Have to agree with Patently, they are not interested at all, I say that by virtue of tha fact that untaxed cars I have reported continue to be so, despite giving the address where the vehicles are every night and most days. The newspaper 'blitzs' and tails of mobile crushers are just propaganda pantomimes.
Looks like it's endemic....
www.wigantoday.net/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=66&...4
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I have to say I don't agree with anyone running an untaxed car, but I wouldn't dream of being a busybody and reporting anyone for doing so. If people want to take the risk of prosecution that is for them alone.
I don't believe it's the business of anyone to go around doing the government or the police's dirty work.
They will take as much money off us as they can possibly can get away way...they don't need any help from us!!. Maybe if all motorists stuck together a bit more and refused to pay the highest motor taxes in the world we might just get a better deal.
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Yes, but if they're anti-social neighbours who wreck your garden, and bounce their old BMW off the rev limiter at 6am, and have 4 alsations barking and gardens steeped in excrement it's one of the ways you try and get them back!
I also met an old lady in May (well I met most of the people on the road) in a nice village who reported a drug dealer with untaxed cars and all the visitors to the house with untaced cars, and the a police woman went round and said she had a vendetta against the neighbour and they had better things to do than deal with untaxed cars.
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think long and hard about these scumbags as you hand over your hard earned at the post office..
do everything you can to "grass" them up even though nothing seems to happen,,
i profoundly disagree with the do nothing its not my problem brigade.
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>>i profoundly disagree with the do nothing its not my problem brigade.<<
Tend to agree on that.
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""I wouldn't dream of being a busybody and reporting anyone for doing so. If people want to take the risk of prosecution that is for them alone.
I don't believe it's the business of anyone to go around doing the government or the police's dirty work.""
So, DH (!), you are quite content to let him get away with it while you stump up ever more tax (or suffer poorer public services) to cover for him?
Do you do your own tax assessment? Doing the government's dirty work for them I mean.
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What lovely people!..I totally agree mate, I should make it clear I was refering to the odd out of date tax disked car as you might spot down your local highstreet.
Whole streets dotted with old bangers with no tax/ insurance is another matter and I would support anyone who made a report. From the article it seems that this would be a bit of waste of time given the current set of mucked up prioritys the police seem to have.
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"alsations"
or Alsatians even.
Typical of the attitude in this country "I'm not going to help the Police"; lets hope nothing happens to ST and all the witnesses decide to turn a blind eye on the same basis.
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PU - to be fair to ST, wasn't it dieselhead whose policy was to turn a blind eye because he saw it as doing the police's dirty work?
Are you the new spelling monitor around here ?
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The thing is with deadlegs running around without a valid tax disc is that its usually just the tip of a very large iceberg.Often no insurance,MOT or even a licence,let alone the car being a death trap.Catch 'em and crush 'em(the cars that is).
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Another option you have is to report the car to the local council as having been abandoned, possibly since last November.
This, coupled with a call to the police and the DVLA etc will get something going.
If this doesn't work, get a photo of it and go along to your local press to complain that the police are evaiding their responsibilities. This will put the cat among the pigeons.
Hugo
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The number now evading car insurance is now in excess of one million and recent press reports state that this will cost all us law abiding motorists an extra £60 per year on our premiums.!!!
IMHO we must stand together on this issue and shop these scumbags.
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Yes I'm sorry ST. A rather cross PU today.
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... And what about another law, mobile phone usage whilst driving?
Joining an urban dual carriageway at a roundabout this morning, I noticed that the woman who darted out in front of me had a mobile phone glued to her hear, and was engaged in a very deep conversation.
A hundred yards up the road, the driver of the car to her left accelarated hard to squeeze to the right in front of her. His intentions, although agrressive, had a clear two or three second warning. She reacted not a jot, and how they didn't hit, I don't know.
When another motorist then wagged his finger at her mobile phone usage, he got The Finger in return. Charming behaviour from the female gender.
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Untaxed cars...those who do pay, paying for those who don't...
There is, as there has always been, a simple answer to stop the evasion overnight.
What is it?
It's to scrap Road Tax altogether.
No need for the annual renewal palaver.
No need for unpaid tax to be chased up.
No need for all those millions of reminders to be posted out.
