A Green Budget. NOT.

Well that was a damp squib for anyone hoping for a green budget. Here are the headlines:

• A change from air passenger duty to a tax on planes but no curb on airport expansion which will guarantee that we can't meet our CO2 reduction targets.
• £26m to help homes become greener - that's about a pound per UK household!
• A law to make supermarkets charge for plastic bags by 2009 if they don't do it themselves - just as communities all over the country are introducing voluntary bans.
• £950 on the price of a new gas guzzler but no curb on roads expansion and a delay on increasing fuel duty.
• New non-domestic buildings to be zero carbon by 2019 when the more progressive councils, like Lib Dem Milton Keynes, have already brought in carbon neutrality for new buildings.

Did I say headlines? I'm sorry - that's your lot - there's nothing else. And set against that there's no feed-in tariff to encourage individuals and businesses to supply electricity to the grid which is what has kickstarted the renewables industry across Europe, there's no comprehensive plan for making our homes more energy efficient, there's no investment in railways, no new money for wave technology.

It's pathetic. And, as The Guardian pointed out today, it actually amounts to "a cowardly cut in green taxes of some £550m."