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Chancellor is 'lying tax grabber' Tuesday February 27, 10:51 AM

Gordon Brown's air passenger duty rise was simply "a bloody tax grab" and had nothing to do with the environment, Ryanair's boss has claimed.

The chancellor used his pre-Budget report last year to double the levy in an apparent bid to help tackle climate change.

But in an interview with this month's Parliamentary Monitor magazine, Michael O'Leary said the tax increase was not an environmental measure.

"Gordon Brown has lied," he said. "It's just a bloody tax

grab.

"He says it will go into Treasury pockets and be used for environmental measures."

O'Leary added that: "Taxing cheap air travel is Brown's contribution to the environment. That is £1bn in taxes, and not one cent of it will be spent on the environment.

"You have government ministers regularly flying around the world in private jets, business and first class, lecturing ordinary working families who take their one holiday a year on a fundamentally green and efficient airline like Ryanair."

Asked why he thinks he and other low-cost airline operators are being picked on O'Leary said: "It makes for sexy television and media coverage.

"It makes for a nice news clip if you show an aircraft taking off on a runway and say that it accounts for two per cent of CO2 emissions, rather than showing a boring picture of a bloody ship which accounts for four per cent of emissions.

"But why they fail to put up pictures of belching power stations remains a mystery."

O'Leary should stand for election!!

Andrew

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Homer Simpson

Yes, Mr O'Leary is fast becoming one of my favourite businessman. It's quite shameful how the Government have behaved towards him and his business, all because he dared to speak up against their bullying.

Mr O'learly, if you really want to beat up the Government, make a donation to SafeSpeed too.

I really can't stand O'Leary. He's motivated by one thing - becoming very rich.

That said, if he was up for a bit of philanthropy, I'd like to see him 'restructure' the Civil Service like RyanAir. I bet he could find one or two places to cut costs and waste.

RyanGov - The low cost country.

I admire his honesty and his approach.

I don't think he's trying to be something he's not.

Oh yes I think the civil service and all government depts could do with a good dose of o'leary. The problem is of course that Brown has grown the public sector to ensure that there are plenty of people in work......VED aka the swansea job creation scheme for instance! It suits brown to have a large and un wieldy public sector because his economic model depends on it!

thats a fantastic idea, or that stellios bloke- easygov

although i expect people would complain at the DIY heart surgery and you'd never hear the end of it if the big ben was painted orange.

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction