vehicle tracking and road pricing policy

Morbyd said:
That too! They've already got CCTV cameras blanketing the country so you're basically always being filmed. Now, you might have your car tracked as well. Orwell was right!
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Between CCTV cameras in the streets and a black box in your own car there's not a big difference in the results, but IMO it's crossing a subtle line and I wonder if there will be option to step back (does it make any sense?)
 
Taken from pistonheads.com:

ROAD CHARGING: GOVT WILL 'LISTEN'

One million signatures force statement


One million signatures and counting. That's how many it took to persuade the Government to admit that it has to listen to those opposed to road charging, as it reacts to the petition on the 10 Downing Street Web site.
Opponents argue that this is an unfair tax, because it discriminates against those who live in rural areas and those forced to drive long distances for either family or work reasons. Others are concerned about the loss of personal privacy, and the power that the provision of so much detailed information would hand to civil servants.


On the BBC's Today programme this morning, transport secretary Douglas Alexander pledged to listen to those who oppose road charging, which is its preferred solution to road congestion. He said it was important to deliberate and discuss, and then take a decision. However, that's all he did say -- there was no promise to take account of people's views.


The Government's been saying for years that doing nothing is not an option, but its solution involves finding out when and where people are driving, and charging them accordingly.


However, one MP, John Spellar, said that there were plenty of other measures that could be taken to combat congestion. These included flexible working hours, staggered school opening, improved traffic signals and using motorway hard shoulders.


The petition opposing road charging was started by Peter Roberts last November. Since then, PistonHeads has charted its progress. It hit 400,000 signatures on 15 January and 600,000 just two weeks later. The next 400,000 needed to take it to one million -- the event happened on Saturday -- arrived within two weeks. At the time of writing, it had reached 1,128,345; the second biggest petition calls for the scrapping of inheritance tax, and stands at 47,602 signatures.


Since the road charging petition proved such a success, Paul Smith of the Safe Speed road safety campaign has started a petition to scrap speed cameras, which has already attracted over 4,000 signatures in just two days, and is now 50th largest petition.


Links

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I'm being priced out of my car as it is and i only use it a few times a week now. What worries me the most is that the rail infrastructure couldnt cope with an influx of passengers so what is the alternative for commuters?
 
i think they should keep car tax as it is according to CO emissions.

then charge tax by the mile, and get this figure when the car goes in for its MOT (seeing that its all computerised now).

and also spend the money raised on giving us a ****ing decent affordable alternative, build a new freight only rail line up the spine of the country, and from east to west, with Brum as the central hub, which might take off a lot of HGVs off the road.

also, widen the main M ways to 4 lanes, and making it illegal for HGVs/slow vehicles to use lanes 3 and 4, and invest in more traffic cops to enforce this.

half the jams are caused by HGVs limited to 50mph overtaking each over on uphill stretches of Mways.

also, make it compusary for ever Local Authority to lay on a regular Bus service for School Kids...

its all common sense really.
 
hounddj said:
BTW - how much nicer has it been driving this week with the kids on half term ?? A 50 min commute has only been taking me 20 mins.
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might also help the mini fatties lose some weight and get fit.

usually takes me 1hr, now got it down to 40mins cos of less traffic.

my "public transport alternative" is taking the 724 Heathrow "express" from harlow to St albans, via every small ****ing village, and that takes about 2hrs.

so im quite happy to let an iceberg melt. sue me! :lol:
 
chewie_oo7 said:
so im quite happy to let an iceberg melt. sue me! :lol:
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460_ap_polarbear_061227.jpg


Please don't hurt my babies Chewie !!!! :( :( :(

:lol: :lol: :lol:
 
sandi said:
So it will cost me £840 before petrol to go visit my parents up north. :lol: :lol: :lol:
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I'm trying to figure out what alternatives people have.

I mean, I took a train London-Newcastle return and it cost more than 2 roundtrip Easyjet flights to somewhere in Europe. Insane!

