If people can create their own fake passports, ATM cards etc, they're certainly going to fake their car tag or whatever tracking device has to be fitted.

It's hardly keeping the traffic moving to price all but those who can afford the tolls off the roads or condemn them to slow-moving "chav lanes" now really, is it?

I guess that this is all to keep the Old Labour stalwarts happy. The old Class war is dead, we bring you Class war 2.0.

Mine's the Bentley doing Warp 10 up the M6 toll with two fingers stuck out the window toward the six-lane Birmingham car park.

Just "NO!". There already is an effective "use as you pay" charging system for roads, it's called fuel duty. It does not require vast arrays or Orwellian technology.

These proposals are so wrong on so many levels it is hard to know where to begin.

Nu Labour - a decade of forcing you to obey the machine.

Something must be done, yes, but it's not making a criminal out of millions of innocents and then keeping their data for 5 years 'just in case'.

How much extra mass transport could be built for the cost of this scheme ?

Motorways will cost more, so the first thing you do is bang "avoid next three miles" in your SatNav and start clogging up some poor sod's local village high street and A roads looking for a cheaper route, lots of thundering lorries and white van man, 'cos both of those groups are always looking for way to reduce costs.

Let's not even get started on the dodgy companies who will spring up to "tweak" the little boxes to make the facts a little more pleasing the bill payer. I mean phones are locked when they come out of the factory and we all know what happens to most of them!

So after being voted down on Road Pricing we now get; you guessed it Road Pricing.

Never let democracy get in the way of a good idea eh?

They don't need nomination forms. They need P45's.

I have an issue with road pricing on the basis that the main reason our twats in gov't want it is to watch our every move just in case. If they are really trying to combat congestion start putting actual police on the roads to start nailing illegal drivers and those idiots who seem to think the road laws don't apply to them as they drive Mercs or Beamers.

Often these things have "unexpected consequences" usually a lack of forethought.

So, have they considered that people determined enough to risk arrest for using stolen plates to avoid tickets/insurance/tolls will find a very simple solution to this system.

My bet is, as the motorway no longer offers the fastest high speed route smaller roads with shorter distance become more appealing and speeds on these roads will go up and with them the mortality rate.

Of course this will be countered by a speed camera on every road by 2000 and X and the PM will....

Mine's the one with a work visa and plane tickets to anywhere...

You're having a laugh?

There's money for war, for games, for police, for a billion and one useless council employees, for more surveillance (and more council employees to run it), but there's no money for roads.

Right.

And yes, to agree with others, there's already a very effective pay as you use road tax - it's called fuel duty, and it even magically takes efficiency and environmental concerns into account by costing bigger users more money.

What the government should be doing, if they have any real intention of being any help to anyone and effecting any change at all, is taking the money they're using for this (and all the other things I mentioned) and investing it in public transport infrastructure.

Fat chance, when we can just watch and tax the citizens a bit more though eh?

if they wanted to reduce congestion, to save the planet, they would gove companies tax breaks to allow people to work from home, not the plebs cuz if the company gains little they say no.

this is about money, just like everything else. but not money from us to the guv, this is about money from the guv to the companies the guv want to end up on the board of.

pork anyone?

Well... we're taxed like crazy for using them so just where exactly is all this money going?

Bring on the revolution.

They'll introduce some system like trading carbon credits for cars... i.e. more credits per mile in peak period in congestion zones. You get a set number of credits for your £200 road tax. You can buy more, if you don't use them, you can trade them. Make it as complicated as possible so the project fails and no one has any idea how much tax has increased overall...

The real alternative is to fix public transport, to incentivise companies to hire local staff and to make public transport to work tax deductible (standard class only). Alas, this will cost money and unfortunately the UK sold it's reserves of Gold when they were at an all time low (compared to a high a short while ago) - well done Gordon.

Norwich Union have great experience of standard road pricing from their Pay As You Drive fiasco, including tamper prevention of the GPRS devices used in the cars. Surprised not to see IBM on the vendor list...

here we go again. yet another attempt by the government to squeeze more money out of us. I'm SO angry and depressed that we let them get away with it. Implement road pricing and we'll still have to pay road tax (wasn't that supposed to be a temporary tax to allow the then government to rebuild damaged roads after the war?) and fuel duty 2.0* will rise inexporably and those that really have to rely on a car will find that they can't afford to run it but they can't stay at home because they'll be in fuel poverty and unable to have gas or electric. If you've got lots of money (from your city bonuses etc) then vote Labour - they're gonna make damned sure you get to keep more of it cos you're more likely to give them a non-exectutive directorship once they've drained as much money from the people as they can get away with and then need a proper job to support the extravagant ex-MP lifestyle. Then I make the big mistake of watching Newsnight and some pompous ass politician (none of them ever give a simple straight answer and insist on trying to shove a mini-party political broadcast in to each one - twats) goes on about how he's behind Gordon and how fabulous everything is - arselicking beyond belief to make sure he keeps his job or gets a ministerialship given that some of them are now realising what the term "shit hits the fan" means. they're in it to line their own pockets and I wouldn't be surprised if someone in the government isn't on the board of at least one of these companies - or there's gonna be a sweetener somewhere. Vive la revolution. Or if not, lets hope and pray that we have something better to vote for at the next General Election - not that I hold out much hope on that, they're all as bad as each other in that place. Huge pay rises to rival the CEOs, expenses that are unbelievable, bribes - no sorry, wrong word, assistance from various companies looking to "lobby" for a positive spin on something they want... oh I'm off to slit my wrists before I cheer myself up.

Paris? Cos even she could do a better job than this bunch of moronic, bloated, egotistical, self obsessed, arselicking, smug bastards.

J.

* 2.0 because it used to be a tax and now it's a green environmental incentive

People who take part in trials are volunteers, real people cheat. Electronic tags will be even easier to steal or clone than number plates. If somebody steals your number plate from your car its glaringly obvious to a Mk.1 eyeball that its missing. If an electronic tag goes its absence might not even be noticed until the police pull you up for not having one or you get a massive fine through the post.

They could also be sabotaged and the damage passed off as accidental - its difficult to get around for very long without someone noticing an 'accidently' damaged or missing number plate.

Police won't be much better off. Money will have to be found for reading technology to be issues to them. They already have eyeballs and can handle normal number plates just fine.

Another commenter mentioned the problem of fitting 32 million plus cars, many of whose owners won't really want the thing. They are quite right except the actual number is more like 50 million, then there are foreign motorists and with channel tunnel etc there are more foreign vehicles on our roads than most realise. On the other hand they all have number plates and the ANPR systems can read all of them - including foreign ones.

Cloning and number plate theft can be controlled. For a start the Police have around 90 years experience of doing so and legislation in place. The only major change needed would to change the registration on any car whose plates were stolen immediately. That way any vehicle showing up on the ANPR network with those plates would have to be a clone and could quickly be rounded up by the Police. At present any enforcement involves having both cars with the plate and the Police having to check any sightings to establish which is the genuine vehicle.

I suggest anyone who loses a number plate or even suspects one has been stolen reports it right away. It could be very helpful when the speeding tickets, congestion charges & parking fines start rolling in...