part of the write-up said that this would raise an extra £xx.
I can't remember what the xx was, but it was an awful lot of money.
However, the point is that it will, overall, raise extra money. So whether or not it is cheaper for some people, on average it will be more expensive.
Why do people never see that bit ?
|
|
The figure is £16.5 billion.
|
£16.5 billion, thanks I thought it was something like that.
And according to the documents, that's £16.5bn *more* than they are collecting today.
So how many motorists in the UK ? And what's £16.5bn divided by that ? Because on average that is the extra we will pay each.
Presumably the theory is that this will keep the poor off the roads enabling the rich to drive in more comfort ??
That sure is some Labour Government we've got.
Whether or not the charge is fair, whether or not we should even be considering charging more, surely ability to pay should not be a governing factor in what time of the day you drive, where you work or how you get to work ?
What % of this country's voting population are drivers ? probably 80/85% or so I should think.
What % of the electorate voted in the last election ? Wasn't it around 50% ?
I would suggest that the drivers in this country need to get off their butts at the next election and try to remind the politicians exactly who it is they are working for because they seem to have lost sight of that bit.
|
Assuming 30,000,000 drivers in the UK, it works out at an average of an additional £550 per driver.
So on top of the (roughly) £1000 per year that the average driver pays in fuel duty, and the average £150 road tax, they will be netting another £550. So the annual tax burden on the average motorist will go up from £1150 to £1700.
|
|
|
The tories seem to be going for the freedom to travel idea. They claim labour are actively discouraging people from travelling but it is the rampant house price inflation that has caused the problem in the first place. Also jobs are less secure than they were so people are less inclined to move with their jobs. Making travel less of a necessity for commuting would be a better way than trying to force people out of their cars. The low paid will end up having to give up working altogether. I live in a poor area and I know people will end up on the dole as they won't be able to afford to get to work. How stupid is that? Whether this would put pressure on employers to pay higher wages so people could afford to still travel and increase wages for those to cover this increased cost is a moot point. The upshot will probably be a few people will be off the road, small businesses will go bust and wages will increase substantially to cover the extra costs. Government will be happy as it will have even more money, congestion will substantially stay the same so little will have been gained for the average Jo.
I think the ability to pay is going to become more of an issue with all services not just transport. Some seem to think that sharing the cost of shared resources is an outmoded concept and people should start paying directly for what they use. The same will happen with health & education. It has already started with tuition fees so labour will certainly continue this idea. The tories don't seem that much different but they are promoting travel and abolishment of tuition fees. Whether they will do any such thing if elected is another matter :-)
I don't think they have thought it through. Public transport gets under used so it gets cut back further, so fewer people use it so it gets cut back. Do they want the same thing to happen with road maintenance. If there are underused routes then councils are going to start skimping on repairs, making them more underused. Soon you will have the roads in the same state as public transport ie the commercial routes are overcrowded, expensive and reasonably well maintained and the other routes are a disgrace.
If people want to use public transport then I don't want to stop them so I don't see why they should stop me using my car when I want. I don't say to them, don't use the bus during rush hour, how selfish they are if they do as they're taking up all that space when the bus could be empty instead.
teabelly
|
Since I've moved to Bicester, using the train is a lot more practical than where I was before. Its easy for me to get to the station, and once at Marylebone pretty much any of London is easy to reach.
Consequently I've been using it quite a lot and I find the service generally reliable, genereally clean and pretty much a pleasant experience.
But the cost !!! It doesn't affect me directly because the company pays, but its expensive. If I had to pay myself I simply would not use it. And if I want to go to town socially with family, then the cost is totally prohibitive - which is a pity, since its by far the more pleasant experience, especially when travelling with a restless little one.
If they sorted out the cost of rail travel, that's one Landcruiser they'd get off the streets of London, and I surely cannot be the only one.
|
|
|
|
Whether or not the charge is fair, whether or not we should even be considering charging more, surely ability to pay should not be a governing factor in what time of the day you drive, where you work or how you get to work ?
The ability to pay has nothing whatosover to do with what time of day people work, where they work and how they get to work. That is why this scheme would be basically unfair and unworkable.
Consider the fact that a lot of people are earning minimum wages and working 9 to 5, which means peak time travelling. If someone on this kind of income was charged £1.40 per mile at each end of the day and had a round trip of 20 miles, it would make going to work pointless.
|
The ability to pay has nothing whatosover to do with what time of day people work, where they work and how they get to work.
Please forgive my awful typing, it should be whatsoever, obviously.
|
|
|
My son does shift work for a bublic authority, based about 15 miles from home, so 30 miles a day round trip.
Public transport simply does not exist for him to get to work at 05.30 or to get home after leaving at midnight.
Leaving work at 06.00 he might be able to get home by P T, but it would take about 1 1/2 hours instead of 20 minutes.
