You know, I really don’t mind the SNP all that much. I mean, in the sense that they are better than Labour then I am pleased they won the election. And I think that, on the whole, they have done a very competent job in charge.

But what have they done since gaining power? ASwaS notes:

The first Act of the SNP Government was to abolish tolls in and out of Fife. The second Act has been to remove university fees. As a St Andrews graduate I feel like I am in a privileged subset of the population.

So there have been two acts, both of which I oppose. This is a bit paradoxical because I am a student living in Fife. Received wisdom has it that I’m supposed to be in favour of these policies. But only the myopic think this. People see the headlines — “free this” and “free that” — without thinking about the full consequences. The policies are unashamedly populist, but unsustainable. This makes the SNP demagogues in my book.

Both of these policies are completely counter productive to a Fife-based student. I have already covered free university education before, so I won’t bore you again. But I have been meaning to write about road tolls for a long while now. So here is why road tolls should not be scrapped.

Roads are a scarce resource. There are only so many roads that can be built with the resources we have (not least space). And it is well known that no matter how many roads you build, drivers will literally be queuing up to use them.

Roads are a particularly scarce resource if you are trying to leave Fife (and who would blame you?). Geographically isolated, Fife is a peninsula. The River Tay lies to the north, the North Sea to the east, and the Firth of Forth is on the south. On the west, the Ochil Hills act as fourth barrier to entering Fife. It is almost as though the Flying Spaghetti Monster was trying to tell us something about Fife.

Anyway, the point is that if you want to travel to Edinburgh from Fife by road you don’t have many options. Basically you can cross the ageing Forth Road Bridge and deal with some horrendous traffic jams. Or you can spend even more time (and use up more petrol) going via Kincardine.

So roads out of Fife are a very scarce resource. When a resource is scarce it has to be rationed somehow. Clearly, no everyone who would like to use the Forth Road Bridge, or indeed any road, would be able to use it because there simply isn’t enough of it to go around. There needs to be some way of finding out who needs to use the road the most.

There are two ways to do it. One way is to make people spend time. This is the way most roads work, and of course the Forth Road Bridge has recently become one of those roads. The other way is to make people spend money. Evil, evil money. Yes? No.

Evan Davis has explained why queuing does a really bad job at rationing a scarce resource. When you make people queue, you are making everyone spend a lot of time. Time is the scarcest resource of them all. You can’t bring back the past, and you can’t transfer your spare time to someone else who doesn’t have enough time. Once time is spent, it’s gone forever.

If, on the other hand, you use money, it might still be costly to you as a person. But at least the money doesn’t just disappear. It has simply changed hands. The money can be re-spent again. Now, society is better off than it would have been had everyone been made to queue.

So to use the Forth Road Bridge as an example, the government could choose to whack up the price of crossing. This money could then be used to build more hospitals, or even — shock horror — a second Forth road bridge or tunnel. Or they could use it to reduce taxes.

Instead, the SNP have chosen to make not only drivers crossing the bridge, but also society as a whole, pay through the nose just so that they can say that they have removed road tolls. It’s a pretty pyrrhic victory if you ask me.

A couple of months back Calum Cashley was sceptical that the removal of the tolls would lead to greater congestion. His argument was that as the charge was only £1, removing it would not make crossing the bridge much cheaper in the eyes of many. But if anything, this is an argument that the charge was not high enough in the first place!

Instead, the SNP have taken it in the opposite direction. Common sense dictates that it would increase congestion. And evidence suggests that it has — by half an hour every morning. The rush hour is now a rush hour and a half.

The situation starts to look even worse when you consider the environmental impact of this situation. If road tolls were in use then think of the carbon emissions that would be cut. Instead, the SNP have removed the one toll road left, meaning that even more drivers are just standing still on the road with their engines running and emitting carbon dioxide. And the SNP are supposed to be a green party!

So road tolls make sense from an economic and environmental point of view. Does that mean we should dive head first into a full-on road charging scheme? Possibly not.

I seem to remember that when Evan Davis wrote that post, it was on the back of a debate about the possibility of people being charged to use roads by the mile (or something similar). This involves having a little box in your car that enables you to be tracked wherever you go. It might be economically efficient, but there is a serious problem with civil liberties there.

Also, it is perhaps worth pointing out that queuing is probably not always the worse option. Even though people grumble about NHS waiting lists, it seems preferable to a charge-based system where doctors could make up your illnesses in order to extract more money from you.

Nevertheless, the principle of road charging (if not the method as it currently stands) is perfectly sound. The tollbooth system on the Forth Road Bridge did not suffer from this civil liberties issue, so there was no good reason to abolish them. It was all the more farcical when the Scottish Government decided to pull them down at a cost of £2m, when they had only just been erected at a cost of £4m!

Since I wrote about the overblown approach some environmentalists have been taking, I may as well post about it again because two stories have caught my eye today.

Firstly the nuclear thing. Today’s announcement from the government is probably the best news for the environment for years.

Nuclear power is, after all, carbon-free (well, carbon-low anyway, as Tim Worstall points out). Increased nuclear power will reduce the high carbon emissions that arise as a result of coal and gas. Meanwhile, the technology needed to make renewable energy cost-effective is not there yet.

