Latest figures from the AA show that drivers in the UK are being subjected to petrol tax increases far in excess of anything endured across Europe.
This hits places like Argyll, with all of the Highlands and Islands, particularly hard in the sheer volume of deriving that living here necessitates.
Apart from the personal driving to support home and family life, there are delivery businesses, hauliers and ferry operators, all utterly central to life in territories like ours and all unavoidably heavy fuel users.
High fuel tax also impacts on one of the great attractions of Scotland for visitors – driving Scotland. Much of the country is only accessible by road and a decline in driving visitors has an obvious secondary impact on the businesses of the accommodation, hospitality and visitor attraction sectors – and the ferries.
This is why the SNP has been calling for the establishment of a fuel tax regulator, an urgent need underlined y Argyll’s MSP, Jim Mather, following concerns raised by his Westminster colleague Angus MacNeil MP, in a statement issued in London earlier today.
Mr Mather says: ‘For most Scottish MPs and MSPs the price of petrol and diesel impacts very directly on their constituents’ day to day living. Every rise in the cost of fuel impacts upon the costs of goods and services and makes the export of local produce that much less competitive.
‘Angus MacNeil has very properly highlighted the disparity that exists between the fuel tax regimes in the UK compared with other mainstream European countries.
‘Since the Pre-Budget Report at the end of November 2008, fuel duty and VAT on petrol in the UK has risen by 11.46%. In the same period the rise in Austria was 2.23% and the average increase over 10 countries, including France, Spain and the Netherlands is 5.07%. None of those countries are, like the UK, major oil producers. Figures for diesel are only marginally less damaging.
‘It is common knowledge that the Labour Government is intent on using fuel tax as a means of raising finance to pay off the bank bail out. They are keen to characterise this as taxing hauliers but the truth of the matter is that it is ordinary people who are left to pick up the increased fuel bills, directly and indirectly in the higher costs of goods and services.’
The SNP has committed itself to a continuing campaign at Budget time for a fuel duty regulator to ensure a fairer and more equitable system for Scotland’s remoter areas.
Jim Mather says: ‘Scotland should be benefiting from the riches of our offshore resources rather than watching it being used to fill the massive deficit at the Treasury at a time when the Scottish Budget is reduced even further.’
In a way, the recession is having an interesting push-me-pull-you impact on responses to the issue of independence for Scotland.
On the one hand, it has frightened some into thinking that the only thing to do is to cling faster to the breast of the UK.
On the other, there is a growing awareness that what could be seen as the wilful prolonging of national infantilism will lead to an increasingly thinner diet as scarce resources are withdrawn to maintain the vigour of the parent.
This view consequently suggests that abandoning the breast and foraging for itself will see Scotland grow to vigorous adulthood – and is based on the unarguable truth that hard times are here either way.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Even Scotland is infected with the British disease of ‘hanging on to nurse for fear of something worse’.
Letting the metaphor run away with us would picture a nurse who has been on the economic equivalent of a bad coke habit, is in long-tern rehab and unfit to nourish.