Road Pricing

[daktari]

A petition is running here :

http://www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=15502

Looks proper scary this whole road charging thing,

[DaveSR]

Never happen ...... the bunch of monkeys can't even setup a simple ID card system !

And they think they are going to fit trackers into every car - yeah whatever :D !

If and IF they do get this sorted, I think we would have run out of oil anyway !

Labour aint gettin my vote this year ....... unless for £10 I can become a Sir or something :!Removed!:

[Jones~32]

:!Removed!:

Signed :)

[Boro Sera]

heard something about this on the local radio today. They were touting a figure of £1.50 per mile !!!!!

Vote Labour !

[Jimlad]

£1.50 per mile?!?!?!... for what, just driving about??.... bluddy hell....

Off to work... gonna get a mountain bike... :D

Could get a good one for £7K right?.. lol

[Demonic Angel]

Like with most things though, its going to be the poorest families that are going to suffer... I doubt Mr Blair or his associates will be scrambling the money together so they can afford to take their kids to school or go to work.

I always believed the Labour party we all for helping the people who actually needed it, maybe not so much those who doss about on benefits all day (and we all know those sorts and I shant go into it!) but those families that work hard and maybe only earn minimum wage and struggle daily to put food on the table and roof over their childrens heads - my parents were there 15-20 years ago and the stories they tell me today, I can scarcely believe they pulled through!

Personally I think leave the cars alone and tax the planes more, as they produce more than double the CO2 of a car, ok there are more cars on the road than planes in the sky, but the majority of people flying places are on business of some description or a holiday. If they earn enough to fly for business and to take holidays (which a lot of families from my experience cannot) then tax 'em.... tax the lot of 'em. At least then people have a choice to not go abroad on their holidays, people dont have a choice to not work.

Rant over.... :D

Oh and signed!

[Tegan]

Like with most things though, its going to be the poorest families that are going to suffer...

Personally I think leave the cars alone and tax the planes more, as they produce more than double the CO2 of a car, ok there are more cars on the road than planes in the sky, but the majority of people flying places are on business of some description or a holiday. If they earn enough to fly for business and to take holidays (which a lot of families from my experience cannot) then tax 'em.... tax the lot of 'em. At least then people have a choice to not go abroad on their holidays, people dont have a choice to not work.

so by your own admissions then - lets make life even more miserable for poor people - tax them for being able to afford a holiday, so lets make having a holiday even more of a luxury - holidays in the uk can be FAR more expensive than those abroad, thats just a ridiculous idea

how about we move away from taxing everything in sight and try and find a real solution to the congestion and co2 problems , seems that is the goverments answer to everything - slap a tax on it - yeah that will solve the worlds problems!

[Demonic Angel]

My point was Teegs, if they are gonna tax anything it should be planes.... I would agree on no taxation at all... all its doing is lining the governments pockets - what are they going to do with the money raised? Use it to fix the ozone layer? I seriously doubt it....

If there was a choice between affording to go to work/school and affording a holiday - the latter makes more sense to me - ultimately you have to be able to afford the necessities in life before thinking of holidays etc...

[Karma Supra]

£1.50 per mile? that means it would cost me £1.50 just to take the rubbish down to the end of my drive

One would hope that this seals Labours death sentance. As I have said befor and I'll say again, my concern is that with the time bomb economy situation that we are faces with I am worried that when labour do get out at last, when wh ever replaced them gets in, the economy all crumbles, all the clueless idiots that make upa large percentage of the voting public think it was the replacement parits fault, and we go back to labour again. who will be fuel to ubik about and make even more dangerous changed!

If it wasn't for labour, my porche would be free to tax next year :(

[Flat Pack]

The government has a problem. For as long as I can remember they've been disproportionately playing up the effect of private cars on the environment. They've used that to justify a 300% tax on the fuel these cars use and enough of the public have bought it for them to get away with it.

Now things are changing. Cars are really around the corner that don't need to burn fossil fuels (well not directly anyway), they're 'green' by the government's own definition of 'green' (despite possibly, like the Prius, having a higher total energy cost than most 4x4s and probably actually being worse in the real world). This scares them as their £27 billion revenue source will be drying up and they won't be able to justify that figure on a these new 'green' cars easily.

So in comes congestion. All around the country useable road space is being eroded, bus lanes created and new roads cancelled. Traffic light priorities are being changed and junctions removed in the name of 'safety'. All to generate congestion, so people will accept this new 'road charging' scheme as being in their best interests.

Remember they don't really want you to stop using your cars, they know there's no viable alternative that wouldn't cost them 100s of billions to implement. All they want is for the population to feel guilty for using their cars and so be prepared to pay more for it. The reason for that guilt is irrelevant to them, the £27 billion hole in their pocket if they fail isnt. Congestion or the environment it doesn't matter. Who are we at war with again? Is it Eurasia or Eastasia this year?

