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Is this idea from our current government or is it from the E.U?
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It has been mentioned on this site many times before now how much simpler Road Tax would be if it was just put on to the price of petrol
Petrol tax is no substitute for road pricing, because one of the key objectives of any scheme like this is to place a much higher price on driving on congested roads. Fuel consumption on congested roads is higher, but not high enough to provide the desired disincentive to their use.
My guess is that the aim of any such scheme will be to charge for peak-time use of the most congested roads at more than double the rates for off-peak uncongested roads, and possibly a lot more than double. That simply can't be done through fuel taxes.
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The thing is, IF the idea is to charge for use of congested roads at peak times, there are simpler ways..
Like.. a simple badge in the car linked to your credit card... read by a scanner and charged when you enter a road. Yes there are security and other issues but they are NOT insurmountable.
I am not (NOT) a conspiracist but when you look at CCTV,DNA databases, ID cards and this, you have all the ingredients of total control of citizens...
Fortunately they will lose the next General ELection and be out of power for 15 years..
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I have absolutely no issues with road pricing, what people need to understand is that there is a cost to running and maintaining a public road system and the costs should therefore be transparent.
For example a return business trip to London by rail costs my employer £150 or so first class, last time we went as a family, it cost £140 in total for all six of us first class again. Instead of going down at 6:30 am to be in a meeting at 9 am, and catching the 6 pm train home we left at 11 am and came back at 7pm at night the following day.
Road pricing is no different to that. You pays your money and you takes your choice.
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IF the idea is to charge for use of congested roads at peak times there are simpler ways.. Like.. a simple badge in the car linked to your credit card... read by a scanner and charged when you enter a road.
That's fine for a motorway, because there's a very limited number of entry and exit points, but it doesn't work in a city, where there are massive permutations of routes. Your solution would require scanner at every junction in an built-up area.
I am not (NOT) a conspiracist but when you look at CCTV DNA databases ID cards and this you have all the ingredients of total control of citizens...
I agree there. Unfortunately, when the ID cards legislation was going through, most people didn't bother protesting.
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Note sure I understand how this will work. Daily Mail aticle states "In most cases, the trials will involve a satellite tracking a vehicle's movements and motorists will then receive a monthly or weekly bill which will vary depending on when and where they drove."
How can a satellite track the vehicle's moment's? Surely the black box would have to track the vehicles movements - This would mean that you would somehow have to have your black box "read" on a regular basis. Anyone have any ideas how they intend to achieve this?
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This would mean that you would somehow have to have your black box "read" on a regular basis. Anyone have any ideas how they intend to achieve this?
Bluetooth and that mobile phone your pocket.
The amount of data even for a 50k mile a year rep would not be that great if downloaded every week or after 20, 30 or 40hours driving time.
The box will simply break it down to time duration in each of the price bandings, a direct debit from your bank account. The first you will know is when your monthly statement arrives (by email of course so they can check with your ISP what you've been downloading too).
Edited by gmac on 18/08/2008 at 21:42
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And how is it powered? 6v positive earth anyone? Quite a few older cars are. Then, do you have variable rates depending on what it is? So your 40 tonne truck become a motorbike?
Quite a few veteran cars don't have a battery, and even my vintage car bumps easily and runs without the battery (magneto ignition).
The only sure thing is like all thse ideas, the only one becoming rich is the IT provider.
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I'm not particularly worried. I've seen several of my close friends at university abandon the country for better living/working conditions elsewhere in Europe; my brother has no intention of returning to the UK to live, and I feel no great ties to the place either apart from family (and Doctor Who). I think there's an excellent chance work will call me abroad in the next few years and if not... well, I think there's a good chance I'll go anyway.
We don't feel guilty since we effectively paid for our university education up front (yes, yes, I know it's heavily subsidised but that's not the point), and the current loathing for the government is unlike anything I've known in my admittedly short life.
This feeling is rife among university leavers my age, and I think the old joke about the last person to leave switching off the lights might just ring true over the next 30 years.
On topic, putting the tax on fuel is such an incredibly simple solution (although you might see more petrol thefts), and provided you change to an RFID keyring that has the insurance details on, you can also effectively shunt a majority of the uninsured drivers off the road.
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I agree, David. 200,000 a year and counting, and it ain't the dole claimaints and serial binge drinkers who are going either. I've "lost" half a dozen mates to mainland Europe, New Zealand and the States in the past 2 years, and not one has come back, or has any intention of doing so. These are 40% tax bracket earners who are now contributing nothing to the country, and whose only regrets when I've spoken to them seem to be "I didn't do it sooner".
Anyway, on topic - I'm clinging on to the hope that this government's historic incompetence with anything IT related, and its slapdash approach to awarding contracts will ensure this system never works properly if it ever gets delivered in the first place. Let's face it, given the track record over the last 10 years (NHS IT systems, exam board marking, Tube PPP disaster), the odds are pretty heavily stacked in our favour.
