I agree. There are far better reasons to bag the government at the moment.

Not a bad idea actually as you could easily identify which roads were "premium" roads by the fact that they had cameras on them, my wifes car hasn't had a sniff of a motorway in its lifetime so it would be ideal for that - if it weren't for the fact that we only pay £20 a year road tax on it anyway ...

Quote ="ROBINSON"The key words here are "could", "proposed", and "we are looking at options." Plus, that article is from the Guardian. An absolute non-story, telling us nowt. Dave, I suggest you stop looking for silly reasons to bag the government, using that biased rag as backup, because frankly, you're starting to look bitter, twisted and out of date, and you're making us all cringe.'" Will this do? www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/new ... nment.html It's a bit silly attacking the source when the story is the issue, not any bias surrounding it. To even think about it is just daft and unfair, as the AA point point out. Plus I would imagine that most people suffer delays and serious congestion on inner city roads or A-roads around towns and cities rather than on the motorways.

Quote ="ROBINSON"The key words here are "could", "proposed", and "we are looking at options." Plus, that article is from the Guardian. An absolute non-story, telling us nowt. Dave, I suggest you stop looking for silly reasons to bag the government, using that biased rag as backup, because frankly, you're starting to look bitter, twisted and out of date, and you're making us all cringe.'" Will this do? www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/new ... nment.html It's a bit silly attacking the source when the story is the issue, not any bias surrounding it. To even think about it is just daft and unfair, as the AA point point out. Plus I would imagine that most people suffer delays and serious congestion on inner city roads or A-roads around towns and cities rather than on the motorways.

Have we already forgotten all the fuss surrounding the road-pricing proposals of a few years ago?

I believe it is inevitable, it's just which sucker government will have the balls to introduce it

It's also in the Telegraph:

[urlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/9639742/Motorists-to-pay-higher-rate-of-road-tax-for-right-to-drive-on-motorways-under-plans-examined-by-Government.html[/url

So now given it has been published in a right wing paper so must obviously be worth your consideration do you have an opinion on this "proposal" or not?

It's a more detailed article as well and the AA are quoted making some rather obvious points as to why it is a bad idea. Or are the AA too left wing for you as well and you only take note of what the RAC says?



What makes us cringe is your defense of the government based on the fact its latest hair brained proposal was linked to on here in the Guardian rather than by extolling the merits of what was actually being proposed. It is your usual cop out and believe you me I was not in the slightest bit surprised to see it and I doubt anyone else was either.

The proposal is bonkers. The idea people can agree not to use motorways or A roads to get around the country with this enforced by number plate reading cameras all over the place is the nuttiest suggestion I have seen in a long time. What do you think to it? Or don't you actually have an opinion?

It's been reported in the Telegraph so you are now free to comment.

There is a case for charging the most against those who use the roads the most.

"Use" in this sense, would seem to me to be defined in two ways, a) wear/damage to the road and b) the congestion caused.

Keeping it simple, heavy vehicles cause the most wear and damage and also, by virtue of their size, congest the most.

Still keeping it simple, you can (roughly) relate the cost of upkeep of the roads to the amount of fuel used.
Hence, the simplest way of charging for road use is to slap an increase onto the existing tax on fuel, thereby eliminating the need for a tax disc at all (and saving the cost of all that pointless tax disc admin at the same time).

But no UK government (and least of all this one) has the cojones to do that.
No, they'd rather spend squillions on fancy gadgetry and move the congestion elsewhere ... utterly stupid.

Never thought I'd find myself in agreement with Standee but there you go.
But I don't agree with paying for third party insurance in the cost of fuel ... that premium needs to actuarially assessed.

The idea of road tax being on fuel is the most obvious one, but will never be applied as they succession of governments have used the price of fuel as a cash cow, and to add a further amount - even if it's only a penny a gallon - would be roundly criticised as being a 'stealth tax'. To make things worse, there are classes of cars for who the road tax is so low that they would immediately be on a loser.

The only REAL losers I can see here are people like myself with surprisingly thirsty machines for what they are - one of my scooter engines does around 25 to the gallon if I hammer it hard, but road tax is only about £30 IIRC - but I think they'd be in such a minority that they could be safely ignored.


As for the idea of multi level road pricing, that's a real and guaranteed way to cause more havoc and accidents on back roads, isn't it?

bloody hell, that's even less efficient than my gas guzzling truck!

Difficult to see how anyone could avoid major roads (unless they just potter around a small town). Seems just a way of increasing the overall tax take (which already more than covers road maintenance, etc) and pricing people out of working. Presumably, they'll need to increase the revenue stream so that private operators can pay a handsome return to their shareholders and pay for lots of "enforcement officers." Also, they'll need to cover the costs of giving the taxpayer funded network away to the prospective operators.

All in all seems another show of "fairness" in these austere times. It will certainly prptect the most vulnerable in our society - who need to attend / be escorted to regular hospital appointments, etc.

This really is a joke! I commute from Wigan to work in Runcorn every day using M6/M56. I live two minutes from the M6. The alternative of using the already congested A49 through Warrington doesn't bear thinking about. Public transport during the morning rush hour is ridiculously expensive (best part of twenty quid/day on the odd occasion I have used it vs £35 /wk diesel). This will just line the pockets of big business while everyone else suffers. It will drive people off the motorways leading to further urban congestion and pollution and possibly force some to consider giving up work due to increased travel costs.

