles, then those who are adversely affected by our hypocrisy are surely entitled not to take us seriously, and even seek violent retribution against us if they are harmed by our sanctimonious insistence on imposing the costs of our high-minded morality on them while we escape the same consequences.
Well Tom, the car gives you far more independence and autonomy than public transport does. Its advantages include: It starts from where you are. It goes directly to where you are going, at least if that isn’t the centre of a city. You don’t have to hang around waiting for it. It is generally more comfortable, and for many journeys faster, than public transport. You can carry loads in it, which you can’t easily do on public transport. Cars don’t go on strike. And the infrastructure for public transport depends just as much on other people as the road network does – if not more.
Walking and cycling are fine ways to get around, in their place. I should know – in 1989 I cycled coast-to-coast across North America, and in 1994 I walked from Calais to le Havre in 18 days. But walking on a day-to-day basis works only for short journeys, with no load bigger than a rucksack to carry. And cycling doesn’t work well in hilly areas, and becomes less and less easy as you get older (I will be 70 next month). People should always have the choice of which means of transport is most appropriate to them and to their journey.
I have never said that I want to see the countryside paved over, or anything like it. While I do take a more liberal attitude on immigration of individuals than many of the commentariat here, I am just as opposed as you are to deliberate government policies that, in my area, are expected to lead to a 20 per cent increase in population inside 20 years. At a time when the birth rate is below replacement! I can only conclude that they are trying to kick the welfare-state can a few years down the road, by widening the tax base. That is what you should be objecting to, not people who want to get from A to B conveniently, comfortably and quickly.
As to pollution, there’s no lead in petrol any more, and modern cars emit way less of all pollutants than the cars of 30 or even 20 years ago.
But I do agree with the moral illegitimacy of imposing policies on others that you aren’t prepared to keep to yourself. We have seen that, not only with politicians driving and flying, but also with examples like Partygate. I think that hypocrisy, or dishonesty towards the people, by anyone in government ought to be a dismissal offence.