It shouldn't mean too much on the price of petrol, and petrol retailers are already unpaid tax collectors, so an increase shouldn't make any difference. I realise that our petrol tax is already absurdly high, but the answer to the road tax evasion problem is a simple one.
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Why should we have to pay road tax at all?
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I find these views really very sad.
One main reason, evry year 90 odd percent of owners turn up at a Post Office with their insurance and MOT certificates and pay up.
I wonder what the non-insured and non-MOTed rates would be if this simple once a year chack was not carried out?
Personally I think that raising the tax disc to say £500 a year would have a dramatic effect on reducing the number of cars on the road.
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And a dramatic effect in increasing the number of untaxed cars onthe road?
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hxj,
I'm glad that you feel that you can afford £500 per year for road tax. I, and millions more like me, cannot. I need my car for work - I work shifts and rather ironically when I finish a late shift, there is no bus to get me home. It's all very well to hoik up the prices to reduce the amount of cars on the road but that then merely creates an underclass who suffer.
Dieselhead,
I will continue to report any untaxed vehicle that I see. I pay a lot of money each year for the dubious privilege of driving on the UK's roads and I'll be damned if I'm going to sit back and let people get away without paying. If I pay up, then so should they. So there ;-)
I actually reported an untaxed van on our road using this address: unlic.dvla@gtnet.gov.uk . About a fortnight later, two geezers are getting it started and moved and it hasn't been seen since. Either that was a coincidence, or the system works.
Cheers
Rob
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The great unwashed won't be put off driving if VED is raised to £500 if they don't bother at £165. They just buy cars for under £200, and treat them as disposable. If they break down, they torch them, if they get clamped, they leave them etc..... They just phone up the local car thief and get another one, with cloned plates, no tax, no insurance or MOT or they buy a cheap MOT failure and never register it in their name.
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Agree ST, yet more good reasons to slap the whole lot on petrol - no excuses, no admin/ paperwork, no avoidance, cost proportional to usage etc.
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VM,
Yes, but slapping the whole lot on petrol will mean even more drive offs without paying at the pumps than there currently already are. If the car isn't registered to them, they won't give a stuff about cctv or numberplate recognition systems.
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Yep- that's true DD but it's really not that difficult to operate a pay BEFORE you fill up policy as some garages in certain less salubrious areas already do. I suppose you could also argue that some people could then also pay for their petrol using cloned credit cartds but that's really no different from paying for your road tax/insurance with stolen money is it. The point is that it's currently
very easy to break the law without actually doing anything - nobodies looking out for you and you'll be unlucky to get caught. Putting road tax etc. on petrol would require people to steal in order to avoid paying and tightening up security measures at petrol stations really should be able to take care of that and hence require people to take a real risk if they want to try and get round the system. Furthermore, even if Mr Low Life does steal a car and fit it with false plates he still has to buy petrol (and therefore contribute to the tax/insurnace fund) to continue to drive it.
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Volvoman,
"it's really not that difficult to operate a pay BEFORE you fill up policy as some garages in certain less salubrious areas already do."
What, like the Texaco garage on the A21 at Farnborough Hill ;-)? Seriously, though, I object to this as it lumps every single law-abiding honest motorist in with the scum. This system treats everybody as potential criminals and must have an adverse effect on our psyche somewhere down the line.
Having said that, though, isn't that how the system has worked in America for some years? I suppose it just needs the right "spin" put on it ie 'We're doing this for your own good, to reduce the amount of drive-offs'.
Nothing like a post that completely contradicts itself is there? :-)
Cheers
Rob
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Rob - I just hope you're not going to be contradicting yourself on Friday night !!!
BTW - you're right about it being a pity that decent folk are lumped in with scum but that's life today isn't it - it's how the mail-order business has worked for years.
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Rob - I just hope you're not going to be contradicting yourself on Friday night !!!
Depends on how much vino tinto you ply me with! ;-)BTW - you're right about it being a pity that decent folk are lumped in with scum but that's life today isn't it - it's how the mail-order business has worked for years.