As madf said too, they won't be in power in 2 years time. As long as the Tories don't suddenly think it's a top idea, we're quite safe.
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When VED was hiked, some people argued that they do less mileage in a powerful car than someone doing more mileage in a small car.
So, in theory the driver of smaller car should pay more. Now when govt. is trying to do the same, people are again unhappy :)
Besides the privacy issue following tracking device in the car, I wonder how much the device would cost. My current VED is £150/year. If govt. makes the tracking device mandatory, I'm sure they will need to hike VED again to make any profit which will offset the cost of the device in the first place!
Whenever a flat rate is applied (anywhere, not just motoring), it is the high volume users who gain the benefit and the low volume users lose out. [eg. currently you pay same tax whether you do 1000 miles/year or 100,000 miles/year]
A cheaper option will be tax based on annual mileage for eg. you will pay tax during MOT and it will be based on your odometer reading [I know that's prone to abuse as well].
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Fuel tax is a substitute. Once people lose too much time sitting in jams they find alternatives. This is the fairest way as an hour of wasted time 'costs' the individual the same. Congestion is automatically self limiting as at some point people get fed up of wasting their lives in jams and either change jobs or change routes or change times of travel. Employers also need to get it into their heads that they need to offer more flexible working hours or car share incentives. What also needs to be done know is to remove the anti car rubbish that has been foisted on towns and make sure traffic flow is optimised. Cycle lanes need to be decent and cyclists need to use them so they aren't holding up the rest of the traffic. Tax on fuel is the easiest and fairest as those that choose to live in the middle of nowhere should either accept the higher costs of fuel, car share, demand adequate public transport provision or move to the city. Those that use congested roads do pay more as they are sitting idling the engine and doing stop start driving which gives poor fuel efficiency. If anything this should be the single reason that towns and cities are optimised for traffic as it must increase CO2 emissions immensely by wasting everyone's time and resources making them sit in unnecessary queues as some bozo has retimed the traffic lights to snarl everywhere up.
HMG argue it is all green reasons that people are taxed for using fossil fuels so if everyone switches to green alternatives there will be no need to tax those using environmentally friendly fuels anyway.
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HMG argue it is all green reasons that people are taxed for using fossil fuels so if everyone switches to green alternatives there will be no need to tax those using environmentally friendly fuels anyway.
The government (whoever they are) must plan alternative taxation for the replacement road fuel what ever it is, if it is compressed air, tax air compressors, or road tolls if they cant tax fuel. They have to pay for the welfare state, NHS, wars, etc, etc.
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 19/08/2008 at 13:21
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The government (whoever they are) must plan alternative taxation for the replacement road fuel what ever it is if it is compressed air tax air compressors or road tolls if they cant tax fuel. They have to pay for the welfare state NHS wars ............
........... civil servants, teachers, etc
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I think it's an excelent idea. I don't like the idea of flat rate tax, unless somebody can explain to me how the following is fair:
A sales rep doing 50,000 miles a year in a BMW 118d with his foot to the floor doing 90+ in the outside lane of the Motorway pays £35 a year road tax.
I, doing 5,000 miles a year in a BMW 530i, normally driven pretty economically, will pay £430 a year road tax.
Unless somebody can justify that to me, I support pay as you go road tax.
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Though, Michael R, the rep in the 118d is already paying the tax on 5,000 litres of fuel (about £3200), while you are paying tax on 1,600 litres of about £1,000.
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Ok, how about this, just an idea - instead of charging for congested roads, why not introduce variable speed limits, which at certain traffic volumes are lowered say from 70 to 50 in the rush hour, so that travelling on these roads becomes at congested times becomes unattractive.
It would still penalise people for travelling on these roads at the 'wrong time' but wouldnt require anywhere near the investment, nor the invasion of privacy.
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We've already got a 'pay as you go tax' - because all tax on fuel is PAYG.
The government, in introducing different VED rates for different cars, moved away from the PAYG principle.
Now, presumably in order to compensate for that, they are introducing a new PAYG tax, though without, of course abolishing fuel duty, or anything else.
If the problem is congestion, then as teabelly pointed out, "Congestion is automatically self limiting as at some point people get fed up of wasting their lives in jams and either change jobs or change routes or change times of travel."
If the government wants to do something about congestion, then the answer is pretty obvious - build more roads.
(And if someone raises the hoary old chestnut about how building more roads just leads to more people driving on them, I shall shake my head in despair.)
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(And if someone raises the hoary old chestnut about how building more roads just leads to more people driving on them I shall shake my head in despair.)
It may be an chestnut, but it's true. More roads means more traffic, which is why the old predict-and-provide approach to road planning has long been discredited.
Additionally, more road capacity means more journeys, which means higher overall emissions. Any government interested in reducing emissions has to both reduce congestion and reduce the number of vehicle miles
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It may be an chestnut but it's true. More roads means more traffic
Broadly speaking, this may be true. BUT . . .
