jupe1407 wrote:Without wishing to be accused of witchcraft, I have absolutely no issue with wind energy/windfarms, they are a not-completely-ideal answer to a question which really has no right answer. Obviously siting should be within reason, but I'm unsure what folk would suggest as an alternative. In fact I'd be quite curious.
Nuclear? - Which remote area do we scar with a massive power station and how do we deal with the waste?
Turbines at sea? - Surely just moving the "problem" elsewhere. Although anything that has an imbecile like Donald Trump in a frothing litigious mess has to be good.
I've walked plenty of hills with views of windfarms and they certainly haven't ruined my day.
As for hydro schemes, I recall a fairly lively discussion on here about the scheme at Heights on Kinlochewe, for example. Admittedly they look horrendous in the early stages of construction, however I don't feel as a brief visitor to an area I have any right to be dictating to actual residents of that area whether they should or shouldn't have access to cheaper energy because it might have spoiled my view for half an hour. They do "blend in" fairly quickly. After all, I can't remember any walk reports referring to the horrors of established hydro schemes on hills like Fionn Bheinn, Sgiath Chuil/Meall Glas etc. They simply become part of a route in such cases. Can you imagine what WalkHighlands would have been like had it been around during the construction of the Cruachan Dam?
Also just remembered we were talking about a Tourist Tax. Oops.
Yes, sorry to have gone off topic - but unlike me you haven't talked about Tourist Tax in your post!
Agreed there is no easy answer to the energy question. Seems to me though that windfarms and hydro schemes are a runaway train, 'you ain't seen nothing yet'. Hard Cash is driving this, not green credentials, Hard Cash will always prevail. But all these schemes are heavily subsidised, paid for by consumers in their bills. A tax. The few locals who directly benefit are doing so through these subsidies. Maybe those profiting from these schemes, and our subsidy tax, should be charged a windfall tax, to be allocated to local communities. I would feel a bit better, a bit.
As for the devastation caused by these schemes, yes some dams will blend in as nature takes its course, but rest assured that Hard Cash will dictate minimum effort in actively covering the scars of development, and the authorities and government just don't care. The vast number in place and planned are way more than the few that existed just a few years ago. And the time will come when every wonderful view has been blighted. What did you see today on your mountain trip? Windfarm/vehicle tracks. What did you see last week on your mountain trip? Windfarm/vehicle tracks. It will come.
https://www.localenergy.scot/projects-and-case-studies/searchable-register-of-community-benefits/click on 'all renewable projects', and I wager this isn't all of them...
Glad windfarms haven't ruined your day, but we're all different. In the unlikely event I one day decide to go for Munro compleation, perhaps I'll be better placed visiting some of them at night!
Back to topic!
LeithySuburbs wrote:Were such a charge to be introduced in Edinburgh (and I think it would be here first - were it to be sanctioned), I can't see how it would not - in time - be rolled out across the country. Would such a tax be detrimental? - I'm not sure anyone really knows the answer to that.
If this were rolled out across the country, every UK resident visiting another part of the UK would then be paying a tourist tax at their destination. When you're away from home you're not using your local services so you could argue why should you be paying more given you're still in the UK, just using services in another location? So a tourist tax for a UK resident would just be an additional form of general taxation, of which we have plenty already. You are already being taxed on items of your spend whilst you're away so that tax, and the tax on profits that businesses make from your 'tourism' (or business trip) should be allocated to the correct local areas. But of course that would require our elected representatives to be competent and to have a will.
Let's just hit Johnny Foreigner then. But they have already paid substantial sums to visit our shores, do we want to discourage them? Surely not.
And what would it cost to administer such a scheme? I have no faith in local authorities across the UK being competent to do this, and it would certainly add to staffing numbers, surely not what we need. We need simplification, not more bureaucracy.
The greatest recent impact upon services and infrastructure across the UK has been the vast immigration in recent years. This has caused overcrowding and, unfortunately, spend on services and infrastructure has not increased in line with population growth, causing a strain. Tourism is seasonal resulting in a great squeeze at certain times, immigration is not.
Paul Webster wrote:But I'd argue we need to better fund them from having a more realistic level of taxes on ourselves, based on ability to pay, rather than increasing the already relatively high taxes we have on visitors which may penalise the worse off and act as a deterrent to the tourism we need. It's already an expensive place to holiday, and tourism from overseas counts as an export for Scotland (in that it brings cash from outside our economy into it).
This seems to me to be a much better, fairer and cost-effective way to proceed, but again, can we trust our representatives to fairly and competently allocate our taxation?
