Which UK political party is better for the motorist?
- Thread starter Wicksta
- Start date
How so? They are proposing to replace VED with a system based on usage. If you like the mechanism of fuel duty, then why do you oppose this?
I would be quite surprised if they implemented a road-pricing scheme where the price wasn't somehow linked to CO2 emissions, and so this would work quite similarly to fuel duty. It would have the additional 'benefit', however, of also attempting to reduce congestion by financially encouraging the use of alternative routes.
It could be a good system if it is implemented well and in a fair and common sense manner (such as not overpricing busy routes where there is no alternative). Of course that's unlikely, but we can dream!
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Soldato
- Joined
- 29 Jul 2004
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Christ Id be 2k a year better off under UKIP
2p worth of traffic lights being out of sync.
I don't know if anyone has noticed, but for the last 10 years traffic lights have been out of sync on major road / junctions. Prime example is Princess Parkway going into Manchester, if you don't know 3 mile road with over 10 sets of lights. There was a time you could drive down it without stopping, now it's impossible.
Motor Cycle News discovered that the Labour goverment had purposely requested lights go out of sync so we used more fuel. One of the ministers was forced to admit this change was made when evidence was discovered.
I don't know if anyone has noticed, but for the last 10 years traffic lights have been out of sync on major road / junctions. Prime example is Princess Parkway going into Manchester, if you don't know 3 mile road with over 10 sets of lights. There was a time you could drive down it without stopping, now it's impossible.
Motor Cycle News discovered that the Labour goverment had purposely requested lights go out of sync so we used more fuel. One of the ministers was forced to admit this change was made when evidence was discovered.
Associate
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Please direct us to where we can see the evidence?
Do you want a GPS device in your car allowing government & police to track you ... or how about the device automatically issuing you a speeding ticket?
Soldato
It would be even more expensive than the current systems to run and would be a privacy nightmare. Personally I would like to see static ANPR systems banned.
Soldato
Crikey not only are the greens eco-nutjobs, they're nutjobs full stop. No tax relief on pension contributions? 12% NI on all income above the threshold (Yay for 62% tax rates for high earners!).
effective tax rate is even higher once you factor in VAT and other stealth taxes
Soldato
why? I wasn't aware of any negatives of ANPR
No political parties are good for the motorist, because none propose sufficient restriction on laws and taxation to resist the temptation to use the motorist as a cash cow.
Motoring has genuine external costs (such as pollution) that make it an idea 'justified' tax target, because one of the genuine uses of targeted taxation is to link external costs to the product, unfortunately there is no requirement currently to actually match taxes to costs, or to actually use the money made to counteract the identified external costs. This leads to the situation we have now where taxation is justified by (for example) enviromental reasons, but the money raised is then spent on community centres for gay and lesbian cabbage worshipers.
Because of the above, and the fact that car use is price inelastic due to the lack of realistic alternatives and the massive fiscal mess the country is in after 13 years of labour incompetence means that the motorist will be a fairly soft and easy target to extract money from and we have no protection to prevent it.
Motoring has genuine external costs (such as pollution) that make it an idea 'justified' tax target, because one of the genuine uses of targeted taxation is to link external costs to the product, unfortunately there is no requirement currently to actually match taxes to costs, or to actually use the money made to counteract the identified external costs. This leads to the situation we have now where taxation is justified by (for example) enviromental reasons, but the money raised is then spent on community centres for gay and lesbian cabbage worshipers.
Because of the above, and the fact that car use is price inelastic due to the lack of realistic alternatives and the massive fiscal mess the country is in after 13 years of labour incompetence means that the motorist will be a fairly soft and easy target to extract money from and we have no protection to prevent it.
Privacy and civil liberties perhaps? Those little, minor issues?
Well for a start just goolge Ken livingstone, and traffic lights, and you will see that under his administration as Mayor of london he reduced the amount of time traffic lights stayed on green there by increasing congestion, fuel consumption and cost of business.
http://www.1888pressrelease.com/london-s-traffic-lights-set-to-change-pr-7ekd552a5.html
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-920581-drivers-fume-at-12-second-green-light.do
Labour, they just cant help themselves when it comes to screwing over people, the environment and business.
I'd rather it not, but I don't think that's necessarily the proposal (please correct me if I'm wrong and they have released more detail). A road pricing system could have a pricing scheme such as:
- Rural or uncongested roads or at night - Free
- Congested roads - Low rate
- Heavily congested roads or peak motorway/dual carriageway times - High rate
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Soldato
which is exactly why I want static ANPR gone and why I detest the thought of such schemes. Your movements are basically logged any time you use your vehicle. Such a scheme cannot be created without destroying your privacy. As I understand it a large chunk of existing infrastructure would only require a change of software to enable it to be part of such a scheme (note that this is as I understand it and may be incorrect), which scares me greatly.
It does nothing to prevent fraud either, if the system logs only the number plate then changing said plate will redirect costs, while it is obviously fairly simple to identify when two plates are used concurrently the past performance of government (either not one specifically) shows that actually doing much to re-imburse the correct party would be slow or practically inaccessible.
I won't go into my thoughts on 'environmental policy' regarding transportation other than to say that it is utter BS, in my opinion of course.
Christ Id be 2k a year better off under UKIP
as would i...
sod all the tiny little details... UKIP it is!
Soldato
I remember when that came in, and it was brought in in an attempt to reduce congestion. That has nothing to do with traffic light cameras being out of sync.
It was not an attempt to reduce congestion. Every single prediction and piece of research clearly showed it would not reduce congestion before it was introduced. If you believe that you fell for the lie.
Because it just creates unnecessary bureaucracy? We would have to pay for someone to sit there and regulate, enforce, and police this.
Why not just do what is normally done and put fuel duty up? Then money is saved not having to pay to have some stupid device installed in the car.
Not that it matters, Lib Dems have next to zero chance of ever getting into any position of power anyway.