As such, for the medium term at least, nuclear power is the only viable, vaguely environmentally-friendly solution to the current energy conundrum. Greens ought to be cock-a-hoop. Of course, environmentalists are never happy, and they are complaining about the government’s announcement.

I’m with Niall at Mushkush here:

I am nominally a Green voter (I think my membership may even still be valid) but I’m also pro nuclear. Not necessarily because it’s a cure all - it’s not - but because it’s a necessary evil… Simply put it’s not possible to do what appears to be necessary without some nuclear in the interim.

The only reason environmentalists could be opposed to nuclear power as a medium-term solution is if they actually wanted there to be either:

1. More carbon emissions
2. No electricity

Sometimes I think some environmentalists really would prefer it if people had a standard of living that was more akin to that of the middle ages. Which brings me on to the other story that caught my eye.

Tata Motors have unveiled the world’s cheapest car, on sale for 100,000 rupees — £1,277 to you and me. It’s a breakthrough that is sure to transform the lives of people in developing countries for the better. But environmentalists are calling it a disaster.

It is not an environmental disaster. The Tata Nano must be one of the most efficient, resource-saving methods of travelling that has ever been accessible to people in a developing country like India (it wouldn’t be so cheap if it wasn’t). It will surely have a part to play in improving the standards of living of many Indians.

So what is the message environmentalists are trying to tell people in developing countries? “Sorry, but only we westerners are allowed to have cars”?

If environmentalists are really concerned about the earth’s resources, they ought to be applauding Tata’s breakthroughs in the realm of resource-efficiency.

This isn’t to say that compromises have to be made in order to tackle climate change. The solution to the problem of carbon emissions is simple and well-known: a Pigovian tax. Simply make people pay for emitting carbon.

That way there is no need for outbreaks of bansturbation or inefficient regulation (which only results in people meeting their quotas, not actively aiming to reduce emissions). A simple tax would incentivise people to reduce emissions themselves with the minimum of fuss.

So it looks as though the SNP and the Greens have come to some sort of deal, something just short of a proper coalition. But I’m with Shuggy — I don’t really understand what’s in it for them.

Obviously it can give the SNP two extra votes in the Scottish Parliament. But it is only two votes, and still far short of a majority. An SNP–Green coalition is not a good deal stronger than an SNP minority administration.

Meanwhile, I am really scratching my head as to why the Greens want to get involved. When coalition talks started, there was a joke (or was it a joke? Was it real?) that the Greens had two conditions. Those conditions were no more nuclear and fewer carbon emissions — which are both already SNP policies anyway.

If the Greens wanted to maximise their influence (as you would assume they would), you would expect them to at least ask for something a bit more radical, like no second Forth Road Bridge. Obviously no deal would be made in those circumstances because it would make both the SNP about as electorally popular as Hitler, particularly in Fife. But it would be a good starting point for the Greens.

But I’ve not heard anything about demands made by the Greens, besides a few “disagreements about transport policies”, which is a bit vague. It sounds like the Greens are giving up a lot for the sake of not a lot of power (because it would still be a minority administration).

I guess both the Greens and the SNP are hoping that the Lib Dems will come to the table. Their original stance was principled, but the fact that they are refusing to even talk about it is beginning to make them look petulant.

After all, as has been pointed out by many people, any referendum on independence would probably be lost. And a multi-question referendum would give the Lib Dems the perfect opportunity to campaign for more fiscal federalism in Scotland. Even though these issues are technically reserved matters, the debate that would be initiated could also open to door to a campaign to resolve the West Lothian Question via a federal solution in Westminster.

Moreover, there is the fact that the SNP and the Lib Dems are so damn similar, apart from the issue of independence. Would it not, for instance, be a good opportunity to implement a form of Local Income Tax, which both parties favour over the current system?

Meanwhile, those rumours that the Lib Dems’ refusal to talk is really being dictated by Gordon Brown don’t go away. I don’t know how true it is. But the very idea makes me quite uncomfortable, and for as long as the Lib Dems refuse even to talk about it, it begins to look true.

Back to the SNP, and Holyrood Watcher has noted how the SNP now face the harsh realities that come with actually being in power. Compromises to be made, and the fact that there are scarce resources (I sense this is a particular weak point for the SNP!).

The one solid Green demand — to go ahead with Edinburgh’s tram scheme — is uncomfortable for the SNP to take on board. And the SNP appear to be learning that increasing spending in one area involves opportunity costs, ie. decreasing spending in another area. Doh! Why didn’t they think of that before?

Update: Just as I finished writing this post, I saw this from Brian Taylor:

So what is this deal? The SNP and the Greens agree that - they won’t build any new nuclear power stations; they’ll introduce a law to cut climate-change pollution year on year (instead of vague longer-term targets); and they’ll “work to extend the responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament.”

Ha! In other words, no nuclear and fewer carbon emissions. ie. the Greens have extracted bugger all from the SNP. Oh well. And that wording, “work to extend the responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament” — very weak, don’t you think? The Lib Dems would like to do that as well. It looks to me like this the plan — to bring the Lib Dems on board.

Update: Having read the actual agreement (PDF), it is actually a bit stronger than that. It mentions ‘independence’ and contains a strong hint that a referendum is still on the cards.