Comment backlog

Cue 20 posts below (mine not yet even published) saying exactly the same thing, with everyone (myself included) thinking they were the first to say it!

Good point!

"I could get 90% of people to agree stopping breathing was a good idea by crafting the questions."

Let's see... "Do you agree that CO2 pollution is a terrible problem and that everyone should stop contributing CO2 to the atmosphere?"

Pretty easy. Ask that at a primary school and see what kind of % you get :D

I can think of one straight away.

Disabled drivers. Or those with Motability Scheme vehicles.

Particularly with regards to those with Motability Scheme cars - where usually their entire Disability Allowance is used to fund the cost of the car, leaving nothing left over for the cost of the fuel. You suggestion would unfairly penalise them.

Here's another one - rural drivers. Often with no public transport alternatives and are accordingly forced to use their cars. This would unfairly penalise them.

Oh and how about this one - People who use their cars because the public transport costs are an absolute bloody rip off and, in many cases, are MUCH more expensive than driving the car. Sort out the bloody public transport costs BEFORE hammering motorists at every angle and I might be inclined to start agreeing with you.

So much for 'pretty much non-existant downsides', eh? Or was it a case of you not being bothered enough to actually give it some thought?

I never fail to be amazed that we SOLD OFF the train rail network to private investors who then still demand massive subsidies to operate, seemingly increase ticket prices whenever they feel like it, cut train services (or increase the First Class provision), are making enormous profits for the shareholders and Execs - and yet still bleat and whine that they don't have any money for investment! They should be forced to invest some of those obscene profits ni the network. Or use them to reduce ticket prices. No-one (and I don't believe the poll stating that 4 out of 5 agree with road pricing) will accept us as drivers continuing being milked until there are AFFORDABLE alternatives.

That's bollocks

"Here's another one - rural drivers. Often with no public transport alternatives and are accordingly forced to use their cars. This would unfairly penalise them."

I live in a rural area, and have no problem with putting the cost on fuel, do you have some evidence that suggests that rural drivers do more miles than urban drivers? If not, then it's not a unfair tax at all. Nobody is forcing anyone to pay for something they don't already pay for. We are saying that those that take more (of the road) should pay more.

Pretty much all your points actually fail.. Nobody is entitled to have a car, not even the disabled.

I say go one further, if you are an OAP, you get the choice, keep your car OR get a free bus pass, you can't have both.... Surrender your licence in exchange for your free OAP bus pas..

Re: On-street parking

Gosh, identifying untaxed cars must be a *serious* problem for all those countries that don't issue tax discs.

Oh, wait, it isn't. You know that thing with the aerial on the end that issues the tickets? Well, the traffic warden can look up the tax status of a vehicle from its registration number.

The tax disc has served absolutely no genuine purpose for many years now. The only reason it still exists is so that when it drops off the windscreen onto the floor they get to fine you for it. Over here I get billed quarterly for car tax and no little pieces of paper have to change hands to accomplish this.

Oh and SORN? That never served any valid purpose bar ensuring that everyone who owns any sort of vehicle gets to be pissed off by the DVLA rather than only those that actually use them.

Hurrah

the DVLA seems to be a large bureaucracy, which spend most of its time thinking up new means of raising money, which it needs to pay for the large bureaucracy which has built up in order to manage these new ways of raising money.

You Need Road Tax

Otherwise how do the governement and the police know who owns motor vehicles then?

Congratulations, Peter 45

You have now discovered Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy.

"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."

downside is obvious

There would be no need for ANPR cameras and satellite tracking of every journey make and how many people in the car. No need for in car face recognition cameras pointing at the driver. No need for ID cards and implanted RFID chips.

Clearly the only way of fairly taxing the road system is to track every movement of every human and tax based on all the data collected. If you make a journey without paying the charge in advance you can then be fined.

The title is too long.

<STRONG>"Unless of course the real aim is to monitor the movements of all cars in which case you probably need to find some way to sell the idea to a sceptical public."</STRONG>

Now who'da thunk they'd still be trying all the things that NuLabour did, but with a different justification?

