One of the (few) success stories of the EU has been its deregulation of the airways. These days people think nothing of hopping on a plane on a Friday and returning on a Sunday or Monday. People even take day trips to foreign countries just to go shopping or to attend a party. And they do it because of the Low Cost Carriers - EasyJet, RyanAir etc. - who now account for over 10% of all flights that use European air traffic control. Although it is true that some European flag carriers are a little upset hardly anyone else is. However, the EU seems to have it in for the airline sector and seems determined to find ways to make this success become as great a failure as practically everything else the EU has got itself involved in. First they tried a scheme for invoking mandatory and high levels of compensation for flight cancellation etc. which seems designed to make things harder for low cost carriers since they may have to pay out massively more in compensation than the flyer paid for his ticket.
However that doesn't seem to have been enough so yesterday l'Escroc and his dachshund, Schröder, decided to make flying more expensive for everyone by requiring a "voluntary" tax on flights to be used to provide development aid to third world countries. The Torygraph notes that this is not exactly a popular measure with the airlines and I certainly agree, as does Tim Worstall. However the best refutation of the whole practice seems to be this essay by a Portuguese gentleman who wrote about the possibility of a tax on carrots. I think I shall be joining the Rabbit Association and push for a carrot tax.