Hadn't thought of it like that. Of course, you're quite right in that for years we have been required to stump up the cash before we get the goods. In fact, I've just this minute paid for a DVD of The Blues Brothers (the video ate my prehistoric copy, you see) before I've actually got it in my sweaty little mitts. By that logic, I should have no trouble whatsoever with paying for my petrol before it is dispensed.
It'd take some getting used to, mind!
Cheers
Rob
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Also (so as not to get 'timed out') given most people's apparent inability to live anywhere near within their means, paying for tax, insurance etc. on petrol would avoid that horrendous time of the year when the car tax, mot and insurance bills all fall on the doormat at the same time! How many otherwise decent folk simply 'forget' to pay their insurance because it's a 'heavy month'?
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Instead of having a tax disc you would have an mot disc and an insurance disc displayed. If they weren't present on the vehicle (vehicles under 3 years old excepted for mot) then the same reporting methods should be in place. Ideally penalities for missing these two items would be a lot greater than they are now for no insurance etc. Insurance details are all computerised so it shouldn't take a genius to work out any car that isn't sorned and doesn't have insurance shouldn't be on the road and the registered keeper of that vehicle should be sent a stiff letter demanding the car is SORN'd immediately or insured immediately. Ditto for MOTs in force, either the car is taken off the road or a valid MOT should be obtained within say 14 days or the person is taken to court.
teabelly
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I'm sure I've noticed when in France they have something along these lines, all the cars appeared to have a small sqaure tax disc like document in the windsceen showing valid insurance. Does anyone know how their full system works? Is it better than ours and does it reduce the amount of uninsured scum on the road?
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You're all wrong IMHO, the British are obcessed with new rules and legislation to counter the criminal scum, who of course will continue to stick two fingers up at the law. Put VED on petrol they will steal the petrol, make you pay before the petrol is dispensed, they'll rob you and I for the cash or drill holes in our plastic fuel tanks... Its the SCUM we have to get rid of with proper punishments and deterrents and a reversal of wet pathetic liberal thinking, and not getting rid of the decent majority's liberties.
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Agreed there are a hard core of 'scum' ST but I think they are a very small minority and most people who abuse the system do so because it's easy. If we could deal with this majority there'd be more resources to deal with the 'scum' and there I do agree with you that we really have to start getting tough and hitting these people where it really hurts them.
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String 'em up eh Sooty?
Blimey, that's given me a curious mental image! Whatever would Sweep and Soo say?
I'll get me coat....
Cheers
Rob
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It's not my policy to 'turn a blind eye' to anyone commiting criminal acts...I just don't wish to report anyone in the high street who may have let the car tax get a couple of months out of date....
If I did it would most likely be the generally law abiding people who would get prosecuted..as others have said, the pondlife who know how to play the system appear to have no fixed address or assets and would be untouched. What's needed is a change in the culture of the courts and police who only seem interested in dealing with 'soft targets'.
I think there is also a wider issue here.. I currently own and pax road tax on 2 cars but I still don't want to legitimise a system that seeks to force motoring beyond the means of anyone who isn't wealthy...paying the highest motoring taxes in the world might be acceptable if we had public transport that isn't so unreliable and expensive.
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Yeah understood Dieselhead but if someone's driving without tax what else are they driving without? Mot? Insurance? It's easier to get away with the latter because you're not required to show a visible document in your car and unless you get stopped by the police, nobody's going to find out. Also, one of the reason we all pay so much 'driving tax' is because there are so many cheats.
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"Also, one of the reason we all pay so much 'driving tax' is because there are so many cheats".
Not true. So then if a car tax non payer is identified, we would all get a discount of £165/20,000000 on our next car tax. I doubt it..
Car taxes are so high because motorists are seen as sitting ducks.. president Blair thinks that by using stealth tax's we won't notice we are paying more and more and getting nothing in return for it. There is no fixed amount of money that has to be raised..they will take as much as they can possibly get away with to employ more penpushers. The only real way to change this situation is with the vote.
I have never driven a car without mot/tax/insurance yet I must have been stopped by the police and asked to produce documents for 'routine checks' several times over the last 12 years. I have no criminal convictions or never been in trouble with the police ....so how anyone manages to get away without paying for any length of time i don't know.... I suspect the police have the power to stop most of the serious car tax evasion...if they wanted to.
