Safe Speed Forums

New Labour stealth tax on motorists

Conservatives have promised to scrap a new Labour stealth tax due to be levied on millions of Britain's motorists.

Condemning the latest Government assault on car owners, Shadow Transport Secretary Tim Yeo warned that a proposed 'car possession tax' could cost drivers up to £4.50 a year in special vehicle registration fees, plus £7.50 for a 'change of keeper' levy to be charged whenever a road vehicle is sold to a new owner.

And speaking before the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs presented a nationwide protest petition to Downing Street, Mr Yeo said: "Motorists are already forking out £42 billion in road tax levies, but Labour's higher taxes have not meant higher spending on our roads.

"This new tax will not only be unfair on classic car enthusiasts, whose vehicles cause neither congestion nor pollution; but it will hit every person who relies on their car."

Mr Yeo told conservatives.com: "This is another stealth tax from Tony Blair's Government which Conservatives will not introduce. We will end Tony Blair's war on the motorist and give them value for money."

What do you think of this then

_________________
'Detritus, get yer stoney arse over ere'

I think:

I can believe this, I live in Surrey, my Parents in Warwickshire. If me and my better half want to go visit them it works out cheaper to hire a car, fill it with fuel and drive, rather than to pay for two return rail tickets.

There's a lot wrong with transport policy in this country.

I think that it is interesting that the government is also looking at road tolls.

In about 20 years, with the advent of alernative fuels and hybrids they will have lost control of fuel duty. This will be a £60B hit on the economy.

They have got to start looking at ways to claw the money back from the motorist.

_________________
Speed camera policy Kills

The fact is that the motorist is paying an amount that justifies neither the present road infastructure or the dis-proportionate treatment of motorists as social and environmental lepers. Why don't the powers that be stop taxing motorists to subsidise inefficient public transport and plough some more money into the road infastructure to alleviate congestion.

I remember reading that rail transport is subsidised at around 21p/per passenger mile and public transport is still vastly expensive and on the whole quite environmentally and spacially inefficient. Day after day I see 4 & 5 buses in a line on the main road with about 3 passengers each and a spare 20 or so seats. To try and price motorists out of their car by making the cost of motoring the same as public transport is certainly the work of the car-hate brigade in their politically correct idealism that favours the few and disrupts the many. It is certainly not working as can be clearly seen by now.

'He who pays the piper calls the tune'

Andrew

_________________
It's a scam........or possibly a scamola


Homer Simpson

A bit misguided though. If it cost the same to use you car as a bus would you take the bus...?

After all the car is 5 yards from my house, is available 24/7. Has ample carrying capacity, can carry passengers at no extra cost, has aircon, pollen filter, Awsome audio system and is a thrill to drive.

Most of all it costs me whether I use it or not....so may as well use it..

You just don't get that with a bus do you....

_________________
Speed camera policy Kills

Blimey! It's like stumbling across some lost Vernean subterranean world of light-shunning troglodytes, this site.
So what would you call the pricing of people from public transport and into private cars, that has been the true story of the last 20yrs?
You know, your hackneyed, emotive, cliched screech is disingenuous tripe. I remember reading that the shortfall between the costs of motoring borne by all of us and the contribution made my motorists stands at @£20billion per annum. Why so averse to paying the true cost of your habit? Why not pay the piper before presuming to call the tune?
Are you equally observant of the number of cars carrying only the driver that you pass each day? Got a figure for us? And are you seriously implying that the private car is spatially efficient?
You know, in my experience, the most disruptive factor faced by drivers is, er, other drivers. There are too many cars on the road. What's your solution?

Cut down on the Caffeine bro…..its not good for you.



Freedom of choice.



But there are not...... so no problem..

_________________
Speed camera policy Kills

And I believe Top Gear have demonstrated you could do it cheaper still by buying a cheap car with an MOT and getting an insurance cover note for the duration of the trip.



And so is everyone else's (more or less). Its hardly surprising therefore that people prefer to use their surrogate tin womb (or whatever other metaphor has been used to describe cars) than public transport. At least you can sit listening to your own CDs as you stare at the back of the car in front, when the alternative is sharing a bus (which you had to wait for) with loads of other people.
And our towns have developed around the car as its prime people mover, how else can you get from one retail park to another, laden with shopping, or pop into Tescos on the way home?
If this love affair (or dependence, whichever) with the car is to be ended then the government is going to have to come up with something a bit more imaginative than ...ooohhh, I know, lets invent another motoring tax

I know.... Freedom Tax .........

_________________
Speed camera policy Kills

Well there are sometimes too many cars all trying to use the same bit of road at the same time.
When motorway traffic is brought to a complete standstill due to flow breakdown caused by the sheer number of vehicles, there are perhaps too many of them.
When people are queuing for up to 90 mins on a bank holiday to get into the shopping centres - there's too many of them.
PS: I must be one of the few people in this country who doesn't feel some primeval urge to sit in a queue of traffic to buy vinyl flooring or garden features on bank holidays

Don't believe the Propaganda
That’s called incompetent traffic management
It happens when tree-hugging morons get too much say in local authorities

It’s a bit like asking for advice on sex from a virgin.

_________________
Speed camera policy Kills

Its not propganda mate, I see it for myself whenever I use the M6 on a busy day. Sheer wight of numbers of vehicles, perhaps travelling a little too close to the one ahead, a slowing of the flow at some point, domino effect, it all stops. Doesn't happen in lighter flows, ergo must be number of vehicles that are causing it.
Similalry, there are only so many roads and entrances you can build into a retail park; if everyone decides to go to the PC World sale at the same time...we have to queue.

I see it as well. I use the M1, M42 and M6 daily.

The problem is that the road network has not kept pace with demand. The M42 is a nightmare because of the length of time it has taken to make the improvements.

