Yes, I know, forlon hope given the combination of politics and non-godly religion here, but I do wish that people would be consistent. Given the announcement over the taxation of fracking we're getting the usual complaints from the usual people:

The government also came forward with a proposal to turn more of the tax revenue from fracking over to the communities where the wells would be. Friends of the Earth dismissed the tax proposal as "a new low" and likened it to paying off local councils to sign off on drilling permits. But there's nothing underhanded about the idea, which would have councils retain 100% of the property tax paid by businesses to support local services.

I'm old enough to recall when business rates were indeed paid to local councils and there was great lefty hysteria when it was decided that they should be centrally allocated instead. So I'm a little confused about the same sort of people now shouting that local taxation to pay for local things is a bad idea.

There's also been outrage at the idea that fracking fields should pay lower corporation tax rates (in reality, lower royalties but they're assessed as corp tax) than North Sea fields. Yet this criticism is coming from exactly the same people who insist, very loudly and at length, that it is the duty of government to support and even subsidise nascent industries. I don't mean just renewables here either: I mean the whole encouragement, protection and coddling of infant industries. It is exactly those who support such ideas who are now screaming about the government encouraging such an infant industry merely by the expedient of not taxing the snot out of it.

Which is what brings me to my wish: that people will at least be consistent in their ideas and approaches. For we do need to have an attitude towards governmental subsidy and encouragement which is more sophisticated than merely to provide them for things I like and don't for things I don't.