Safe Speed Forums

Where? I'm sure the vast majority of vehicles on the roads in the UK are driven by more than one person (feel free to prove me wrong!), and it would seem like an awful fag to change two registration plates just to burrow mum's car and nip down the shops!

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-mike[F]
Caught in the rush of the crowd, lost in a wall of sound..

Sorry - that's not nearly enough reason in itself to decide my vote. Government is much much more than road traffic legislation - I don't see, for example, any desire on the part of the Tories to assist freight onto the railways so that the roads don't get pounded to smithereens as they do right now. I haven't forgiven them for privatising the railways and destroying for a generation any chance whatsoever of an integrated transport policy, not that Labour are having any impact in repairing the damage.

Sorry, I suggest you think again.

Hi

May have misunderstood one of the Euro-members of this family - but I think he said the numberplate system in Belgium does have some named driver system in place for two driver/one car families! (He is road safety nerd over there!)

With regard to the "advanced bod" badge - Gatsobait makes excellent point that you could fake them, exchange them - and could see these being nicked instead of the car even!

Nope! Still think improving driver training, introducing motorway training and "periodic brush-up skills" course would be of more benefit, along with introduction of 80mph m/way limit at least!

As for politics - hmm! No politican is a good one! Honesty does not play a lead part. They all fibble! They all spin! But never known one that does it quite so blatantly! Better than Hitler (who invented the spin!) Spying? Twisting ALL statistics to suit policy, attacking reputations of any dissidents (whether anti-scam, anti-war, anti-WMD, or mildly disagreeing!) Those are the issues I would weigh up - they will all do it - but which one will do it the least! And those are what we will be weighing up when we cast our little slip into the black box!

But this government has been less than truthful overall. Yes! The Thatcher Government privatised the buses etc., and the privatisation of the railway was under way from their regime! But it was not finalised under their government! This government oversaw the whole procedure - and the resulting shambles is theirs!

Oh, really! The railway privatisation was a done deal under the Tories, who then managed the clever trick of losing the election, thus leaving someone else, anyone else to mop up after them and pick up some of the blame. I cannot imagine that the Tories themselves actually had the slightest idea of the mess that would ensue, not did Labour have any idea of how to put it right. They still don't, either. Somehow, British Rail seems like a Jolly Good Thing now, doesn't it?

IIRC, at the last election, the Tories were also suggesting free left turn on red at Traffic lights. A bigger recipe for chaos I can scarcely imagine. If that's the best they can do, then they are as hopeless now as in 1997. The Tories are also to blame for the contract allowing Midland Expressway Ltd to charge through the nose for HGVs on the M6 Toll, as a result of which they're all still pounding the free M'way - and indeed, the new road should have been free to all, except that Tory ideology got in the way.

Nope, the Tory record on transport is far from glorious, and we have to judge on past record as well as future promises.

Thatcherism certainly had it's bad side, as did the Wilson/Callaghan years if we go back a bit further.

But with Blair you simply get all the worst policies from both systems! 'Nuff said...

But CJB

Blair the Almighty One is, alas, in power - and buck rests with him! He has powers to reform, repeal and amend!

There was no need for him to rush through train privatisation, and if he decided not to tinker (as you may think) with the previous policy - then he must have agreed with it in principle!

And what about this daft proposal of paying £400 pa per child for the school bus? I have 4 kids! (As do other members of this family!). This is gonna cost me a fortune to get them to school! So either myself or the wife will be taking them ourselves as it is on the way and thus cheaper! At least we did not get that from the other mob! There are lot of other ideas which, granted the other lot thought of and started to implement, but whch have become a real fiasco! (Higher Education Policy comes readily to mind - cannot thing why - must be a Papa facing possible "financial ruin in a few years thing!")


I am in charge of large department - just taken over. Have to adhere to some of the dubious practices my predecessor imposed - but over time I can adjust, adapt, and change them!

That is what we elect a change of government for!

By all accounts, Spain's new leadership is going to change policy and pull troops out of Iraq - which the previous government was committed to! Governments change and policies change.

