If even Al Gore's partner John Doerr is now on record questioning the need for government assistance, we'd say it's well past time for Washington to turn off the subsidy spigot.

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Policy support for clean tech commercialization, demonstration, and deployment was in equally bad shape, plagued by boom-and-bust periods of expiring incentives and on-again, off-again subsidy extensions.

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When the subsidy comes off, there will presumably be an improvement on the fiscal side.

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Such is the madness caused by an on-again-off -again tax subsidy.

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Labour will characterise it as a subsidy for the well-off, which, at least at first, it will be.

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As it stands, this is a policy which Labour can easily characterise as a subsidy for the well-off.

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Letting them charge fees would at least lessen the subsidy to the better-off.

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They would abolish tuition fees for universities, which would mean either letting the quality of British higher education slide still further or raising the subsidy to mostly well-off students by increasing state funding.

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Whatever the intention, the subsidy system helps the better-off much more than the poor.

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The old image of railways as a devourer of government subsidy will not be easy to shake off, despite their new high-tech image.

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To receive the present much more generous subsidy, schemes will now need to be ticked off by December 12 - rather than 1 April 2012 as expected.

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Make no mistake, with still-buoyant demand for tickets, well-heeled sponsors and an annual subsidy of DM24m, the Berlin Philharmonic is still far better off than, say, the plucky but impecunious London orchestras.

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Prior to the subsidy, Salerno says, 20 percent to 25 percent of laid-off workers at the company continued their insurance under COBRA. "We're running close to 50 percent now, " he says.

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This would continue a subsidy to renewable energy that currently allows investors in solar projects to claim 30% off their investment tax bill.

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