Be Excellent To Each Other

Just read this in the Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/new ... -levy.html

Do motorists not pay enough bleedin' tax in this country, that the Government thinks it's perfectly ok to allow local councils to grab a bit more? Are we not taxed enough, generally, that this scheme is even necessary?

"Oh, but it will cut congestion!" Will it bollocks. All it will do is make sure those who currently drive to work are several hundred quid a year worse off - I bet that pretty much every company affected by this will pass the costs on to its employees.

It's getting to the stage where the money you earn isn't yours, but the Government's and if you're really good and behave yourself they might just let you have a bit of pocket money.

Fuck off.

It was either that or the government would simply directly tax more, and pass the cash on to local councils. This simply passes the admin on to the councils instead, so the gubmint don't have to worry about it.

So... If you own your own car park, you now have to pay to let people use it? Jesus.

Sounds a bit daft doesn't it.



Not a valid argument - we pay less than in most other European countries, and the cost of motoring has been falling for years.

They should just jack up the petrol tax instead.

Also, stop reading the torygraph, it's clearly not good for your blood pressure

If you own a (paying) carpark, do you have to pay tax on it at the moment?

Dunno. I thought they got all sorts of breaks because they were performing a public service.

They should tax windows! That would raise a lot of money.. in fact, I don't know why the government haven't thought of this sooner?

Wouldn't work - this is a congestion thing rather than a green thing.
So you'll have to pay too, Kalmar

Windows or Windows^TM?

That is shit. I get the bus to my work because I can't drive but the bus is horrendous as I've already mentioned today in Bits and Bobs. The bus takes an hour and a half so I have to leave home at 6am. If I drove, I'd be able to leave an hour later.
I wish someone would put the amount of money that goes into thinking up taxes and charges for 'improving the environment' into actually improving the environment,like by making clean cars or investing in clean power.

Learn, yo. Or get a little scooter, maybe.

Im hopefully learning next month when my wage goes up, currently I am a pauper.

Bicycle for summer?
Or is it still snowing in scotland

If it takes half an hour in a car, assuming that's not because of congestion, then I think a bike might be a bit unsuitable.

Hour and a half on the bus is probably at least an hour by bike. Each way. I've done that, but it gets a bit wearing. And as you point out there are only about 4 days of the year where you're not going to get blown off course to Shetland, or drowned, or frozen.

Also you have to pedal, you'll either get wet from rain or sweat, arrive at work needing a shower and it's just horrible. I'd sooner be sat on a bus with some chavs.

You know what the result will be anyway. Instead of parking at the office people will just park in the closest non-metered residential streets, which will piss off the folk who live there. Then that'll be the excuse for introducing parking permits everywhere.

It's fine if you have a shower at work, vastly preferable to the omnichav.
ATM I put the bike in the back of the car, park a few miles from work and cycle the last bit (which usually has congestion, so you're faster on a bike anyway).
Only on nice days though. And the fumes are still a problem. Mostly bus exhaust.

Still, at least the economy is doing well, so businesses can easily afford it.

You probably need to look at your diet.

That & there's no direct route from Saltcoats to Killie that doesn't involve cycling up an unlit Dual Carriageway. Fuck that.

Quite. That's not what I pay my cycle road tax for!

Probably. You'll just end up with empty carparks, which the businesses still have to pay for, with staff refusing to pay for them because they refuse to use them.

They charge you for having a car on the road, and now they want to charge you when you take it off. Perhaps a bit sensationalist, but this sort of crap makes me pretty angry.

*If* you can shower at work then cycling is (for me, at least, and on busier/quicker roads than I have to go on it would change the calculation) absolutely brilliant. I've lost half a stone, am now a substantially better runner and arrive at work on a high. I had to get used to the idea, and it took me several trips before I felt like I could just 'do' it and it wasn't a big deal. But worth a thought.

And hey, drivers will happilly pay rather than find streets with no parking restrictions.

I can see this having an effect though. I can think of several people in my office who drive to and from work over a shorter distance than I walk most lunchtimes to the post office and shop.
I reckon it'd cut a huge number of basically unnecessary short, congestion and pollution causing journeys that you aren't going to be able to cut any other way.

And if you're driving from a further distance, you'd probably just pay it - it's still a negligible cost compared to an annual rail ticket or something like that.

Still, a carrot would have caused less uproar than a stick. But carrots don't raise millions of pounds, they cost millions of pounds. If they spend the revenue on hover-trams, fair enough I reckon.

Controversial eh.

I think it's perfectly valid Just because some other countries pay more in motoring tax, doesn't mean that we should. Also, where does the idea that motoring is getting cheaper come from?



Boo! We already have the highest fuel tax in Europe, if not the world!



expect a blood pressure tax in the next budget

Sure, it's just that the "It's not fair" argument doesn't work very well


This type of thing:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7496381.stm



But overall, our motorists pay relatively low amount - most other countries have a lot of road tolls and purchase taxes and so, which add up.
Here you can have a cheap car, not use it very much, and it'll cost you next to sod all. That's quite a good thing.

If, however, you're taking advantage of that cheap ownership to do a very short journey twice a day at the busiest times, adding to the congestion, for the purposes of earning money, it could be argued that this needs balancing up a bit.

Perhaps not the ideal solution, and it's not going to win a lot of support amongst the daily mail brigade, but "meh".

Funny, you seem to think it works okay for TV tax

Or you can do what I do, which is motorcycle to work, get caught in a sudden downpour, and be told in work that you smell of damp motorcycle clothing.

Presumably this is the plan which has replaced proposed congestion charges in these cities. It's certainly a simpler, cheaper, more practical, plan than the ones to introduce congestion charges.

The trouble is that it won't actually solve the problem of congestion. The only real solution to the problem of congestion is investment in a competent, cheap and effective public transport alternative. Sadly, the government has an incentive to try and solve these problems via taxation which has the pleasant side effect of increasing their coffers at the same time.

Would they still charge you if you drove a Chevrolet?

A quid a day for parking is pretty cheap.


Ow, my face!

I think my place would just tear up the few proper spaces they have, most people park on the wasteland that's a potential other building anyway.

Because of course we're not allowed to light our roads anymore because of the environment.

Bogus. A dual carriageway is no place to be cycling, lit or not.

They could always make public transport cheaper and more appealling! That's also a totally likely option!

It's perfectly legal. They've got as much right to that road as cars.

Unlike say other places cyclists constantly go, like pavements.

So what, so is jumping off a cliff, it doesn't mean it's a great idea.