OK, in theory he will not be travelling in peak time, but even say 20p per mile would triple his travel cost.
|
I'll join the chorus of those who rightly state that the taxation burden on motorists should not be further increased.
However there can be little doubt that something will have to be done about congestion over the next 10 years or so. Our towns and cities simply cannot cope with the predicted increase in traffic.
So what measures should the Government take?
|
Are we sure the predicted increase in traffic is accurate? I'm sure a few years ago a prediction said that we would have much more traffic than we do now. Part of the problem has been the lack of road building. Labour cancelled an awful lot of projects so we are reaping the rewards of them doing that. The m6 widening was one of them I think.
Encouraging home working would be a good start. Stopping parents choosing schools and have their children go to the nearest with free transport there and back would cut congestion by a huge amount. It would also stop the sink schools as parents would be forced to send their kids locally so they would actually have to help the school improve rather than just sending their child elsewhere. Phasing traffic lights to help traffic flow rather than hinder it might help too. Teaching people about merge in turn would also be a good idea then you wouldn't have traffic at a standstill at lane closures.
Grocery shopping on the internet could also be encouraged as it must be more efficient transport wise to have one van deliver groceries to several households rather than all those households buzzing around in their cars. If the delivery charge was dropped to say £3 a go rather than the current £5 then I would do all my shopping that way but as it stands it is much cheaper to go to the supermarket by car.
Get rid of petrol and diesel as much as possible and substitute biofuels. The consequences of pollution would then be much less so the environmental reasons for reducing travel would disappear.
None of my ideas would actually generate revenue and if we weren't all stuck in traffic burning fossil fuel the government would lose billions. While they earn so much from fuel taxes I can't see why they would ever really discourage car use.
teabelly
|
There is no incentive for the Government or Councils to ease traffic congestion.
Vehicles sitting in jams burn fuel which generated tax revenue.
Not building roads to cater for population growth saves money.
Ditto giving planning permission for houses or factories without the infrastructure to link it to other parts of the transport system.
Town centre parking charges and fines generate revenue and enable more people to be employed by the relevant departments , a larger empire means higher status and higher salaries for the departmental heads.
Congestion charging generates revenue whereas alleviating congestion would reduce it, or even cost money.
|
|
I agree that private transport has to be controlled to some degree, or the roads will be in a permanent gridlock, but there has to be a viable alternative. Already the government is talking of cutting back on rail services, rather than expanding them. Taxing people for travelling at peak times will only hurt those least able to pay for it. In addition, people who are paid travel expenses will be able to claim it back, so won't be affected personally and so won't have any incentive to change times of travelling or routes anyway.
|
Teabelly: Rampant house price inflation has caused the problem.
No, rampant stamp duty inflation. Which means that when in the good old days you could move house for maybe 0.5% stamp duty, say on even a big house of maybe 250,000, so about a grand; now that house is worth a million, and stamp duty is (is it?) 4% so over thirty times as much. If your house was worth 40k (no duty) and now 200k then it's even worse, relatively.
Solution: scrap stamp duty.
|
And the cost of implementing all these black boxes, which are just another thing to go wrong.
Scrap road fund licence. Require an insurance stamp for the windscreen instead (gives some sort of guarantee that car was MOT'd and insured at some point in the last year).
Tax petrol more. And if you really want to introduce an element of road pricing, charge more for petrol in the relevant areas. e.g. 10p per litre premium for filling up within the M25. Petrol is so expensive it's not worth making a special journey to go to fill up somewhere cheaper.
|
Jacking up fuel tax is the simplest solution, and the mechanism is already in place.
However it would be political suicide to raise the duty by enough to raise the sort of sums envisaged and act as a deterrent.
We would be looking at tripling or quadrupling the cost of fuel to raise the equivalent of even a 30p per mile toll.
A toll will encounter negligible resistance compared to that.
Although the effect is the same.
|
|
...so now not only will further education become a perogative (sp?) of the rich, but motoring will do too. There will be a revolution soon if more of these absurd laws come into existance - we are getting more into the "have" and "have not" culture IMHO.
|
It is nonsesnse to suggest that further education is the preserve of the rich. (Sadly. It should be the preserve of the intelligent, but increasingly it is the preserve of the otherwise unemployed.)
Owning a car requires some money. By the time you've insured a car, taxed it, serviced it.
|
|
We are already due to have the lovely SMART plates in 2007, these will use RFiD tags, and the sensors which are currently being installed in ernest along the trunk roads and motorways by the people who own Trafficmaster (Total Information Systems) whose sgareprice has gone up about 10x in a year since this was announced.
|
Heres a link abou RFID number plates.
www.rfidnews.org/news/2004/06/10/rfidenabled-licen.../
What they don't tell you in the article is that speed cameras will no longer be needed and they will be able to catch a huge amount of those that speed while the current camera system only manages a tiny percentage.
|
|
Within 12 months of RFID number plates covering 100% of the population I guarantee that everyone using this forum (and owning a car NW) will have points on their licence unless there is a fundamental change in the approach to speeding penalties.
|
Within 12 months of RFID number plates covering 100% of the population I guarantee that everyone using this forum (and owning a car NW) will have points on their licence unless there is a fundamental change in the approach to speeding penalties.
