Green spies and taxmen who make us see red

Like a dog biting a man, news that a state-sponsored technology project has been another extravagant disaster is barely news at all. Yet this week's news that the technology for the pay-as-you-throw rubbish collections constantly broke down made the front page and was read with delight across the country.

Politicians and environmental campaigners should draw a simple lesson from the general glee. People don't like the new taxes, whether on rubbish or fuel. They want to believe they are a con, and they are desperate for them to fail.

If the political class doubts me, it should look at what has happened to the Tory MP David Davis. Most thought his decision to storm out of Parliament over the rights of terrorist suspects marked him as an eccentric. As soon as he said his defence of civil liberties included a crusade against spy cameras in bins, he became a popular hero.

Good councils already know that carrots work better than sticks. They don't use Greenery as an excuse to institute rolling fortnightly collections - to provide a worse service for the same money, in other words. They provide a better service with new collections for recyclable waste alongside the old collections for household rubbish, and no one complains.

Many in the elite have yet to follow their example. They haven't learned that the smug assumption that anyone who criticises them is a Neanderthal brute who does not care if polar bears die of sunstroke infuriates-those who must sit through their sermons.

First, they need to acknowledge that there's no need to raise fuel duty this autumn. The soaring price of oil is already, in effect, a huge carbon tax, which will radically alter behaviour. Once they've grasped that, they should understand that the poorest will be least able to cope with the new world of high commodity prices.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies found that increasing fuel costs cut the income of the poorest 10th of Britons by twice the rate of the richest 10th. All right, you might say, the poor can't afford to drive cars. But they must heat their homes in winter if they want to live, and will need to be compensated with tax cuts, home insulation grants and benefit rises.

Meanwhile, the rest of us need to be treated as partners in a common endeavour rather than potential criminals.

If the state matches increases in green taxation with cuts in traditional taxes, provides us with new services to encourage recycling and generally appeals to our better nature, we will go along with it. If it lets loose armies of spies and tax collectors, we use every trick in the book to foil them.