Suggesting putting car tax onto fuel duty is a bit like turkeys voting for Christmas..we would end up paying more in the end :).
nobody is going to stomach £80 to fill up a mondeo...
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Sorry, dieselhead, but I can't agree with your "political" (though obviously motoring-related, mods.) statements.
Motorists have long since been taxed, whether through Road Tax, Car Tax, VAT, Insurance Tax, duty on petrol, congestion charging, or whatever - most of which date from well before "President Blair" came on the scene, and would be the same whichever party or individual were in power.
It stands to reason that if a system designed to collect these taxes is abused and additional resources have to be ploughed into catching cheats and evaders, then the costs for everyone are going to go up somewhere along the line - maybe not directly through car-related taxation.
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"Suggesting putting car tax onto fuel duty is a bit like turkeys voting for Christmas..we would end up paying more in the end."
Agreed - whenever a taxation method/measure changes it always goes up.
"nobody is going to stomach £80 to fill up a mondeo..."
Sadly wrong. I remember when petrol was around a £1, when it reached £2 everyone agreed that if it ever reached £3 nobody would use their cars. Fact is, we pay whatever it takes. It already costs me £50 to fill my 406 - and I do this 3 times a fortnight!
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Your argument seems to be centred around possible abuse of the system by HMG in order to raise revenue. Well if they want to do that they already can by a myriad of means! As for turkeys and Christmas - I'm not sure I agree, I heard the results of a poll recently (may have been Sky News or TalkSport) which showed the vast majority in favour of such a measure. I suppose the truth is that some people will pay more but others will pay less according to usage and, if you think about it, that how most of our bills are calculated these days.
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Got to agree with SR - but Dieslehead, putting road tax etc. on petrol would require no complex administration, no reminders, no paperwork, no annoying post office queues, no enforcement etc., etc. Also, there'd be no possiblity of fines (which many people get worked up about) for the genuine driver who simply forgets or is unable to get their tax on time for some other reason. If you're worried about abuse of the system by HMG, there is no reason why the whole thing couldn't be overseen by a small, autonomous and apolitical body. This on its own would save money and reduce the overall cost to us all. Furthermore, not everyone would pay the same - a little old lady who uses her car for 1 journey a week to the local shops and back isn't going to be paying the same as someone for example who does 30k pa and uses their car a work tool through which they generate income. Surely that is fairer and far more efficient so I really can't see much of a downside.
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Rant.
IMHO
Dieselhead, you are absolutely right.
SR, the extreme to which "il presidente" will go know no bounds and the demand for other peoples money is infinite. The visceral hatred of the motorist is the only consistent functioning part of the governments "integrated transport policy".
Volvoman, the BBC have confirmed (on a Money Programme)that Irish Republican terrorists and other organised crime do extremely well out of high petrol taxes through illegally converting red diesel and flogging it. Given this Govt. total failure to oppose organised crime and choosing to police the compliant through the Proceeds of Crime Act, IMHO the Govt will always go down the path of least resistance. i.e. police the compliant not the criminals. However, if you were to set up protected traffic police units with dedicated traffic courts out of the tax take, well then I'd agree with you in cutting down paperwork!
Incidentally, abandoning inspection of documents at the PO would probably lead to a spectacular increase in uninsured vehicles, unless Police were properly rersouced and not subject to this Govts hatred of the car.
End rant
Have a nice day
Vercin
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Compromise - taxation on fuel on the basis that the millions saved by scrapping the existing system are used to cut down on uninsured/non-registered cars?
This cuts through a veritable mountain of bureacracy and deals with some of the problems previously mentioned.
Agree with Volvoman - this is by far the fairest way of taxation for road use, if you want (and can afford) a larger engined car
then you can afford the additional taxation.
The point is you would have a choice - with the existing road tax system that choice doesn't exist.
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Unfortunately, you'd probably end up paying more if car tax was put on petrol. Cars will still need to be registered and there will be a charge for this. Eventually, the government of the day will increase this fee - costs have increased etc. - and we will end up being doubly taxed.
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Not necessarily a bad thing - if the cost of owning a car was more visible i.e. taxation through petrol then it would make many folk take a look at their usage.
If the number of unnecessary journeys was reduced that would benefit everyone right?