It doesn't matter who I vote for, the Government still gets in!

road usage and fuel duty

> We already have "usage based road charging" - it's called fuel duty.

No it isn't. That's a tax on the use of fuel. This isn't the same thing as road usage. A gas guzzler will need a lot more fuel to use as much road as a supermini, all other things being equal.

Transport policy in this country has been fucked up for decades. There are too many cars and trucks on the roads and far too much congestion as a result. But there's no alternative because public transport is either non-existent or expensive and shit.

Road pricing is not the answer, even if it could be made to work and the civil liberties problems could be solved. Which of course they won't.

Meanwhile the Department of Transport plays a long game, softening up public opinion for road pricing, as it prepares the ground for yet another over-ambitious and expensive surveillance system. You'd hope Whitehall would look past the PR bullshit and realise from the ID card fiasco that this new scheme is doomed to fail.

Doh!

"No it isn't. That's a tax on the use of fuel. This isn't the same thing as road usage. A gas guzzler will need a lot more fuel to use as much road as a supermini, all other things being equal."

...So a bigger car (occupying more road space) will cost more?

Still sounds like a road use tax to me.

...And travelling a larger, faster, less congested road at higher average speed will cost less?

Yep. Still sounds more efficient way to charge for road usage than a huge network of cameras and ridiculous administrative / bureaucratic overhead.

Re: Doh!

You would have a point, if all vehicles of a given size and occupying the same road space used the same amount of fuel.......

Mine's the one with the keys to the AC Cobra in the pocket.

Good point

Good point. With road usage tax, I'll be able to run a massive 5l V8, and pay the same as somebody else running a 1.6

Unless of course, there's going to be some elaborate and complex way of charging based upon engine size.

Oh wait, hang on, don't we already have this with FUEL DUTY?

As I say. Logic fail.

This whole idea is somewhere on the far side of daft.

@Matt

"This whole idea is somewhere on the far side of daft."

As is the government and a majority of civil servants.

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

Or by going back to the tricks that Red Ken was playing on Londoners before his "Congestion" Charge tax came into play: fiddle with the traffic light timings to cause extra congestion. It is incredible how much extra fuel is used in a 3 hour stop/start crawl/delay. That will have the added advantage of fouling up the air quality measurements, so the greenies can then campaign to have all the affected roads declared "traffic free" (in the same way that vast swathes of the landscape is now "smoke free").

Whichever way they do it, the ambition seems to foul up the ability of the individual to travel in his own country, except he has permission from "the authorities" for each and every journey.

Yep - your missing something

The only problem is that anyone bringing a lorry or car into the UK will fill the tanks to the brim before crossing the channel. Lorries that may cross the channel regularly will have large capacity fuel tanks fitted. Chip shops will do a roaring trade in selling waste oil to anyone with a garden shed to produce home brew diesel in. Every back street garage will have a special offer on converting your car to run on propane or butane from cylinders intended for bbq’s. In Northern Ireland, those who don’t know someone in the IRA with a nice line in smuggled fuel will fill up in Eire, and quite how they decide to make electric cars pay their way, I really don’t know.

Moron...

...I work in an utter fucking shithole of an area. That's why the campus is here, it's dead cheap land as no one want to live in this hole.

I live 10 miles from work and oddly enough when I did live closer, it actually took 20 minutes longer to work as I had to battle with the other hapless soles.

So now I live further out, come in a different route and probebrly use less fuel.

And as I live ina nice area, I don't have to drive out every weekend to get out of the shit tip, I'm happy to walk to the shops at night as I know I'm unlikely to get stabbed. My kid can play in the park without worring about sitting on a syringe by some crack head and my wife can go to the local without fear of being raped.

So fuck of you smug self centered prick. I pay for the travel it's called fuel duty, so don't tell me I should live in some fucking dump, to save £1 a week.

QFT

Are you running for MP.

i would vote for you :)