So, if you can't take your car, and the train is so expensive, what are people supposed to do? Has your government even considered that they'll kill leisure travel within the country? I guess I'm just amazed that any government could take this idea seriously!

Chewie - see above re: petrol tax.
 
as above, the train costs me £25 a day if i buy daily tickets. Thats for a journey i could drive in less than an hour.
 
Morbyd said:
I'm trying to figure out what alternatives people have.

I mean, I took a train London-Newcastle return and it cost more than 2 roundtrip Easyjet flights to somewhere in Europe. Insane!

So, if you can't take your car, and the train is so expensive, what are people supposed to do? Has your government even considered that they'll kill leisure travel within the country? I guess I'm just amazed that any government could take this idea seriously!

Chewie - see above re: petrol tax.
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i think 2p per mile is enough dont u? Motorists = easy targets.

seriously tho, they wont cut/abolish any of the existing taxs in whatever form, cos they need it to pay for vote winning **** like the NHS, before considering anything about how people get from A-B.

Morbyd - our incumbant lot dont even know what the word considered means? - all they wanna do is "level" out the playing field between rich and poor - the ruch get poorer, while the poor stay poor. seems to me, they can get away with chucking away OUR money, in ill stupid projects that are badly managed and over budget.

the reason our unemployment is so sodding low, is cos half of em are employed doing "jobs" in whitehall, which seems to be the only place these days where u can work and also be guaranteed a decent pension...
 
if nearly one and a half million people marching through central london couldn't stop the iraq war, what hope do you folks think you have got?

clicking a button on a website is possibly the most stupid excuse for a protest i have ever heard. and then you come on a completely unrelated website and moan on here too.

there are some pretty convincing freedom of movement and personal liberty arguments against the road tolls but wildly slagging off the goverment and spreading completely unfounded rumours aint gonna make anyone listen to your view

learn from the poll tax protests. there's nothing to concentrate a governments mind as much as smashing up a few mcdonalds
 
russ said:
i think you will find that if the yanks had a more responsible attitude towards energy consumption, things would be a darn sight better for all of us
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Agreed that energy consumption in the States is a bit excessive.

But that's got nothing to do with your road tax!
 
russ said:
if nearly one and a half million people marching through central london couldn't stop the iraq war, what hope do you folks think you have got?

clicking a button on a website is possibly the most stupid excuse for a protest i have ever heard. and then you come on a completely unrelated website and moan on here too.

there are some pretty convincing freedom of movement and personal liberty arguments against the road tolls but wildly slagging off the goverment and spreading completely unfounded rumours aint gonna make anyone listen to your view

learn from the poll tax protests. there's nothing to concentrate a governments mind as much as smashing up a few mcdonalds
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well lets go smash in a few Maccy D's then.
 
I can see your point russ and to some degree I agree that this is unlikely to make any difference. However it does give the public and to some extent the media a statistical figure to use in the fight against additional road taxing.

If you ask someone who joined the iraq protest march if they thought it was pointless due to the goverments defiance and subsequent invasion; I'm sure they will tell you that they were still proud they made some sort of stand against the decision. A petition is by no means as aggressive move but the higher the number gets, the more attention it will receive.

It's no bad thing if people want to discuss this in forums. I don't see any complaints about threads such as 'what i had for lunch' and 'what are you doing at the weekend'. This section of the forum has always been fairly open as you well know. There's bound to be some obligatory goverment rants involved as we've all had a gripe with one policy or another. I originally started this thread as i saw an article on a popular motoring website, it caused a great deal of discussion on there so I was interested in the opinion of spotlighters.

With a bit of luck, this will just be a rogue policy idea to try and steer our attention away from another story. Much like the proposed 'Tax per bin bag' which clearly wouldnt work.
 
dam0 said:
With a bit of luck, this will just be a rogue policy idea to try and steer our attention away from another story. Much like the proposed 'Tax per bin bag' which clearly wouldnt work.
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365 ****ing days in a year mate. what did that leaked memo say once? "its a good day to bury bad news"?
 
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