Of course its a joke and by the way the idea was to include major trunk roads so your A49 route would not be allowed either. Know of any B road routes from Wigan to Runcorn?

The idea is simply a means to increase road tax for majority under the false pretense that there is a cheaper alternative when in fact there isn't.

As one of the articles linked to suggested the reason they need to do this is falling revenue from road tax due to people driving cleaner cars.

It doesn't cost any less to maintain the roads though, so what do you suggest they should do? At least they are looking for ways to make it fairer, rather than just hiking up taxes for everyone.

Then they have several options. They can raise car tax across the board. They can raise fuel duty. Or they can raise income tax and corporation tax.
I know which I'd prefer and believe is fairest. But all 3 of those options are fairer than introducing a 2-tier system that penalises certain people and restricts others.

Bless, you still think road tax goes to maintain the roads.

Taxing foreign lorry drivers would be a start.

The amount the Treasury rakes in from motor vehicles is obscene. Tax on fuel is just one part of it and that is bad enough but people seem to overllok they also then charge 20% VAT on top including VAT on tax! Us taxpaying mugs of course already paying this extrotion out of what is laughably called our "taxed income". Add in road tax, add in the tax and NI that they take from the people employed to stock and sell the stuff, why they even have the cheek to charge tax on my insurance premium



If they ever got the huge companies that import and refine the stuff to pay some corporation gazillions that would go in the mix too though for all I know they are allowed to do a Starbucks.

I wouldn't mind so much if the rake was spent wisely, but instead most of it disappears in foreign adventurism and guaranteeing gold plated civil service pensions the liability for which is I think about half the national debt.

Quote ="DaveO"Of course its a joke and by the way the idea was to include major trunk roads so your A49 route would not be allowed either. Know of any B road routes from Wigan to Runcorn? '" The A49 is not a trunk road. You are assuming all A roads are trunk roads, this is not the case. www.roadsuk.com/documents/trunk_road_map.pdf

Quote ="DaveO"Of course its a joke and by the way the idea was to include major trunk roads so your A49 route would not be allowed either. Know of any B road routes from Wigan to Runcorn? '" The A49 is not a trunk road. You are assuming all A roads are trunk roads, this is not the case. www.roadsuk.com/documents/trunk_road_map.pdf

Simply avoiding the shortfall in VED isn't what's driving this proposal, I wish I knew what was but it certainly isn't that.

To mitigate the shortfall requires a simple raising of VED rates, taking into account the (fairly predictable) numbers of "cleaner" vehicles that will be in the vehicle parc. Keep the cleaner bands low and use the higher-polluting bands to make up the shortfall. It's not fooking rocket science.

The introduction of the proposed scheme would result in a dog's breakfast. How could anyone predict who would use what roads when? Commensurately, how would they then be able to predict future revenues?

It's a balls-up of a smokescreen to take everyone's eyes off just how much these chancers and fooking-up the nation

Why not start taxing aviation fuel? You land here with empty tanks then you've got to pay to get anywhere else.

Why is it laughably called our taxed income?

It's our income, and it's taxed, so surely 'Our accurately named taxed income' would be more accurate.


And to whoever it was that commented on one of my scooter's lack of fuel economy - it's been tuned for high power and minimum reliability.

It was me, sounds familiar, took the truck to get a remap ans told "we can do x and get you an extra 80 miles out of a tank of fuel, or do y and get you and extra 40bhp", no prizes for which one I went with.

A good remap should do both. Mine gave me an extra 35 ps, improved torque and improved fuel economy

Well, as I obviously need to spell it out, it would be (especially if you want to use it to buy fuel) much more accurately described as "our already partially taxed but which is about to be taxed a shedload more" income.

You may say there's a distinction between the tax already paid on earnings, and the further tax paid when the net is spent on fuel, and as a matter of semantics of course there is, but in real life if the fuel purchaser earned (say) £200 gross and £150 ends up straight back in the Treasury, the fact he kept a bit of the tax in his pocket for seven minutes on his way home till he filled his motor up is not really of much financial help to him.

It's not just that, though, since governments have gone out of their way to impose hundreds of stealth taxes all over the place, in addition to the biggies on fuel, fags, booze, and continue to do so. Including tax on tax. And the not-so-stealth tax, council tax.

In reality, the tax you pay on your income is not the whole truth. It is little more than a weak starting point for "negotiations", where you have a bit of choice to a limited point, but no bargaining power.

If you wanted to call it "preliminarily taxed income" then I'd go along with that, but it is just the first instalment.

On what vehicle though?

2.0l diesel Passat 4Motion.

It doesn't necessarily follow that an increase in power leads directly to a fuel penalty, although much is down to how the vehicle is driven and the prevailing conditions. If a driver decides to use the extra power available to get to his destination faster, there will be a fuel penalty. If however he uses the extra power to prevent the engine labouring, he'll get a smoother and (usually) more economic return. I rarely go above 2000rpm and have returned up to 54mpg on a run - not bad for a 4WD

Yes, you obviously do need to spell it out as you've failed so far...

It's not - as you strangely put it - 'laughably called'. It actually is called that as that's what it is; money that can (and will) be taxed further.

It's not difficult to understand.