Road Pricing

[El Dingo]

I respectfully (!) ask my fellow members to have a look at the following:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/

 

If you disagree with Road Pricing, here is an opportunity to add your voice to the petition.

[NikpV]

done :lol:

[chesh100]

me too. :lol:

[Bigjeeze]

Me too! :lol:

[redneck01246]

done it :rolleyes:

[Guest bigal]

Me too. thanks for the info El Dingo. :rolleyes:

[big_kev]

Petitions are a waste of time, I prefer the letter bomb approach.

 

pass the semtex ( from the left hand-side ).

[gregers]

DITTO

[AndeeeH]

I'm signed up. ;)

[MadBaz]

I'm not signing up!!!! The idea of pricing peeps per mile sounds fairer to me than the bloody unfair road tax, scrap the road tax increase duty on fuel and use that extra duty to fix the roads and to put more Traffic Officers back on the roads instead of Gatsos. Sounds like some hairbrained scheme to me dished up by some civil servant who has to justify his being there.

 

Having said that, the road tax is probably cheaper for me ;)

[big_kev]

 

You know it makes sense !

[gregers]

ive singed up,but i do agree to a certain amount of what madbaz says,but alas this has been talked about for years (scrapping the road fund licence)yeah thats a laugh,why do that when they get in the region of

[Guest gooner52]

if it means i get a new gadget in my galaxy

im paying ;) ;) ;) ;)

[chauf4]

Signed.

 

I can't think of a worse idea than being charged per mile on top of paying for fuel as well, which funnily enough, the more you drive, the more fuel you pay for, the more tax the government gets anyway.

 

I am quite concerned that this could be fairly bad for my business. I drive about sixty five thousand miles, in the chauffeur industry, which costs me around

[katman]

its a lot like the nhs too many cheifs and not enough indians.

 

I know what was meant by the above phrase but its quite funny because there are a lot of Indians working for the NHS.

 

:huh:

[gregers]

:lol:

[mumof4]

Signed.....Id be buggered if they brought this in..so far ive done 9k miles in about 8/9 months.....most of it scenic driving.LMAO.

[MadBaz]

I relented and signed, apart from the monetary issues, I don't like the goverment being able to keep tabs on where and when I am, not that I've got anything to hide.

 

It's not gonna happen anyway using gps tracking, that is hell of a lot of data to transfer, store, interpret and invoice, (Glen may have an idea of the numbers involved) which will be contracted out to the highest bidder, Not only that the GPS satellites are owned by the USA, they can swith them off/ change the signal (less accurate positioning) whenever they please. How would the goverment enforce/police it? It's taken them long enough to get illegal cars down to reasonable numbers and they've got a long way to go. How do you secure a tracking device against tampering? it's not possible, you'd have devices on Ebay before the scheme had even started.

 

Fo every penny we'd pay for our travel, another would have to be charged for the administration of this scheme.

 

Any goverment that introduces this, surely must be committing political suicide.

 

If they do it, it'll be through fuel, and we won't see the benefits, although maybe another chief constable can have a new en-suite fitted to his/her office.

[Ivor_E_Tower]

The road pricing issue has me very worried, because they have not said anything definite about ending or significantly reducing the road Fund Licence or fuel duty if road pricing is introduced.

Despite there now being over 300,000 names on the petition, the government has said it intends to go ahead anyway - 300,000 people who voted them into power in the first place and the government is now going to ignore them.

Stop and think...with fuel tax at its current level, it costs around 12p per mile to drive anywhere :lol: Most of the jobs for which I am suited have disappeared from the uK with the near-death of manufacturing industry.

So I went to University for 5 years (which I did not enjoy) just so I could end up paying the bills at the end of every month and have nothing left over, no money for a holiday..

We are all paying heavily for stupid politicians and their idiotic policies over the past 30 years or more. Now we have to fund the war in Iraq :lol: which none of us wanted (except B Liar aka Blair)

[katman]

It's not gonna happen anyway using gps tracking, that is hell of a lot of data to transfer, store, interpret and invoice.

 

How would the goverment enforce/police it? It's taken them long enough to get illegal cars down to reasonable numbers and they've got a long way to go. How do you secure a tracking device against tampering? it's not possible, you'd have devices on Ebay before the scheme had even started.

 

I thought it was going to be a box similar to that being trial by Norwich Union for PAYG insurance, which again will simply screw even more money from the long suffering motorist.