The planning process takes so long the demand is exceeded before the infrastructure has caught up. Traffic is increasing at less than 2% per year. It can't be difficult to keep pace. But how long have we been stuck with two main north south routes....

Everytime there are improvements in the planning the tree-huggers go into overdrive trying to block the process.

I am not arguing that we do not have conjestion...but that we have inadequate provision. Isn't that what we pay for. The more cars, the more tax the better the roads...you would think

We do not have too many cars...just too few capable roads.

_________________
Speed camera policy Kills

Which is merely another way of saying we have too many cars.
Guess it all depends on your perspective, and where you're starting from. I'd've thought it would be worth thoroughly exploring and giving a fair go to all manner of alternative solutions before paving any more of the UK in tarmac. My own amateur analysis suggests that if drivers could be encouraged to be less fearful of the 'other', of intimacy, and share a car on the way to work, then peak congestion could be reduced by anything up to 75%. I agree this might be challenging - how would you establish who has control of the CD player? - but worth a shot..
I think you'd find tree-hugger hostility to road-building would diminish were drivers to cut out unnecessary journeys, always strive to fill their car on the commute etc., not least because the clamour for new roads would diminish too.

Nope....More cars, more tax more roads....only there arn't more roads....so it all goes tits up...

We have paid for them so give them to us.

Its the only infrastructure which has been artificialy constrained.

_________________
Speed camera policy Kills

Perhaps this might work if everyone lived in same area and worked on same industrial estate and office hours were uniform without some kind of obligation for ordinary office people to work unpaid overtime as goodwill.

Ideal thought - but we need to rethink work cultures for this to work properly.

Better still - in days of computers, modems and so on ... why not work from home on some days? Know Cousin Wildy does work on her reports from home sometimes - which is probably why she manages to post on PH so often!

But you haven't paid for them.
You must know that roads are funded from general taxation, and that there's no such thing as 'road tax', so for whose benefit are you trotting out this threadbare nonsense?
You most likely also know that revenue from motorists stands at around 50% of the cost to all of us of car culture. In short, motoring is heavily subsidised by the general tax-payer. You're not 'owed' anything, nor are the roads the property or exclusive domain of the motorist, nor should road policy be determined exclusively by the motoring lobby.
That would be like asking advice on sex from a syphillis-raddled whore.

Mr tailpipe up his ass wrote:

PROGRESS, FREEDOM AND CHOICE, What would you call it?


Mr tailpipe up his ass also wrote:

Emotive?? Who's emotive???? Not me Chump at least I can control my emotions. Let me guess you are letting of steam because your little ideal world of bikes and buses has not been realised? Don't worry I understand




Can you please outline how you, personally, have had to pay due to vehicles driving on a road? If indeed this leftist, car-hating statistic-propped up by the Government for another revenue raising excuse-is in any way true then the solution is very simple. You take the £40 or so billion raised every year from motoring taxation you wait until the £6 billion for transport costs has been removed then you are left with £32 billion, take the 20 billion from that and hay ho we are still in the black...easy



No I don't stand at the road and count! But due to the popularity of private transport I would say quite a lot.





Yeah 5 people can fit in a bit of metal that weighs only 3/4 of a ton, which is 6.6 people per ton yet a bus at around 7 ton with 30 seating is only 4.2 people per ton.



Eh stop putting in silly traffic calming devices, build-outs, bumps and stop licking the boots of the green whingers. The environ-mentalists are complaining now only because the Government listened to THEIR policies 10-20 years ago. We wouldn't have cars going 60MPH through villages and tailbacks everywhere if the Government had actually invested in by-passes and newer roads instead of listening to the green tripe to save a few trees, trees still grow you know in other places.

Andrew

_________________
It's a scam........or possibly a scamola


Homer Simpson

I'd call it a shame, and prime contributor to the foul-up that is transport policy and the snarl-up that is the experience of all road users. Guess we must have different definitions of 'freedom'. Curious, wouldn't you agree, that this site is, ostensibly, about burdening the motorist with more responsibility - that of determining his own speed limit - rather than being liberated from this irksome additional consideration? Seems more about power to me. And progress is an unfortunate term to apply to a failing transport system. Or are you being ironic? And as for choice, I thought the big whinge from motorists of a certain hue was that they have no choice but to drive everywhere because public transport is in such a parlous state.
So how do I pay? Well, I pay general taxation and local (council) taxation, from which pots all building and maintenance of public roads is funded. This tax contribution also funds our health, emergency and police services which foot a bill for @£20billion per annum purely to manage injury causing accidents (@300,000 casualties at @£72,000 per casualty -govt figures). I also pay VED and fuel duty, but that's irrelevant to your question because these aren't hypothecated for use on roads, any more than the duty on fags is ringfenced for smokers' health facilities, or pub entertainment licences fund the performing arts.
I don't trust Yeo's figure of £40billion, BTW. I've heard @£20billion from sources I trust more than a vote trawling Tory.
Would somebody explain to andy, in terms he can understand, that 'weight' and 'space' aren't synonyms? I doubt he'll be able to hear it from me.
We wouldn't have cars doing 60mph through villages if motorists didn't imagine themselves exempt from the law.
Yes, I agree conditions have causes. Is other crime - burglary for example - legitimised if it can be shown that it rises as a consequence of specific economic policies: the failure to redistribute opportunity and wealth to the underclass who perpetrate it? Thought not.
I guess the only positive thing is that the vast majority of drivers think differently to you: it's possible to be a driver without fetishising/mythologising driving ("Freedom!") and without being volitionally ignorant to the problems consequent on current levels of car use. Which is why the ABD has a membership equivalent to 0.007% of drivers, and this site has 600 and some members.
It's a freak show!