Road Tax on driving a vehicle

When I were a lad, there was one bus an hour up till about 7pm to the nearest decent town..at the bottom of our road.

We had no car.

That journey - just 5 miles - to the town was a once a month, if that, expedition...and took MOST of the day..10 a.m bus, half an hour to get there, have lunch, and possibly tea, there, come back laden with parcels, get on the bus and be back by 6pm.

Of course there was a full set of shop within a mile and a quarter of where we lived for daily produce..it would have been unthinkable to go as far as 5 miles for a loaf of bread, cheese, bacon, meat..and milk came to the door daily, and the papers if you wanted them..Pubs? unthinkable if any house in Britain had a pub less more than a mile away, or a church..no need to drink and drive, drink and walk instead.

Frankly I can't remember going to a proper restaurant till 1964 or thereabouts..Lyons corner house was as good as it got..

I remember going on holiday by train,. Huge snorting coal fired locomotives. It would take a whole day to get to Devon..with three changes of train..these days its there an back in 3/4 of a day..

We probably need to get back to that sort of lifestyle. Supermarkets exist because cars exist and are cheap. Corner shops do not because since people go to the supermarket twice a week there is no need to have them.

What has changed? cars are cheap, fuel is cheap. So why not commute?

Wages are high, time is short..why not eat out?

All through my life my choice of home has been dictated by the transport available and the cost of it versus the job and what it paid..all one has to do is to tilt that playing field and everything will change..

Recently we have given up working..with a house paid off, our outgoings for two are really pretty low. Certainly sub 20k net per annum. For a very large house and comfortable lifestyle

we probably do no do more than 8k miles a year in the cars anymore between us, compared with over 50k when working.

We are both in our 50's, highly skilled, and ready to work from home..no one is offering though.

I do free work, mainly technical support to DIY'ers, and a couple of other areas..via the Internet. Why? cost its better than twiddling my thumbs, and I enjoy it. I like work, I just hate being an employer or an employee. Get rid of all the red tape around working - the taxes and the bloody forms, and I might consider it again..

Saving the planet isn't about taxing this or that randomly: Its about coming up with a viable lifestyle that is acceptable within the constraints of what people are politically prepared to accept.

By and large we don't have to tax roads, or cars or ban people from doing stuff. We just have to do LESS of it. The simple way to do ALL these things is to make travel expensive, not by taxing roads..but by taxing FUEL.

Make working from home tax advantageous - fuel tax does that anyway..

Make WORKING FOR MONEY advantageous..right now it isn't. > 50% of the GDP goes to the government, that is then used to fund an army of civil servants, most of whom are entirely superfluous.

Crime pays, because we have made things illegal and expensive, and because there is no tax on it, and because it suits a certain sort of unskilled entrepreneurial spirit..cut the taxes, legalise the drugs, and lets have those entrepreneurs dong something socially useful..

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher
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Exactly.

Its amazing how the population of this country appear to bne making choices based on cost benefit analysis, whereas the government appears to never have heard the term.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

No idea who said that but s/he is wrong. I'm no supporter of the 'comprehensive' system, in our city at least. We sent our teenage children across the city (two buses) to the C of E high school rather than the local comp. They went to the nearest C of E Middle school rather than the nearest middle school but they did attend the nearest Primary.

Spouse and I both attended grammar schools by the way but in those days both grammar and secondary modern schools were better than.today's comprehensives in this city, in our opinion and experience.

Circumstances alter cases. I wouldn't criticise anyone for choosing one type of school rather than another, it should be a personal choice. If I had my time over I'd have home educated them but it was very difficult then, it's much easier to organise these days. However, our children had an education despite going to school and they weren't socially deprived by being in the local ones.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

Most peole I know who are braodly 'normal people' just use the car whenever and wherever they feel a need with no idea of thinking it through..we have run out of coffee, pop down to the supermarket and get some.. oh - there's no milk, go again' and so on.

planning is not a skill you need when everything can be satisfied instantly by driving somewhere to a 24x7 supermarket.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I don't KNOW about that but I wouldn't be surprised. There weren't any figures or tables or ratings of any kind when we had to consider schools.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

Good idea. If you have a bright kid you don't want it being held back by a load of dozy plonkers.

Likewise there is nothing worse than being consistently bottom of class.

Streaming works. Accept it.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Ggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...............

Reply to
Mary Fisher

OTOH streaming also needs to be flexible. The Grammar/Secondary modern "streaming" doesn't work in a lot of ways. Streaming within a school for certain subjects does though. But the more mixing, the better.

OTOOH I know of places where they genuinely teach mixed-ability classes - and make it work. Relies on your teachers being good enough to handle the different abilities well - keeping them all interested. Just lecturing won't do that...

cheers, clive

Reply to
Clive George

I knew someone would come up with that old half-truth.

Reply to
Bob Eager

Because the only job I could get within walking distance, or practical cycling distance, is shelf-stacking. And that won't pay my bills. The days when a bus-conductor (remember those?) could support a wife and mortgage are long gone.

