We should tax cyclists and electric car users

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

It is no good championing environmental needs if other important social needs are neglected (PA)

As the government is looking towards cuts to fund the UK deficit, why don’t they take the levelling-up approach and impose more taxes on cyclists and electric car users to raise income? Both are using roads and having investment spent on infrastructure and maintenance which is currently subsidised by other vehicle users and council budgets. So how can this be justified when councils should be prioritising their budgets towards the social care areas which are most in need?

If we now have 1 million electric vehicles and 6.5 million cyclists on the roads, implementing new or increased road-user tax could possibly raise essential billions which could be spent on improving essential community services. It is no good championing environmental needs if other important social needs are neglected.

C Jones

Cheshire

Bad air is killing us

Having read “Failure to ditch fossil fuels putting health of ‘all people alive’ at growing risk, major report warns” in The Independent, we now know that lung cancer is the biggest killer and accounts for most cancer deaths, and it has the poorest survival rates. New evidence shows that it’s now being blamed on air pollution caused by fossil fuels instead of smoking.

Researchers at Francis Crick Institute in London discovered that air pollution leads to cancer by waking up old damaged cells that give rise to tumours rather than healthy cells multiplying out of control. When exploring why non-smokers get lung cancer, it discovered that one in 10 cases in the UK was caused by air pollution. It’s a breakthrough in understanding the impact of pollution and its direct link to cancer.

Research from Harvard University explained that producing and burning fossil fuels creates air pollution harmful to our health and generates toxic emissions that drive the climate crisis. It releases pollutants that lead to early death, heart attacks, cancer, respiratory disorders, strokes and asthma. It has also been linked to autism spectrum disorder and Alzheimer’s disease.

Despite the damage to health, nature and the environment, Greenpeace says the government is planning to approve more than 100 new oil and gas (fossil fuels) licences. Greenpeace is challenging the government for unlawfully approving the development of the Jackdaw field, and may do the same for the Cambo and Rosebank sites in the North Sea.

With only eight years left to reverse the impact of the climate crisis, I would like the prime minister to justify why he is pushing ahead with fossil fuel projects when it won’t lower energy bills, is intensifying the climate crisis and is killing us.

Jeannette Schael

Tadley

Not the Brexit you wanted? Oh well...

Not the Brexit you wanted, Next boss Lord Wolfson? Simple! We got the wrong kind of cake. It disappeared when we ate it.

Robert Gould

Edinburgh

Not me, guv!

Kwasi Kwarteng’s attempts to clear his name over the crashing of the British economy are not very convincing.

He himself was clearly responsible for sacking Tom Scholar, the permanent secretary at the Treasury, thus depriving himself and his team of invaluable professional advice. His slash-and-burn approach on taking up the post of chancellor did not suggest someone who had reservations about the dramatically new (and ultimately disastrous) approach he and Liz Truss were taking to the economy.

It also would seem Kwarteng is unaware that Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, has said the economy was only hours away from meltdown after the mini-Budget .

“Sorry”, of course, is always the hardest word for politicians. However, trying to wriggle out of his responsibility for the disaster that he and Truss brought about will hardly add lustre to his reputation.

Andrew McLuskey

Ashford

What did Musk think he was buying?

If Elon Musk has already dismissed half of Twitter’s workforce, and now thinks that bankruptcy is on the cards, is it possible to find out from him what it was he thought he was buying?

Cole Davis

Norwich

Don’t shoot the messenger

In her desperate efforts to demonise any opponents to her Cruella worldview (carry on, Dave Brown, you have her nailed perfectly) the home secretary should be more careful in her choice of language, which not for the first time exposes her ignorance of the bigger picture.

The M25 is certainly a vital artery for the continuation of “our way of life”, but it’s an artery already clogged with the absence of any remedial treatment by this sclerotic government. Shooting the messenger – in this case, climate activists – is never a cure.

Rick Biddulph

Farnham