[stevetubbyturbo]

Dont think it will happen as it would destroy this country as a large amount of people in this country struggle already to pay mortgages and council tax plus bills and then run a car to go to and from work and if they have to pay £1.50 per mile and work 10 miles away that would cost then £30 a day £150 a week and if they only earn £250 a week net they are left with £400 a month to pay for everything and wouldnt be long before they lost their house couldnt put fuel in the car and then lose their job and then the goverment has to surport them when they could quite easily have surported themselfs before this stupid and totaly impractical idea.

[kingdeacon]

This scares them as their £27 billion revenue source will be drying up and they won't be able to justify that figure on a these new 'green' cars easily.

you hit the nail on the head, they know they got to come up with something as they will lose all the tax if they dont. but I dont see how they will be able to do a pay as you go system, yeah sure the technology is out there but there is 20 million cars on the road so you will need 20 million little boxes of tricks fitted to every car, who will pay for that? how would they police it? if i was to have one fitted to my 18 year old corolla gt and switched it off, cut the power wire, got it wet, hit it with a hammer, cloaked it in lead so it lost signal. how would they know? what would they do about it?

[dawesy]

gotta say youre right. this would be so hard to police. at the end of the day if theyre trying to force it they have to pay for it!. the only way it could work properly is gps or a radio signal to road side beacons and that would be easy to overcome

[cfc1]

£1.50 per mile???.. thats an average of £9000 per year (at 6000 miles a year).. I think they would have problems imposing it.

[kingdeacon]

the easy way for them to keep getting tax once cars are using water of what ever, is to put road tax up to £2000 or so, but they cant say its for congestion then, the other route is use camaras like londons congestion charge or toll roads, but they will find people driving on all the b roads to get away from them where possible so that would not be very safe

[Bodgit]

it seems the government have missed one point here. how will people be billed and pay?

You will have the normal law abiding citizens paying because they fear going to court, prison and losing their homes. then the people who think nothing of driving without a license, uninsured, no MOT, no Tax will flout the law in the usual way buy binning the demands for money.

Seems its more than pay and go, it is tax the honest motorist and let everyone else drive around for free. The courts will be overcrowded for non payment. All the extra money being gained from the road tolls will be going towards prosecutions and administration so no extra money will be received.

Why do they not add a couple of pence on fuel and be done with it. oh and abolish road tax at the same time.

[Flat Pack]

but I dont see how they will be able to do a pay as you go system, yeah sure the technology is out there but there is 20 million cars on the road so you will need 20 million little boxes of tricks fitted to every car, who will pay for that? how would they police it?

You'd have to pay of course, MOT fail if you don't have one fitted and you have to stump up the cash for the little black box.

I don't think they can make it work either, the government's record on even simple IT projects isn't exactly great and this is pretty tricky :P In the short term I think they'll just stick up lots of congestion charged areas.

I'm not sure that compliance will worry them too much. They're working on the fact that enough people are decent and honest and have been conned into feeling guilty about driving because of the lies they spout about the environment or congestion or whatever the enemy of the month is. They feel guilty so they accept they have to pay more. It works with 300% tax on fuel, it works with speed cameras (forced confessions? How the hell do they get away with that?) and it'll work with road charging too. Of course there's a line where an otherwise decent and honest person will stop being decent and honest to avoid persecution, that'll be crossed by more people when road pricing comes in. They won't care though, provided the remainder stump up the £27 billion they need.

[DaveSR]

The point is though they could easly reduce congestion with just a few simple ideas.

Buses for schools

Stop lorrys traveling between rush hour (plus whilst there not driving they can catch up on some much need rest)

And policing of the motorways stoping/pulling over cars lane hogging.

If they also offered discounts for car sharing I think that it would work much better.

[Karma Supra]

Ona more psoetive note, it may actually work out cheaper for families that have way more cars then they can use....

[GIDDLEPIN]

The point is though they could easly reduce congestion with just a few simple ideas.

Buses for schools

Stop lorrys traveling between rush hour (plus whilst there not driving they can catch up on some much need rest)

And policing of the motorways stoping/pulling over cars lane hogging.

If they also offered discounts for car sharing I think that it would work much better.

Buses for schools They already have them

Stop lorrys traveling between rush hour (plus whilst there not driving they can catch up on some much need rest) Dont forget JCB's,Tractors, Milk floats, CARS TOWING CARAVANS

And policing of the motorways stoping/pulling over cars lane hogging.

If they also offered discounts for car sharing I think that it would work much better. Most cars run at 25% capacity My car is at 50% all of the time ;)

[crizzle]

I've signed it, I'm sure they said 80p/miles on the news.

[Jinxed]

I absolutely despise our government, every last member of it. I hope they all develop serious life threatening anal bleeding!