Blame the Greens for some things, but don’t blame them in the wrong

IT has been another bad week for the public perception of the Green Party’s behaviour in power. It must have been made worse for those in the party by the fact that the latest blow involved getting the blame for something it hadn’t actually done.

The newspaper headlines screaming that party leader John Gormley – in his role as minister for the environment – was enforcing a new higher rate of motor tax for commercial vehicles that are used occasionally by their drivers/owners for personal use has done significant damage to the already reeling party.

The public reaction to the idea was one of fury – or at least from those who would be affected by such a move. It didn’t matter that the story had been spun in a misleading way, that there was no new tax being proposed or introduced and that the Department of the Environment – apparently unknown to its minister – had merely issued a document reminding local authorities of a long-in-place but rarely enforced law: it has always been the case that a car-user paid the higher rate of motor tax if a commercial vehicle was used for personal reasons (There are also benefit-in-kind rules relating to income tax because of the realisation that commercial cars and vans are used in this way).