It would probably catch me too, 'cos even tho I don't currently own a car, I do drive a few thousand miles a year (hired and borrowed cars).
Otherwise, I agree: if every instance of speeding is always going to lead to points, then 3 points for every instance becomes unworkable. The 3-points-a-go regime is based on the assumption that most speeding will go undetected, and that's rapidly becoming an outmoded assumption.
Even with a lower points penalty (say 1 point for just over limit), it would give drivers a big incentive to choose cars with speed limiters such as that promised on the new Citroen C4, and already available on the Renault Scenic. Many drivers would probably want something which could be set to work in an automatic mode, setting its own limit from data avaialable from the roadside transponders.
In any case, I'd share a lot of the fears expressed here about the civil liberties impact of tracking every vehicle's movements. There's gotta be a better way of controlling vehicle misuse.
|
Crack open the champagne, ND agrees with NW on a motoring issue!
:: checks tablets ::
Nope, this is really happening folks.
:oD
|
And the odds of their being used for positive purposes... like to identify & track stolen cars....???
|
And the odds of their being used for positive purposes... like to identify & track stolen cars....???
Slim. First thing someone will do when targetting a car to steal is disable the RFID chip.
|
Disabling the rfid chip will be the first thing a lot of people will be doing. Where I go is none of their business. If a lot of people disable their chips then it becomes unworkable. I think I read somewhere that if 2% of the population doesn't support a law then you can't enforce it. It will end up with speed limits being either relaxed entirely or most of the population driving while banned. If this happens then banning becomes a totally ineffective punishment.
Besides Wales & Scotland could vote against it then it would also become impossible to implement.
I do wish governments would realise that interfering in the daily lives of ordinary citizens is something they shouldn't be doing. It should be the criminals that get tagged, followed and observed and not the law abiding majority. Punishing normal behaviour while leaving the criminal minority alone is a recipe for revolution or at least a flurry of angry letters into the telegraph...
teabelly
|
|
You're spot on Teabelly. Given bad law, all we can do is to write to the Telegraph. We are so completely impotent.
|
|
The day this comes in I propose every town has a numberplate burning rally.
|
How about we find the plate of the person that came up with the idea and have everyone clone that tag :-) We could also wind up the road side sensors by sticking the tags to birds...
teabelly
|
How about we find the plate of the person that came up with the idea and have everyone clone that tag :-) We could also wind up the road side sensors by sticking the tags to birds... teabelly
Now that idea I like. Perhaps we can put Mark Tomlinson ro whater his name is from C4 on the case. Get him to follow the offending politico for 24 hours and present them with a video record of their movements, along with a written assurance that only the juicy bits will be aired.
|
There is an election next year. The tories seem to be pro travel so unfortunately that means voting for them even though they are reprehensible in other ways. But if they are pro-motorist, pro freedom then they're getting my vote. I will just have to live with my conscience on the matter :-) I have never been bothered to vote but this lot have got my goat to such a degree I might actually end up in a polling booth. It is either that or emigrate.
teabelly
|
But if they are pro-motorist, pro freedom then they're getting my vote>>
Conservatives believe in individual freedom and being given the opportunity to run your own life as you wish, within common and decent guidelines.
Communists, Labourites, Socialists etc believe that they know what is best for us and that as much as possible should be controlled/run by the State - we are expected to be almost completely dependent on it.
I prefer my freedom.
|
Labour governments, despite all the pompous talk by Blair, Brown and Co, have always overtaxed and overspent with very little to show for it at the end of the day.
People who have had little or no experience of the real world - a recent health minister once had a part-time job in a bookshop, another in an elevated position was a ship's union official and others have spent all their lives serving on town and city councils - shouldn't be left in charge of the shop.
But the general public still doesn't get the message and, every so often, lets Labour in for another spell of ruining Great Britain Ltd.
Brown may think he's got things under control, but those of us who vividly remember inflation under Labour in 1976 standing at 26.9 per cent (the IMF had to bail us out) don't hold much hope of things not going pear-shaped soon.
|
The line between a discussion on motoring legislation and political debate is a thin one. I think we just crossed that line.
I have sympathy with the views expressed but would ask that you all try and keep from turning this into a debate on party politics in general.
Cheers folks,
No Dosh - Backroom Moderator
mailto:moderators@honestjohn.co.uk
|
|
|
|
|
