I'd happily pay a tax to keep my 100-watt bulbs and why not impose a levy on sunbeds, spas and golfers, asks ORNA MULCAHY
OLD-FASHIONED, incandescent light bulbs are selling out fast. Those perfectly designed globes with their pure, bright light, or pearly soft glow, have been banned across Europe to slash energy costs, but the public doesn’t like it.
In Germany, householders have been stockpiling 100-watters since the beginning of the year, so sceptical are they of the new compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). In the UK, some lighting stores sold a year’s supply of bulbs in a week as the ban approached on September 1st.
Here, people are buying bulk while they can. In Woodies this week, I managed to nab the last handful of 100-watt bayonet bulbs from a half-empty shelf of Solus boxes.
“Everyone is doing it,” the girl at the till told me. “We’re supposed to be running stocks down and not re-ordering.”
I loathe the cold, sickly light of long-life bulbs and worry that they are giving me eye strain. Every time I sneak an old-fashioned one into my bedside lamp, the eco police (aged 8 and up) come along and replace it with a thing the length of a banana that gives the room all the ambience of a public toilet.
I’d willingly pay a tax on the traditional bulb, if such a thing were allowed. Why not keep the things but make buyers pay an extra €1 on each bulb, to be put towards other energy-saving projects?
Did the Commission on Taxation think of that this week? No, it did not. Nowhere in its 506-page report (imagine the waste in printing all that) did it offer such a win-win solution – and yet it could be a money-spinner. After all the plastic bag levy has brought in well over €120 million since it was introduced in 2002. We use the bags more sparingly, and we pay for the pleasure.
There are other omissions too, from the commision’s mighty document. Revenue streams that they just didn’t think of. May I suggest a few?
How about a tax, to be collected from RTÉ, on anyone using the phrase “going forward” on either radio of television? Money would flow into the coffers if, in a curse box situation, pundits had to donate €1 each time they used this dreary, meaningless phrase.
What about a tax on politicians, in fact on anyone, who is heading towards the Listowel Races next week for a mighty booze-up, the money to be given to the RSPCA to look after horses and ponies abandoned by cruel, feckless, heartless, broke owners?
Let’s have a better strike rate for “on the spot” litter fines (less than half the fines imposed in a six-month period last year were paid, according to a survey by Irish Business Against Litter) and a crackdown on anyone who flicks a cigarette butt out of their car window. While we’re at it, let’s follow the Australian code and encourage other motorists to “dob them in”, that is, take their registration number and report them to the litter police. It’s tough but effective.
Still on the road, what about a tax on drivers who rear up behind you in the fast lane, and flash their lights even though you’re already driving at the speed limit?
How about bringing back the window tax? It worked before, back in 1696 when it was introduced as an emergency levy, but lasted until 1851 giving rise to the phrase “daylight robbery”. Ireland was particularly punished by it during the Napoleonic wars, but imagine how effective it would be today, after a decade of glass box extension building?
Let’s have a tax on womens’ shoes. Okay, it didn’t work before for tiny feet but now that Laboutins and the like have become must-haves for the 30-something brigade, let ’em pay for the pleasure. What’s an extra tenner on a pair that costs €580 anyway? Go for it.
With the national airline in disarray, what about a new kind of departure tax? Everyone leaving the country would have to pay up at check-in, rates to be on a sliding scale, depending on the purpose of the jaunt. Business folk to be heavily charged as it all goes on expenses.
Ditto for the short break set who feel entitled to get away five times a year, while instant €50 per head penalties could apply to big girly gangs heading off to shop in New York. And the same to check in their obscenely large suitcases.
Leniency would have to be shown to families who tried a staycation this year and were rained on for two weeks solid in Donegal and are worried the children will get rickets if they don’t get a week in the sun.
Also, a substantial tax rebate to be given to those citizens who are throwing in the green towel and emigrating. The money to be issued at the airport in a currency of their choice. Fair is fair.
There are many more taxes that could quietly be introduced: a levy on all spa treatments and teeth whitening, heavy penalities on sunbeds and instant fines for women in people movers who take up two spaces in the shopping centre. Also, a fine for people who keep small, yappy dogs.
Finally, but lucratively, a tax on all golf players, regardless of skill, gender or dress. Anything else you can think of, drop us a line.