Safe Speed Forums

299 CO2 for me.

Mrs CE does about 2,500 pa in this car yet we're paying top wack. Excellent!

Now Gordon, let me ask you a question. I can afford the car, I can afford the fuel, I can afford the insurance. Do you think that paying more VED will make me sell my car.....or do you think it will cause me to resent you even more than I do?

Where do you think I'll find the extra £200??? I'll sack the ironing woman before selling my car.

You are are an unreconstructed class warrior!

Putting it into context, this is like buying an extra gallon of petrol every week (or one-and-a-half pints of bitter!). It won't make any difference. In fact, by shopping around for insurance, it would be easy to save this. I've just shopped around for insurance for Mrs. Cooperman's Mondeo Diesel and my Rover 75T, and it's just over half what I was paying via a broker; £375 for both cars as against about £345 each. With that saving I can afford any extra road tax.

That's pathetic... Next thing they'll be introducing extra tax for vehicles fitted with tow-bars...

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Shhhhh!

Don't give them any more ideas! Mine has a tow bar!

Unfortunately, it's somewhat redundant now. When our local council in a fit of "green-ness" decided to empty the bins every other week, I think they honstly believed that people would say "oh well, in that case, I'll stop going out and buying stuff just to put in my bin"! Unfortunately, not many people (that I know anyway) put more stuff in their bins than they need to so they still throw the same amount of stuff away - it's just that they make more trips to the tip. In their infinite (lack of) wisdom, the Council issued everyone with TWO new wheelie bins - a black one for household waste and a brown one for garden waste. I rang up to ask what I was supposed to do with the existing grey one and was told I could take it to the tip if I didn't want it... (true story - you couldn't make it up)!

Anyway, not long after this decision, they (curiously) developed a problem with large queues forming at the tip so they decided to ban vans and twin-axle trailers. Unfortunately, mine is a twin-axle trailer. Still, not to worry, it just means I have to make several trips with the car rather than one with the trailer but I'm sure that's better for the environment and local congestion!

Trouble is, now that I can't use my twin axle trailer any more, I don't know how to get rid of it...

..I could take it to the tip but they've banned twin axle trailers...

...maybe I'll do what everyone else seems to be doing increasingly and just fly-tip it somewhere.

Just un-bolt one axle

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

The whole CO2 emissions system is (in my view) fundamentally "cobblers" anyway because it's done on the "standard" EC drive cycle. This means, start the engine up cold, idle for "X" seconds, into first and accelerate up to (say) 10MPH in "Y" seconds. Into second and up to (say) 30 MPH in "Z" seconds. And so on - up and down the gears and at various speeds for various times (including some simulated "motorway" driving).

The trouble is, it's the same test for every vehicle so they have to keep the acceleration periods such that any car can cope with them. What this means is that the little Aygos and Lupos and the like are pretty much foot-to-the-floor to go from speed "A" to speed "B" in "Z" seconds but the Ferrari will do it while barely opening the throttle much beyond tickover.

It's for this reason that when you compare the VCA figures for two almost identical versions of the same vehicle (other than engine output), the CO2 figures are often very little different. For example the Peugeot 307 1.6 (90BHP) diesel has a figure of 129g/km CO2) and so does the 1.6 (110bhp)! The reason is that neither car needed 90BHP to do the test and the differences in the mapping of the engine management systems are beyond the 90 BHP point so they simply don't come into it!

Even when you look at similar engines of different capacity the differences often aren't as much as you'd think.

Yes, I've been tempted by that because it just happened to have 2 axles when I bought it but I dont actually NEED the carrying capacity of both. Unfortunately, they also have a limit on the bed length of even a single axle trailer so I'd have to remove an axle and shorten it somewhat as well.

No, it's obvious I'll just have to keep two trailers - one for the tip and one for the big stuff.

- And there's me thinking how not to be wasteful and deciding that if I got a big trailer I could always put small stuff in it but not the other way round.

Silly me.

I wonder what they'd do if you got a single axle trailer, strapped the twin into it and then loaded the twin?

I'm in one of those moods today...

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

It's all complete tripe.

Ok so my wife's 4x4 'pollutes' more per mile than some cars. But it's going to last for years.

We bought it used and took the view that it would last us for a good few years. But if I am to follow the twisted reasoning of the eco tax, the high rate on 'gas guzzlers' is to discourage people from buying them. So what to do with the ones that have been taxed off the road' and how much CO2 will be expended making their replacements?

