Road Tax on driving a vehicle

[robgraham]

If you drive a car, van, etc., please read -

Sarah Kennedy was talking about this proposed car tax scheme on Radio

2=2E Apparently there is only one month left to register your objection to the 'Pay As You Go' road tax.

The petition is on the 10 Downing St website but they didn't tell anybody about it. Therefore at the time of Sarah's comments only

250,000 people had signed it and 750,000 signatures are required for the government to at least take any notice.

Once you've given your details (you don't have to give your full address, just house number and postcode will do), they will send you an email with a link in it. Once you click on that link, you'll have signed the petition.

The government's proposal to introduce road pricing will mean you having to purchase a tracking device for your car and paying a monthly bill to use it. The tracking device will cost about =A3200 and in a recent study by the BBC, the lowest monthly bill was =A328 for a rural florist and =A3194 for a delivery driver. A non working mother who used the car to take the kids to school paid =A386 in one month.

On top of this massive increase in tax, you will be tracked. Somebody will know where you are at all times. They will also know how fast you have been going, so even if you accidentally creep over a speed limit in time you can probably expect a Notice of Intended Prosecution with your monthly bill.

If you are concerned about this Orwellian plan and want to stop the constant bashing of the car driver, please sign the petition on No

10's new website (link below) and pass this on to as many people as possible. Sign up if you value your freedom and democratic rights -

[Roger Mills]

another 2 weeks to run - closing on 20th Feb.

It is by far the best supported petition on the No 10 website - the next in line having a mere 22,000 signatures - but it still needs more people to sign it in the next few days if it is to have any effect.

[Tony Bryer]

If five million people signed it would still have no effect. The reality is that something has to be done to reverse the ever increasing amount of traffic and the Conservatives know it too. Traffic congestion is Socialist: the duke and the dustman sit there side by side both getting fed up. Freeing the roads up for those with money must appeal to those who have lots.

"Equally, measures to reduce car usage have other arguments to back them up - not least the fact that the marginal car user does not take into account the pollution and congestion that this produces. I have long favoured a policy or road-pricing which made us consider the worth of a journey against its now explicit cost.

I would press on with road pricing and justify it also as a measure against global warming."

Roger Bootle is managing director of Capital Economics and economic adviser to Deloitte.

[PeTe33]

Yawn.

This "petition" causes as much spam as "bigger harder erections"

"A pilot scheme could be carried out using volunteer drivers in a large British conurbation within five to six years, but a national scheme would be rolled out within 10-15 years."

Yeah right.

So which political party is going to be in power then? Somehow I doubt they will be taking any notice of antiquated theoetical policies of todays governments. Besides which, any satellite tracking system of today would be GPS based. How can anyone prove your vehicle was moving if the "black box" was disabled or cloned and left plugged in in your garage?

Complete A.D. 2001 comic book rubbish, not worthy of bandwidth. You can stick your petition in your lunch box as far as I'm concerned!

Pete

[Bob Eager]

I have no problem with that....but I'd prefer it to be done via fuel pricing, or whatever. Otherwise it's just one more state control and surveillance tool.

[tim.....]

Just how is it state control?

And it doesn't have to be implemented as a surveillance tool. IMHO you would have better results just campaigning for that.

tim

[tim.....]

Anybody who believes this probably thinks that alice in wonderland is someone's biography.

It will be at least 5 years before the infrastructure for this is ready.

By that time the boxes will cost 20 quid each.

tim

[Tony Bryer]

But ultimately, and missed by most commentators, this is not about making money, rather persuading people to change their lifestyles. So the mother quoted by the OP doesn't spend £86 a month to take her children to school, but sends them by PT, moves house or sends them to a school in walking distance. Merely upping the price of fuel won't do this - if you choose not to drive from here to Heathrow at 10.00p.m. no one really benefits (marginal less pollution aside). If you (and lots like you) can be persuaded not to drive there between 0800 and 1000 then there are real benefits for everyone else.

As to surveillance, there are so many cameras around these days I suspect that they can track anyone they need to.

[Owain]

That *is* your full address.

Owain

[Mary Fisher]

It's unrealistic to suggest that a mother could do any of those things!

Hurrah!

Mary (who never used a car to take any or all of her five children to school/s, they had to get up in the morning and catch the buses as Spouse and I had - or use our bikes)

[Bob Eager]

Probably not. Merely an excuse to install trackers.