 

The GPS tells the box where it is, and preloaded rules in the box determine the current charge per mile eg M25 @ peak time 10p per mile and clock up your bill accordingly. Every so often it dumps the data via a GPRS link to the main computers. They cant track you continuously (well they probably could but not everyone all the time) because as you say it would be a massive amount of data to store and analyse.

 

As for the policing, the MOT is now computerised and included the recorded mileage. If the spybox doesnt tally with the speedo reading no doubt that there will be some automatic fine just like not getting your tax return in on time.

 

Illegal cars are difficult to track down because they dont know who owns them. Our cars are all legal because we pay for MOT, Insurance etc and have the cars registered. Finding us is dead easy which is why the scheme appeals to them so much. Captive audience :lol: :lol:

[katman]

The road pricing issue has me very worried, because they have not said anything definite about ending or significantly reducing the road Fund Licence or fuel duty if road pricing is introduced.

 

Stop and think...with fuel tax at its current level, it costs around 12p per mile to drive anywhere :lol:

 

Which is why they can still screw even more money out of us :lol:

 

Have you tried public transport recently ?

 

Its AWFUL. The buses are full of the scum of the earth who sit there F'ing and blinding regardless of the fact that people with young children are on the same bus.

 

If you need to catch a bus at peak times and are unlucky enough to want to get on the bus at a point in the middle of the route, the buses often wont stop because they are already full so despite being a 10 minute service you may have to wait for an hour to get a bus.

 

The ONLY times I have used buses in the last 10 years are when I used to have to drop my car in for a service and catch a bus to get home. The garage I use is about 3 miles from my house so at approx 20p per mile (mine is petrol) it costs me 60p for a comfortable journey, aircon, music, no scumbags. The bus for the journey home is

[El Dingo]

...Not only that the GPS satellites are owned by the USA, they can swith them off/ change the signal (less accurate positioning) whenever they please....

 

For info on GPS, see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_positioning_system.

I assume that the authorities could use either?

 

As Katman said, how do they intend to catch illegals? Theft of number plates is already a problem around here...

[MadBaz]

recieved this morning, for those that didn't sign, this is the goverments response

 

 

<H1 style="PADDING-RIGHT: 5px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; FONT-SIZE: 20px; BACKGROUND: #4a95c2; PADDING-BOTTOM: 5px; COLOR: #fff; PADDING-TOP: 5px; FONT-FAMILY: verdana">E-petition: Response from the Prime Minister</H1>The e-petition asking the Prime Minister to "Scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy" has now closed. This is a response from the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

 

Thank you for taking the time to register your views about road pricing on the Downing Street website.

 

This petition was posted shortly before we published the Eddington Study, an independent review of Britain's transport network. This study set out long-term challenges and options for our transport network.

 

It made clear that congestion is a major problem to which there is no easy answer. One aspect of the study was highlighting how road pricing could provide a solution to these problems and that advances in technology put these plans within our reach. Of course it would be ten years or more before any national scheme was technologically, never mind politically, feasible.

 

That is the backdrop to this issue. As my response makes clear, this is not about imposing "stealth taxes" or introducing "Big Brother" surveillance. This is a complex subject, which cannot be resolved without a thorough investigation of all the options, combined with a full and frank debate about the choices we face at a local and national level. That's why I hope this detailed response will address your concerns and set out how we intend to take this issue forward. I see this email as the beginning, not the end of the debate, and the links below provide an opportunity for you to take it further.

 

But let me be clear straight away: we have not made any decision about national road pricing. Indeed we are simply not yet in a position to do so. We are, for now, working with some local authorities that are interested in establishing local schemes to help address local congestion problems. Pricing is not being forced on any area, but any schemes would teach us more about how road pricing would work and inform decisions on a national scheme. And funds raised from these local schemes will be used to improve transport in those areas.

 

One thing I suspect we can all agree is that congestion is bad. It's bad for business because it disrupts the delivery of goods and services. It affects people's quality of life. And it is bad for the environment. That is why tackling congestion is a key priority for any Government.

 

Congestion is predicted to increase by 25% by 2015. This is being driven by economic prosperity. There are 6 million more vehicles on the road now than in 1997, and predictions are that this trend will continue.

 

Part of the solution is to improve public transport, and to make the most of the existing road network. We have more than doubled investment since 1997, spending

[teresa]

i received mine aswell :lol: my b/f didnt receive one even though he signed... wonder if its because they actually know what he feels about tony blair :P

[katman]

i received mine aswell :lol: my b/f didnt receive one even though he signed... wonder if its because they actually know what he feels about tony blair :P

 

I read a copy of it posted elsewhere long before I received my own email. I guess with 1.6 million emails to send it will take a while :P :)