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Good point, Malcolm.
Thought we were already being charged for registration anyway?
Vecin - "visceral hatred of the motorist"? Really? Slightly out of perspective? Possible exaggeration? I think a lot of things imposed by lot of regimes around the world could be described as "visceral hatred" - but not the policies of successive UK governments on motoring.
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Can anyone explain why insurance companies can't be compelled to advise Swansea when a car is insured and keep them informed when a policy comes off the books?
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Insurance companies share information with each other and I think the police so I assume a standard pnc check would tell a policeman whether the car was legit in that respect. If this isn't the case it will be because some clueless civil servant didn't specify their computer system correctly. I am sure with a few lines of perl and access to both the insurance databases and the dvla it would be possible to produce a list of all vehicles that aren't sorn'd and that aren't insured. Might take a while to produce though!
teabelly
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"visceral hatred of the motorist"?
I have to say I think that was a fair comment really!. In the last few years there has been issues such as the hated fuel tax escalator, an explosion in the use of speed cameras, 'nanny state' traffic calming measures appearing everywhere, bus lanes for empty buses, cars confiscated and crushed at the ports and the road building program has been slashed. HMG instinctively dislikes private transport yet has no alternative.
Imposing all the tax burden onto petrol would be unfair on bods living in rural areas with no public transport. Taxation is allready based on ability to pay based on car purchase price and CO2 emissions.
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So "visceral hatred" basically includes expecting motorists to obey the law, and introducing so-called "nanny state" measures for a group of people who have historically proved themselves to be incapable of judging what is safe and what isn't?
It's not HMG's fault that people are so attached to their cars that they can't bear to leave them and use public transport even when it IS a viable alternative.
When judging viability cars have an unfair advantage because so many people get away with breaking so many laws. Maybe if they couldn't jump into their uninsured and non-MOT'd cars and drive (unlicensed or banned) at whatever speed they like, with half their lights not working and without wearing a seatbelt, and then park on a pavement or in a space intended for disabled people.....public transport might start to look more attractive.
But then, if HMG dared to start clamping down on some of those offences that would just be "visceral hatred of the motorist" again, wouldn't it?
Surely wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility to subsidise petrol in rural areas? Would help tourism too.
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Wasn't it HMG that allowed out of town shopping centres to be built and is responsible for the state of our public transport.. You can't expect people to pay a small fortune to run a car then be happy to leave it at home and endure the delays, discomfort and high cost of using buses or railtravel. This could change if motoring taxation was used to subsidise buses etc. but HMG is too greedy to do this.
There is an argument for people thinking a bit more responsibly about their car use but on the other hand we are mostly not as bad as North America driving monster "fashion accessory" SUV's.
For the small minority of people who drive with no tax, mot etc.. People do this because they know any fine they may recieve will probably be less than the cost of running a car legally!. Nobody would have a problem with action being targeted specifically at theses people.
A rural subsidy would be very difficult to implement and unfair. People living on the border of a rural area would be forced to pay full price when someone living say 10 miles away recieves a subsidy...
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Out of town shopping centres were built because there was demand for them, not because HMG said so. Most have perfectly adequate bus links to local areas at least, and if people choose to use their cars to get there that's fine, because they're out of town and congestion rarely becomes an issue.
I don't accept the universal "delays, discomfort and high cost" of rail travel. I can either take the car and have a relatively stressful 30-minute journey to work or take the train and get there in the same time, with the option of reading the paper or doing some work (no, not really) on the way. The cost is about the same for the journey, plus I'd have to pay an extra £5 or so to park the car, or walk for about 15 minutes from nearest free parking. Local station has a well-lit, CCTV-monitored car park - costs £1.50 a day, which is refunded against your train ticket.
Difference is, in rush hour the car option can take about an hour or more, but the train is still 30 minutes.....
It's not just the size of the fine, but the chances of being caught. I have had research quoted to me that said increasing fines would not make people any less likely to commit given offences - to which I asked if they had researched the effect of being 10 times as likely to be caught.
Petrol subsidies would be no less fair than regional variations at the moment - e.g. from 72.9 to 91.9 in different areas - if gradual. If people were so desperate to get the subsidy, they could always go to the subsidised area.
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