The current road tax system is no different - is it? You are better off doing exactly what you just said anyway.
It is different. Keep old diesel banger and pay £235 every year, change it for Polo Bluemotion and pay 0 forever. And until recently govt would even chip in two grand for you to do so. With tax in fuel there is no incentive to buy cleaner new car at all. You just want something that does as many miles per gallon as possible and you're golden.
I have read a lot of posts in here talking about it being unfair on high mileage users, transport companies etc but surely at the moment the're all getting away with murder? They are clogging up the road systems, their vehicles doing the most damage to the roads themselves and chucking out the most pollution and yet the motorists who do very little damage to the environment and road system in comparison are paying over the odds to cover them.
Transport and services is the necessary evil no one ever talks about. When congestion charge was being introduced, some guy from one of the London papers, I'm going to take a wild stab at my memory and presume it was Evening Standard - took few hours to park his four letters on Holborn Viaduct and count cars passing by in 12 am traffic. And at the time, he calculated that nearly 70 odd percent of all vehicles that drove by were either endless chains of black cabs or buses. Out of the remaining 30 something percent, majority were lorries, delivery and service vans. He argued, against Ken Livingstone's presumption - that people do not actually drive to London to get stuck in traffic for pleasure and fun, and that regardless of what you do majority of traffic on the roads is there because it has to be. Cabs are there because no one regulates their shifts and they prefer office hours, as the meter keep eating into company expenses budget indefinitely in stationary traffic of other cabs without doing long miles or imposing any wear and tear to their cars. Buses are there, because regardless of whether they have passengers onboard or not they need to get from A-B via C and D. White vans are there because someone is waiting for their service and deliveries "right here and right now". But when men in charge meet up in city hall board rooms to discuss congestion, they only see commuters, which accumulated to some laughable number - something like 9% of all cars.
And so among statistical 6 cabs, one bus and two white vans, it was that girl in Fiesta at the end, that Ken and his cronies decided was the cause of congestion. That one car in ten, they argued, was slowing down The Whole City. One car in ten, would stretch their travel in a black cab, from Parliament Square to London Assembly, on average by 7%. Instead of taking 20 minutes to reach their office, they could have made it in like - 1 minute and 24 seconds faster. And something had to be done about it.
And it's the same with your description of haulage and transport system up there. What you said is absolutely right. They do use roads more, they do cause more damage to it, they are, by far, the heaviest polutants. But no one will touch them. Not only because touching transport and haulage, even with a barge pole, will immediately spawn wild horde of highly trained, a-hole union workers calling for road blockades, group protests, wrecking and burning office rooms all the way to White Hall but also for far more simple reason.
For it is necessary evil.
You want your goods as much as men in Johny O'Groats do. You want your mail, your IKEA desk, your OCUK PC parts dropped off at your door step without paying arm and leg for it. You want your Mullerice and Hovis at supermarket shelf for the same price as the guy living next to the factory, and you want it before best by stamp expires. You want your rubbish picked up by men in orange vests every week without paying double your annual council bill. And that is how it works - whatever you impose on transport and services, you end up paying yourself.
.
.
