A quick buck

Central and regional governments are obviously after some quick bucks to solve the country's financial mess. But there needs to be a more long term approach taken.

Already over the past week we have seen the government slap a matriculation tax on the private air charter industry. Yes, it will make some quick cash from the tax but in the long term, once the air charter industry has been sunk by the tax, just like the yacht charter sector, there will be no industry left to tax and therefore no revenue being made by another extinct top end business sector.

The same can be said about fiddling with our travel discounts.
Less people are travelling because of the recession. Obviously, people have less money. But we are not always going to be in recession and people will start flying again once the situation improves.

So, by slashing or scrapping it, the government may save some money in the short term but, in the long term, even less people will fly if they have to pay full fares and as the region becomes even more isolated, business will suffer as well and the long term result will be a fall in income for the airlines and less money turned over by local businesses which need access to fairly priced air or sea travel.

Quick fixes are never any good but, considering EU residents can not vote in the important general elections, I guess we are going to have to lump it with our smaller green pieces of paper.