Apologies for yet another post on fuel costs, but I heard an interesting exchange on BBC News's Question Time last night. The Government was represented by the almost-forgotten Geoff Hoon, never a good idea, and there were three lesser lights from other parties.
Inevitably the first question was about fuel costs, and whether the Government would cut excise duties to ease the burden on consumers. Hoon launched into a boilerplate New Labour spiel about how the Government needed tax revenues to pay for health, education, policing and so on -- no mention, you may notice, of the expensive weapons programmes that Hoon was in charge of when he was defence minister.
The questioner listened to all of this, then with a butter-wouldn't-melt expression asked this simple but brilliant follow-up question: "Can I just ask how you were planning to pay for all of these things if the cost of energy hadn't skyrocketed?"
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