Granted there are things past governments introduced which are binding on new ones - (Europe )

No political party is any good and I certainly do not trust any politician to tell me any truths! But my wife did live in Stasi Germany for a short while and she does see similarities in the leadership style - but then she did see the Iron Lady in Nazi coloured glasses

But when election time comes, I will be weighing up every single manifesto item on the agenda from all sides! Road policy will come pretty high on my list, followed by NHS (who employ me!), followed by taxation, education, and all other things which directly and indirectly concern my well-being and freedom!

The proposal to charge for school transport does rather make a mockery of all their posturing about "the school run".

We have a mini bus that takes our two to the village school, which is down a narrow lane and gets rather crowded at chucking in/out time. This is great, but if faced with the prospect of £800 pa for a 2 mile trip we'll just use revert to driving them there instead. So how exactly does that encourage the use of public transport? Really it's a "school tax", isn't it?

A similar farce is the "Children's Tax Credit".

Once over I used to get a "Marriage Allowance", which seemed like a fairly sensible little nudge towards encouraging good nuclear family values. But now this has been stripped from me and made means-testable in the form of the CTA. So instead of me getting a tax allowance, they now pay a sum of money to my wife every month. A problem now is that they never considered pay rises when they put this system in place, so my "actual" earnings for this tax year will push me over the qualification threshold for what used to be my allowance. So as the end of the tax year approaches I will now have to submit a further stack fo forms in order to pay back the money which they've been dishing out to my wife over the last 12 months, after all the form-filling that demanded!

Quite why they feel the need to take money off a sole breadwinner and redistribute it on his behalf to his wife I don't quite understand. One can only presume that they think that if I am entrusted with providing for the family in the previous way I'll just go and spend it all in the pub or something! The words "Nanny" and "State" come to mind...

Anyway, the net effect of the current regime is that there are sizeable financial incentives to:
(a) live separately from your partner,
(b) pay others to look after your children and go out to work instead
(d) earn less and let the DSS take the strain

You couldn't make it up!

Mad Mog, I hope you don't think that I think that Blair is the Bees Knees - I see no difference between him and those of a blue hue, so no surprise that rail privatisation was not reversed more quickly. (I think you'll find that it really was all done by 1997, BTW, all franchises let, Railtrack in place etc etc). Unpicking the Midland Expressway contract would probably have landed HMG in court for years, too.

We've gone a bit off-topic here. I principle, I'd support raising the M'way limit to 80mph, or even lifting it altogether, but it WILL NOT BE the sole decider of my vote. Speed cameras may have proliferated under Labour, but the Tories put them there first. Labour are making a dogs dinner of the railways, but the Tories left the mess behind. Get the picture? Whoever you elect, the Department of Transport still runs the show, it's them who need to be the subject of our campaigning.

Hi CBJ

One cannot dispute the mess left by Major's (Thatcher's!!) governement, nor that New Labour seems to have crawled from under the same stone!

Yes - Norris (whatever ?) brought in the Speed Cam - and sold it to us on "They will only be positioned outside schools and other blackspots!"! Remember thinking loudly "OH YEAH!??? LIKELY STORY!" at the time!

But Labour introduced the current Scamships, and allowed them to keep fines to buy more scams! Big business! Lots of New Labour jobs provided for those who could not hold one anywhere else!

Result - policy gets out of hand, and turns into veritable farce!

To regain credibility - they really need to have independent audit - not rather daftly asking the Scammers if scams are sited correctly!

But like I said - all manifesto points would be appraised, and like yourself, I would not vote for any government on one issue alone. I can live with 70mph speed limits - though admit would love to see the limit raised to something more realistic!

The labour party are responsible for the imposition of new daft speed limits enforced by thousands of revenue cameras. The tories have promised to raise the motorway speed limit, reduce the number of cameras and do away with the M4 bus lane (particularly annoying if you regularly use the M4).

Obviously I will not be voting purely on transport policy but then I am a capitalist anyway. But hey, this is a motoring forum so lets keep off of taxation and immigration etc.

I thought it was the council that imposed speed limits on non "trunk roads", ie, most of the ones in town. My road has been reduced to a 30, fom a 40 for no real reason. Though the police like taking up a vantage point with a radar gun outside my house, which I'm sure is a coincidence.

They pulled a BSM driver over once - which i recorded on my webcam. Made me laugh

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uzz