Because even today, the traffic planners believe that places of work are noisy, smoky, smelly places, and must be sited as far away from homes as possible. Because housing estates must contain nothing but houses, except maybe one token shop per thousand dwellings, which is therefore uneconomic to run. If you have to walk a mile to the nearest acceptable pub, you'll probably be willing to do it for a 'binge- drinking' (i.e. more than two pints) session, but if you just fancy a single pint you'll get the car out.

Because nearly everyone works in offices, and offices don't like standing alone. Despite the fact that there are few economies of scale in crowding offices together, that's how the councils like it. Scattered office blocks would look *untidy*.

As I've said before, you solve London's transport problems by doubling the rates on office floor space, and halving domestic rates. Repeat annually until existing transport is adequate. Large-scale commuting is caused by businesses wanting prestige city addresses without being willing to pay their employees enough that they can have them too.

Endless reasons...

Reply to
Joe

I'm sure they will. But what will *we* have to pay for them?

Reply to
Joe

10 miles? (that's practical cycling distance IMO. 30-40 mins riding - agrees with the normally accepted commuting time by car and train)

cheers, clive

Reply to
Clive George

Melbourne taxes non-residential parking spaces within the city centre, A$800, about £320 per space p.a. IIRC. It makes it much less attractive for employers to offer parking to staff, and if they have to pay to park they'll be less inclined to drive. And if you want to drive on the freeways that bypass the city you pay for a transponder

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Reply to
Tony Bryer

Exactly. And that needs to be addressed and soon. There's far more to the problem than restricting car use by any form of price alone.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Small class sizes and streaming works. We had three streams in every subjet to O level..I was in top streams for some., bottom for others.

It can't work for all subjects..You cant really teach rocket science to kids who cant even do simple maths..and yes, there are plenty of them that leave school that way.

Lecturing is really if ever the best way to teach anybody. It is an efficient way of passing stuff to a bright motivated bunch of university students maybe..but its useless in schools.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

What's interesting is that (so I'm told by someone who knows) selective schools generate, statistically, better results for all pupils (not just for the grammar school ones). This is because of the reduction in mixed ability classes.

Round here, the population isn't dense enough to support a local grammar schoool (although we were promised one 15 years ago). We have the choice of 12 miles by train in one direction, 14 miles by train in the other direction, or 8 miles by bus (taking nearly 3 times as long) in a third direction.

The fourth direction is the sea, and the bloody wind turbines (a third of which have been broken for quite a time now...)

Reply to
Bob Eager

I think more about the time element.

A trip to B&Q for me is 16km each way and with titting around because of idle weekend shoppers and push chairs getting underfoot takes in total 2-3 hours.

The cost of the time is hugely more (excuse pun) than the fuel and running cost for the trip.

So the game plan tends to be considering the next weekend's projects in the early part of the week and placing order with Screwfix or ANO while sitting in an airport lounge in Outer Mongolia or Glasgpw (same thing really). It's worth paying the extra few £££s to improve the probability of a delivery before the weekend.

Otherwise, if I've screwed up and forgotten a pack of M5 widgets without which I can't continue a project, what do I do?

If the answer is that there is high value (measured how one wants) in continuing the project and the sacrifice of time is worth it, then I may do the B&Q run. Otherwise, I'll look at other project options.

It would take quite a bit in terms of added journey cost through fuel or a tax based on distance before I would consider a trip based on this vs. time.

Reply to
Andy Hall

Which is fundamentally one reason why they have such limited appeal.

Reply to
Andy Hall

Deliveries of meat and vegetables (in season) were twice weekly by delivery boys on bikes with a smaller wheel at the front. I remember that they went to the tradesmen's entrance (i.e. back door) and not the front.

Often depended on the parish and the views of the vicar.

Here we see a friendly lion conversing with a mouse. Round the corner we can see the Lyons corner house....

Baboom....

... and wonderful they were too, not like those diesel things.

.. and people are not willing to pay the price for quality and for service. Look at any French small town and you will find the selection of traditional boulangerie, epicerie, boucher,... etc. in the town centre, and then a ZAC (commercial estate) on the edge with a Carrefour, a LeClerc or an Auchan together with Castorama, Leroy Merlin etc. and a McDonalds. In other words a clear separation of market sectors with both surviving.

.. and people do....

If that is your criterion.

You could make it happen, but then is it worth the effort for the return?

Therein is the nub of the issue.

It's a way of reducing unemployment of the unemployable.

Reply to
Andy Hall

Yebbut non-selective schools doesn't imply mixed ability classes. And I do know of at least one case where the school does do mixed ability and apparently does so rather well.

The real killer with selective schooling is what happens on the wrong side of the 11+. Consigning the kids to the 'lower status' school doesn't produce good results - and there is no doubt that it is a lower status.

You never answered my question about whether or not it had a non-selective secondary school - does it?

cheers, clive

Reply to
Clive George

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