Safe Speed Forums

It's a fight the gov't will inevitably lose as it will unite many different factions within our society.

It must be getting close to being difficult to justify expendature on local trials if they have already said they will dump it if public opinion is against it.

The £2 billion set aside to help local authorities invest in London-style congestion charging has so far failed to persuade a single council to introduce a scheme.

I seem to recall that one reason for the success of the UK employment figures was the fact that we have a flexible workforce willing to move jobs and travel as necessary.
With the increase of house prices in the larger towns/centres of employment, employees have thought nothing about a 30+ mile drive each way to work on a daily basis. The majority of this mileage is on main roads which would be subject to the highest charges, thus, 'at a stroke' destroying this flexibility.
One has to ask whether any estimate of the number of jobs that will be driven-off abroad should this nonsense come to pass, not to mention the destruction of UK touring for Brits (foreigners won't be affected as their vehicles won't be trackable).
B'liar and his lickspittles have already presided over the destruction of a lot of our heritage, a reduction in our traditional values, all the well-publicised other failures and 'soft on crime, soft on the causes of crime'. This road pricing, however, will be the last straw for many of us.
I've been around long enough to have seen a lot of government stupidity and errors (like cancellation of the TSR2, failure to curb union powers in the 60's/70's, failure to support our industries, reliance on foreign coal and gas, the 'Nimrod 2000 project', etc, etc, the list is long and sad), but this has the makings of a huge and un-recoverable disaster for our nation.
It has the potential to cause massive civil insurrection the like of which has not been seen since the General Strike of 1926. It's a fight the gov't will inevitably lose as it will unite many different factions within our society.

Tony Blair seems conveniently blind to the truth of road taxation

After my one face-to-face discussion with Tony Blair, I became immediately worried about the man and his train of thought. Or lack thereof.

On motoring and car-related matters he seemed at best uninterested and at worst out of his depth. The Prime Minister seemed clueless about which companies qualify as true Brits (home-grown MG Rover, surely) as opposed to truly foreign firms such as Nissan, which were tempted here by massive state subsidies from the Thatcher government.
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Such lethargy on Mr Blair's part might have something to do with the fact that Ford has done the unthinkable and stopped building cars in Britain, Vauxhall is no longer making any at Luton, while MG has died, as has Rover and indeed Longbridge. TVR's UK factory, in Blackpool, has recently been murdered too. And within the past few weeks Peugeot's car-building operations here have been cruelly killed off. All this UK car industry carnage has been on Mr Blair's watch.

I also wonder if the Prime Minister understands how our well-oiled, tried and tested system of motoring taxation works. In a nutshell, we pay (at current rates) a total of about £50 billion a year for things like road fund licences, tax on car purchases, more tax on petrol and diesel and yet more tax on vehicle servicing, repairs, parts and oil. In addition to that little lot, we pay a variety of other levies, duties, charges, surcharges and tolls when we purchase everything from our car insurance policies to passes that allow us to drive over major bridges.

Of that £50 billion, we're handed back about £12 billion in the form of better, safer roads. The remaining £38 billion is gross profit for the Treasury to spend on expensive items such as John Prescott and foreign wars.

In other words, thanks to the very high levels of direct road-user taxation, drivers have more than met the cost of building, expanding, maintaining and improving the road network they use. And, of course, as we currently continue to pay up under the same tried and tested system, we continue to pay for those same roads that we have already effectively bought outright - several times over.

The Prime Minister doesn't seem to know this. In a report headlined "Blair: we can't go on without toll tax" published in a leading pro-Labour publication on Wednesday, he reportedly insisted that his Government will press ahead with a pay-per-mile toll system.

"In the future, I don't believe you will get consent for general taxpayer-funded massive investment in transport," he said.

His meaning is clear: if big money is to be spent in transport-related areas (as it has to be) then the general taxpayer will be unhappy picking up the tab. But the point he conveniently misses is that the general taxpayer never has had to pay for roads and public transport out of income tax or VAT on household goods. Road-related charges cover the lot.

Despite this, it now seems certain that a road-pricing scheme will be introduced, relying on charges of up to £1.30 a mile.

In other words, we'll have to pay once via the traditional road user taxes we've been paying for decades, then we'll have to pay again when cameras and/or other electronic devices permanently track us and charge us for every mile we drive.

A government source insists, pathetically: "We're not in the business of asking people [ie drivers] to pay twice." But that's a blatant lie. When you are charged up to £1.30 a mile to drive, you will, at the very least, still be subjected to heavy taxation on your vehicle purchases, servicing and repairs and you will still have to pay high fuel taxes. The inevitable result will be that, all things considered, the Government will get richer while private motorists will get poorer. Guaranteed.

Thank goodness my son is going to live permanently in France and can 'lend' me a car to use in the UK on French plates and insurance. Then, every 6 months, we can swop cars and 'my' French registered car will be quite legal. At least the EU regulations are good for something.

Interoperability for Road Charging
GALILEO will offer the possibility to implement new and more advanced methods of user-friendly road charging: charge for the use of particular roads at particular times with particular vehicles, or charge users travelling in a certain urban zone, according to the distance driven. Although there are other techniques for road tolling, only satellite navigation leads to a reliable seamless service thus avoiding isolated system implementation which puts a burden on user equipment.
The vehicle will use GALILEO to determine its location and to store the distance driven on every type of road (charged or free). Then it reports the results to a monitoring centre for a central charging entity to invoice the user. This would work on both inter-urban and urban roads.
A GALILEO-based solution avoids expensive investments in roadside equipment and avoids traffic jams at traditional toll plazas. New charging policies will allow better demand management. For this type of application, GALILEO will offer reliability and the possibility of tracing its performance in disputed cases. It will also provide a common standard for road charging.

Interoperability for Road Charging
GALILEO will offer the possibility to implement new and more advanced methods of user-friendly road charging:.. ...

It is worth emphasising that the services offered by GALILEO will cover the whole planet, particularly areas at a geographical disadvantage and the outermost regions of the European Union.

Now passed the 1.5 million mark - 1500034 as I look.
Will the government listen?

Hell, yes, they are lsitening intently. They are just pretending not to listen.

They are only trying to find ways to 're-educate' us into accepting the stupid bloody idea though.

Quite possibly, but why, exactly?

I well remember the WMD BS in the run up to the Iraq war. It was only later we learned that the real reason was Blair's agreement to support Bush.

So where's t, and lack of he 'agreement' behind the BS surrounding road pricing?

EU/galileo?
Technology suppliers?
Something else?

Quite possibly, but why, exactly?

I well remember the WMD BS in the run up to the Iraq war. It was only later we learned that the real reason was Blair's agreement to support Bush.

So where's the 'agreement' behind the BS surrounding road pricing?

EU/galileo?
Technology suppliers?
Something else?