PLASTIC BAG TAX IS MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE.

The suggestion that the government is about to extend, and double, the levy on plastic bags is another example of our masters using moral blackmail to bamboozle us into paying more taxes. Be under no illusion, this 'levy' is, in reality, just another tax, even though the government dresses it up as part of some sort of moral crusade.

Government habitually contributes, one way or another, to a wide range of charities; the plastic bag levy is supposed also to contribute to charity, assuming that the businesses which collect the levy really do pass it on in that way. However, rather than this being additional money for charities, one wonders how much it is more of a reduction in the amount that government pays for these supposed 'good causes'.

If our government was actually serious about preventing the pollution caused by plastic bags, it would simply ban them. Instead, it has chosen to dress up its approach as a fund raising measure when it's nothing of the sort; it's just another tax, pure and simple. Worse, it's a tax which the collectors, the big companies, can opt to pay, or not, at their whim. After all, who is actually checking that the 5ps charged are all being properly accounted for ? 

If this tax is extended to small retailers, the opportunities for fraud will simply increase and an increase in the tax to 10p per bag will make the incentive all the greater. We, the consumers, will be stung not only by a government tax that achieves nothing but also by fraudsters who simply enjoy the profitable opportunity offered by our moronic masters. 

A tax on plastic bags, straws cups, bottles and all the rest reads as very laudable, but the real answer is simply to ban their use. Instead, our government uses the current publicity surrounding the environmental damage caused by plastic waste as an opportunity to raise taxes. That this is an abominable and corrupt use of power, and nothing other than the nationalisation of antisocial behaviour is obvious. Tobacco, alcohol and now plastic - all are deemed antisocial and all could just be banned to avoid problems, but government prefers to allow the damage to continue while collecting vast revenues from their continued use.

So much for political morality.