Cruisezillas (as one national newspaper has called them), aka Cruise Ships – the behemoths of the deep, gorging on filthy untaxed fossil fuels, belching CO2 and methane into the air and soiling seas with toxic sludge.

Isn’t now the time when our Iron Chancellor should tax them out of British waters for the next five years and in the process earn at least a temporary dividend to line the UK’s empty coffers?

After all, she is not increasing VAT, Income Tax, or National Insurance. A tax on cruise ships would have several advantages apart from increasing the Treasury’s funds. It would fight the climate crisis; it would help relieve all those tiny towns round the planet from having skyscrapers anchored in their ports or off their shores, disgorging tourists who contribute little to local economies because they eat and sleep in the bellies of these monsters (five times the size of the Titanic and getting even bigger).  And it would show the world that finally the UK is taking this truly global, rather than just national, crisis seriously, by taking a leaf out of the playbooks of Venice, Barcelona, and Amsterdam, and in doing so helping to protect the waters round vulnerable island nations, and even places like Ponta Delgada in the Azores.

I believe that fourteen of these mega-ships were in Southampton over the Bank Holiday. I hope that the newly-elected MPs in the areas nearby take note.

After all, the measures suggested above are in accord with the manifestos that they were following.  Nor can I believe that sensible Conservatives, like Caroline Nokes MP and some members in Hampshire County Council, wouldn’t agree and make this a cross-party policy.

Jock Macdonald,

Stockbridge Road,

Fulflood,

Winchester