That's assuming there is a choice. Nearest suitable school for my kids is at least 8 miles away. Terrible public transport (1.5hrs by bus). We've sent him FURTHER away so he can go by train. GIvernments never seem to grasp that a big stick won't work if there is no alternative.

That's not so joined-up, though. And there aren't cameras everywhere yet.

[tester]

caused by Labours (and Ken's) bus lanes, traffic light phasing, width restirction, and getting rid of turn-on's to roads by adding lights to stop the side- traffic moving onto a road when nothing is coming in the nearside lane on the road they wish to join. Why is this doen - simple - it justifies people paying through the teeth for tax upon tax, when proper traffic management would allow most of the traffic to flow much better - sort of like it was many years ago before someone twigged they can raise money by lying about the real cause.

[nightjar]

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of petitions on the web site and it up to the petitioners to publicise them, not HM Government. However, as the chances of a petition having an effect on government policy are probably lower than that of winning a triple rollover jackpot on the lottery, petitions really only exist to allow the people who sign them to think they have done something.

Colin Bignell

[John Rumm]

I have never quite followed the logic of this "ever increasing" argument. Just who is supposed to drive all these extra cars? Most people eligible for a drivers licence already has one. The number turning 17 each year probably does not even match the death rate. So appart from social trends forcing more people to resort to car use, there does not seem to be that much scope for expansion.

Perhaps rather than trying to social engineer a different response to car use which goes against necessity and human nature, they ought to consider encouraging an environment where the need for car use is less. Home shopping is starting that trend. We just need home working to catch up.

[John Rumm]

The national infrastructure of roadside telemetry and IT systems to talk to them however will cost £20Bn by the time they can make some pretence at working, and we will have paid for it all through the back door...

[Andy Hall]

I looked at figures for my area (which has one of the highest levels of car ownership in the country), and the figures seem to support this point. For number of households:

No car: 2001 9.2% 1991 11.4%

1 car: 2001 37.6% 1991 40.1% 2 cars: 2001 41.1% 1991 39.5% 3 cars: 2001 9.1% 1991 9.1%

So if anything there is a minor fall in ownership but nothing significant.

Public transport has continued to dwindle but in any case doesn't match the profile and requirements of the area.

Traffic congestion in the area, where it happens, has much more to do with incompetent traffic schemes than volume of cars

I looked at those figures as well.

70% of the local economically active population is involved in managerial, professional and related occupations vs. 53% in England and Wales. These are potential candidates for home working - i.e. don't necessarily need to travel to a place of work every day or at all.

Nonetheless, 68% of people travel to work driving a car (65% in 2001). Bus travel has fallen from 5.2% to 4.4% Train travel has increased from 4.7 to 5.3% Othe modes of transport have changed by a fractional percentage.

Home working has increased from 4.9% to 10.7% (more than double, but still not a lot as a percentage)

Nationally, 55% travel to work by driving a car and 9% work at home.

OTOH, we have Ken Livingstone publishing figures for transport in central London (by definition suspect) extolling the virtues of public transport (36% of journies); 40% of households not owning a car (guess what Ken, this means that 60% do); and only 10% of people using cars to get to work (surprise, surprise). The point is the same. Why do people perceive a need to go to central London to work and do their shopping?

[Roger]

The message from John Rumm contains these words:

More roads generate more traffic don't y'know. Well not really. That is a myth put about by the anti car lobby. The reality is that we have a currently unsatisfied demand for road space due to decades of under investment in the roads network.The irony is that the cost to the country in terms of wasted time and extra polution caused by slow moving and stationary traffic is probably greater than the cost of providing adequate roads would have been.

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 6 Feb 2007 07:58:23 GMT someone who may be Roger wrote this:-

Are SACTRA part of "the anti car lobby"?

Is the President of Transport 2000, who has been filmed for Transport 2000 driving his car, part of "the anti car lobby"?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Simple. Because in the case of Cambridge, you can earn 100K plus jumping on a train and going to the city, whereas 50k is the tops locally.

>

[The Natural Philosopher]

The short answer is to remove all obstacles to traffic FLOW - all those humps bumps traffic lights and chicanes..and to tax fuel till the pips squeak.

People will think twice about a trip to the supermarket to get some coffee if it costs 30 quid in fuel.

The surplus tax take can go on better roads, or better railways. Or VAT rebates for those who HAVE to use cars..etc..like fireman and ambulances and the like.