If you are willing to believe that Leonardo da Vinci painted secret codes in The Last Supper, indicating that some bird is directly descended from the baby Jesus, then I'm sure you'll agree there was something a bit fishy about the cancellation of the Cheltenham festival this year.

Every year, the tweedy turn up and brave whatever the elements have to throw at them. But this year, a government-trained health and safety hit squad arrived and announced that, due to the high winds, the marquees were unsafe and, as a result, everything would have to be closed down.

And in case anyone was thinking of complaining, some orange-haired old bat got to her feet in the House of Lords and said the inclement weather was all down to climate change. No it wasn't. We've had high winds in March since the dawn of time. It's got nothing to do with climate change at all.

The problem was simple. Just a day earlier, a respected body had concluded that last summer's floods which drowned a million horrible sofas across the land was not due to global warming.

And this was not good news for Alistair Darling who was preparing his budget. He'd realised that his predecessor, Gordon Brown, had not saved a penny from the times of plenty and had even sold the country's entire gold reserves when the market was at rock bottom, so he hit on the brilliant idea of increasing green taxes to pay for Brown's uselessness. He just needed a climate catastrophe to make it all plausible, and, hey presto, the tents in Cheltenham were suddenly declared unsafe.

God, he must think we're thick. "Yes, Mr Darling, Sir. Of course we understand that the world will somehow be saved if we give you a thousand pounds." Except it isn't a thousand pounds. If you have a car, it's much, much more.

There was much speculation, in the run-up to the budget whether Darling would up the price of petrol, increase the cost of a tax disc or go for road pricing. In fact, he's gone for all three. Later this year, petrol will go up by two pence a litre and then, for that little extra something, it'll go up by another halfpenny shortly thereafter.

What's more, he signalled that he is in favour of road pricing, so that soon you will be expected to pay as much as £1 a mile for driving on busy roads, early in the morning or late in the afternoon - i.e. when you are going to and from work.

Then, and here's the killer, anyone who buys what he calls a high-polluting car will face a first-year increase in road tax. Now you might think this only affects rap artists with supercharged Hummers, but no, the tax disc for a normal Ford Mondeo, as driven by Darling, will be £550. The bill for, say a Gallardo, will rocket to nigh on a grand. That's not taxation. That's rape.

Darling tried to smooth this over by saying that people in cars which produce less than 100 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre will be exempt from road tax altogether. So you reckon you're safe in your Renault Modus? Well, reckon again, because even the Toyota Pious is clobbered. In fact, with the exception of the terrible Volkswagen Blue Motion, the only cars which get a zero rating are electric. And you haven't got one of those, because you're not a twat.

Plainly, we are living in idiotic times. Seriously. Basing a system of tax on how much carbon dioxide you produce is fine at the moment, because many people live on fair trade food made from mashed-up copies of The Guardian, and use fart-filled, low-energy light bulbs. But soon, when all the fuss has died down, it's going to look as outdated as William III's window-tax. You might as well tax us on how many words we say.