How about this gem. Mrs CE was car sharing so we were getting 3 people in the car per day. This arrangement is coming to an end so she decide to catch the train instead. But given that we are now being taxed more whether we use the car or not....guess what....we're going to make more use of it!

Anyone fancy a toyota pious? http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editoria ... NewsID=188

Indeed. I am expecting "Piouses" to start arriving in the junkyards around 2010 by which time the ones operating on the least favorable driving cycles will begin to have their battery packs dying!

There is *NO* such thing as a deep cycle battery!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

Don't forget the postponment of the fuel tax rises till later on this year - why i ask cynically - suppose the answer is that by then we might have forgotten about them , as garages hike up fuel prices (now why did fuel go up this week ??) and then Gordo can claim profiteering by garages

My view, now that I have read some details of the Budget, is that small manufacturing businesses (like mine) are some of the worst hit by the changes.

The lower rate of Corporation Tax is up from 19 to 22% (it's only down from 30% to the headline 28% if you are a big firm and make over £1M profit a year) and capital allowances are down - a great incentive to invest.

If you have a big service business (say a computer consultancy like EDS who do a lot of Government work) where capital spending is minimal then you will benefit.

It's all very Gordon Brown socialism. Big centralised companies are OK as they are in cahoots with the Government but small individualistic businesses and entrepreneurs must be penalised in case they get "out of control".

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I think one big con in every way.

How on earth can you have everyone pay 20% basic rate tax .. abolish to 10% band .. and claim those on low minimum wages will be "better off"

I note no mention of "allowances" and this is a budget for next year and beyond and not this year .. and thus prone to changes ..

More of the same from this particular bunch in office. Whethe the other flavour of green is any better is the elusive answer to a straight question .. and I think theSwiss mob should be in charge now .. but mobile phones .. sigh ... - that riff raff would probably confiscate the whole lot of those .. but raise the speed limit :rotfl and bring in compulsory cycling for all for at least a half hour per day and build some decent cycling lanes which everyone would want to use

But seriously Malc.. it really is a non-budget and one seriously big taxation con trick which serves not one person in the UK in reality .. but will dupe those let down by being unable to work out simple sums as a direct result of tripe "eduakyshun" //"bovvered Blair style"

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

Well, I've got a good loophole that seems to be working.

My car is 2002 registered (manufactured in 1999), but as it's a grey import with no EU type approval, it falls under the "old" pricing rules. I just paid £175 to renew on tuesday, would have been £180 if I renewed today.

So if you want to drive a brand new gas guzzling 4x4, I guess you should visit one of the many grey market importers and get yourself a nice Mitsubishi Pajero.

Actually dont, if too many people do that, they may close this loophole and then I'm screwed.

So is my wife's Citroen Saxo.

Gotta take my hat off to Stal... sorry, big Gordy though. He's an old (very old) style politician trying to survive in a new-style politicians' world. He's hung around like the proverbial bad smell and it does look like he is going to get his day after all.

Trouble is he's going to go down in history for being the shortest serving prime minister of the last two centuries.

Way to go, Gordy......!

2.0 mondeo ghia. how can we justify having an engine of that capacity? well we could take our hard earned abroad but we like to stay here for holidays, so many places to visit in the uk we see no reason to go abroad. family of 5, tent and all the equipment, trying fitting that in a sfart car.

So's my Clio.

yeah, so like said an extra £200 ain't gonna change many peoples minds about what they drive when they already drive a new "premium" car anyway, they'll just despise gordon brownspeak.

but what about when all these cars are 10-15 years old and being bought by people on a budget? will they buy £300 worth of high-spec, built to last car and pay £400 a year tax, or a £300 clapped out 1.0 litre oil burner cos it'll cost them £100 a year?

I can see a lot of quality cars being scrapped before their time while heaps are kept on the road pumping out far more pollution purely for the tax - how envirmentally friendly

And I expect we'll get family sized cars with poxy little engines purely so it can be marketed to a tax class- regardless of the fact bigger engines in this class last longer and return better mpg in normal driving.

PS, whats the new tax class on a VW T5 van? I notice the minibus variants are now supertaxed Cos I'm sure people buy minibusses they don't need them just to show off

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction

if you don't want a headache, don't read it.

http://www.grumpyoldsod.com/tax%20cuts.asp