So back to my moan about the New Year hike in diesel prices. Below is the range of diesel prices since October 2017.

The huge 11 cent per litre hike in January is caused by a rise in taxes not supply. The government is justifying this rise citing environmental concerns. This, if you will pardon the expression is just a smoke screen. The government is in a serious crisis, one which has been on going ever since France joined the Euro. The European Central Bank has strict rules about the size of the annual public debt of the Eurozone’s members. After the financial crisis that bankers greed plunged the world into these were eased on a case by case basis, but France, even before  the crash was always way over it’s ‘permitted’ budget. Fuel taxes are the state’s fourth largest money earner, with VAT being it’s single largest.

Fuel prices, like VAT are a classic regressive tax.

To quote Wikipedia ” In terms of individual income and wealth, a regressive tax imposes a greater burden (relative to resources) on the poor than on the rich: there is an inverse relationship between the tax rate and the taxpayer’s ability to pay, as measured by assets, consumption, or income. These taxes tend to reduce the tax burden of the people with a higher ability to pay, as they shift the relative burden increasingly to those with a lower ability to pay.”

Source Regressive Tax

Diesel taxes hit poorer people harder. I would also add that diesel tax hit  rural populations harder that urban ones. the lack of public transport means that rural communities are much more dependent on our own vehicles that urban ones. Farmers who use diesel fueled machinery, workers who commute to work, just getting to the shops to buy food, the cost for the local delivery and food sellers who sell from their vans are all hit by these taxes. Yes farmers have access to red diesel, but here in the Haut Corbieres red diesel is the same prices as supermarket diesel, so no great shakes on that front.

Here at the Domaine de Montrouch diesel, after state taxes and MSA, is our single largest cost, not seeds, nor soil, nor pots, diesel. When we descend to do our markets in Lezignan, Perpignan, and Narbonne the largest cost is not the price of the stand but the diesel to get us there. So like everyone around here you go out rarely, you combine all the necessary jobs on one trip, doing markets, shopping, buying materials, paying bills. You shop for your neighbours, and they for you. You stop for hitchhikers.

If the government had a coherent plan to reduce pollution and move to a sustainable economy and the rise in diesel prices was a small part of that then I could support it. It hasn’t and this diesel price hike is not part of a wider plan. It is one more attack on the rural poor from a long distant urban elite, no amount of green frippery disguises it.