I appeared on SKY News on Sunday 6th September, urging the government to extend the scrappage scheme to the end of the year. Then start a new one for cars a year younger. The SMMT later endorsed this and on 28th September the government coughed up a further £100,000,000, and extended qualification for scrappage to cars first registered before 1-3-2000 and vans first registered before 1-3-2002. This takes some heat off the increase in VAT to 17.5% from 1st January. And, of course, on a car sold for £8,000 the Taxpayer gets back £1,043 in VAT and £55 in first registration fee on cars that would not otherwise have sold, so the scheme effectively finances itself. The next question is what happens after 1-3-2010 when sales of new cars emitting more than 130g/km CO2 will be hit with an extra CO2 based sales tax of between £110 and £950 with no scrappage scheme to lessen the blow.