Is Now the Time for a Ruinous Tax?

A Question for the British Prime Minister

David Cameron,

who gave us the free advice,*
“Tax your very air”,

I have one question—
a brief answer will suffice:
“How does Britain fare?”

*  The Daily Telegraph’s Louise Gray, in “David Cameron supports Australian carbon tax”, writes:

David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, has written to Australian leader Julia Gillard in support of her planned tax on carbon to combat climate change.  [...]

“Climate change is one of the most pressing threats we face and we need to take urgent action to reduce emissions and put economics on a more sustainable low carbon footing,” he wrote.

UPDATE I:  On a not completely unrelated note, see “Families of suicide bombers given £5m in British aid cash by Matthew Kalman, at The Daily Mail:

The Government is under pressure for the amount of aid it is handing out at a time of austerity.  It plans to increase foreign aid payments by 35% to £11.4 billion by 2015.  [...]  David Cameron has admitted that the controversial pledge to spend billions more on international aid was a ‘difficult commitment’ at a time when spending programmes were being slashed at home.

Funding His Own Destruction

It’s a “difficult
commitment” to subsidise
jihadist terrors

but the PM is
unlikely to recognise
such needless errors.

A Conclusion of Sorts

Can’t Britain’s PM
distinguish virtue from vice?
We may well despair.

I suspect that he’ll
get kicked soon—it won’t be nice—
on the derrière.

UPDATE II (Tuesday evening):

A Devastation

When barbarous thugs
rampage, many excuse their
“alienation”:

willful fury, and
a sense of entitlement
are called “frustration”,

with greedy looting
and haphazard havoc termed
“retaliation”.

The reporters are
nearly as uncultured; they
lack education

but, being ill-read,
excuse inexcusable
intimidation.

We may be seeing
in England the passing of
civilisation.

David Cameron,
alas, will never perceive
the culmination

of his policies
(and his predecessors’) in
this ruination.

UPDATE III (10 August):  See Tim Blair’s “BBC Niceness” and Melanie Phillips’ “London descends into anarchy”, and “The chickens come frighteningly home to roost”, as well as “Arabs in wonderland”.

UPDATE IV (11 August):  See  Theodore Dalrymple’s “British rioters the spawn of a bankrupt ruling elite” at The Australian.  So, still planning to waste more billions on international aid to terrorists and more billions on useless “green-energy” subsidies, Mr. Cameron?  See also “England Riots” at the Digital Glebe:

Separately, the [BBC] announced it would refer to “England riots” rather than “UK riots”, following complaints from people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  The change was met with crowing from Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, who irritated the government by saying there was a “different society” in Scotland.

UPDATE V (11 August):  See my post, “The Nature and Cause of the Culture of Rioters”.

UPDATE VI (14 August):  See “£70m of British aid ‘paid to the Taliban’:  Cash wasted on bribes and protection money, say campaigners,” by Kirsty Walker of The Daily Mail:

Millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money could be ending up in the pockets of Taliban insurgents and corrupt Afghan officials, a damning report has revealed.

The International Crisis Group warned that up to 10% of overseas aid was being paid in bribes and protection money to the Taliban and officials in Kabul.

UPDATE VII (15 August):  See “Police water cannon and plastic bullets? After 50 years of the most lavish welfare state on earth? What an abject failure,” by Peter Hitchens of The Daily Mail.