More roads only leads to considerably more traffic in situations where there were not enough roads before. If there are sufficient roads to meet the transport needs of an area, any increase in traffic will be absolutely tiny. If road-building does produce materially more traffic, it is basically an indication that the transport infrastructure was inadequate before, or that it was soon going to become inadequate.
One suspects, however, that some people are committed to inadequacy.
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More roads only leads to considerably more traffic in situations where there were not enough roads before.
No, they also lead to people making decisions based on the apparent availability of the roads, and setting out to make journeys which they wouldn't otherwise have made. Look for example at how commuting patterns spread out with the arrival of motorways, as people decide that it's feasible to commute down the new road.
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they also lead to people making decisions based on the apparent availability of the roads . . .Look for example at how commuting patterns spread out with the arrival of motorways as people decide that it's feasible to commute down the new road.
In other words, promoting flexibility in the labour market, which I would have thought was basically a good thing for the economic prosperity of the country.
And surely if it was not feasible to commute before the new road was built, it means that the road system was pretty poor at the time?
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Though Michael R the rep in the 118d is already paying the tax on 5 000 litres of fuel (about £3200) while you are paying tax on 1 600 litres of about £1 000.
So why then the VED on top of that? And if its not about usage, it's about a fixed cost, why base it on emissions?
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So why then the VED on top of that? And if its not about usage it's about a fixed cost why base it on emissions?
To discourage people from purchasing and running high emissions cars. Making it a standing charge means that even if you aren't using it much, the high emissions car costs you more than the low-emissions car, so it drives consumer choice away from the most polluting vehicles, regardless of the mileage they drive
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>> So why then the VED on top of that? And if its not about usage >> it's about a fixed cost why base it on emissions? To discourage people from purchasing and running high emissions cars. Making it a standing charge means that even if you aren't using it much the high emissions car costs you more than the low-emissions car so it drives consumer choice away from the most polluting vehicles regardless of the mileage they drive
But my car pullutes less than the rep in the 118d I highlighted? Plus drive me away - I've already bought it.
My car produces lower emissions per annum than the average rep car. Why should I pay more VED?
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>> To discourage people from purchasing and running high emissions cars.
But my car pullutes less than the rep in the 118d I highlighted? Plus drive me away - I've already bought it. My car produces lower emissions per annum than the average rep car. Why should I pay more VED?
Its all about making people change their future buying decisions in favour of lower emmission cars, MR. Also it will make many people think about whether its worth them hanging on to their gas guzzler or getting rid - as many (most?) people change their cars every few years it will cause more "low polluting" (perhaps that should read "lesser"!) to be sold new in the long run...
And over the same mileage you car does pollute more than the 118d.... its only the fact that you are travelling less miles that means you are polluting less... if you owned a 118 instead of a 530i you pollute even less! Obviously the gov haven't loaded the VED rates high enough to put you off... yet! ;-)
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Its all about making people change their future buying decisions in favour of lower emmission cars MR.
I agree with this. This is a good idea - when ordering a new car, buyers and manufacturers should be encouraged to reduce emissions. No argument from me there at all.
So why is the tax change retrospective.. I've made my buying decision already. Help me shape my next decision through taxation, sure. But to penalise me for an existing decision? Why? What purpose does that serve? How does that reduce emissions? If I decide enough is enough and I sell up... somebody else will buy it and continue to run it.
And if I was thinking of changing do you think shafting me tax wise so that my car sheds thousands and thousands in value, as has been the case, is going to make it easier or harder for me to move up to that lovely new eco-car? BMW 118d's are not cheap ;)
Also it will make many people think about whether its worth them hanging on to their gas guzzler or getting rid -
See above. Net environmental benefit from that is nil. We are talking about cars on the road.
And over the same mileage you car does pollute more than the 118d....
Not relevant, as I don't and will never cover the same mileage as the 118d in this car. It's my hobby, not a workhorse.
Edited by MichaelR on 19/08/2008 at 17:41
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If the whole point is to get higher polluting cars off the road as quickly as possible, increasing the ved for older vehicles would do the same job for older cars as it does for newer ones (note I am not defending the policy, just stating what is the logical deduction after looking at the facts and figures)...
Which does make my comment re your car relevant - its an unfair comparison in the first place between your low mileage car and the high mileage rep... the mileage is irrellevant, they are trying to get people to downsize to less polluting cars and their policy would seem to be working.... the fact that you choose to ignore it doesn't change anything.
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If the whole point is to get higher polluting cars off the road as quickly as possible increasing the ved for older vehicles would do the same job for older cars as it does for newer ones (note I am not defending the policy just stating what is the logical deduction after looking at the facts and figures)...
So why are the oldest cars on our road - those made before 2001 - capped at £210 a year? Why are the owners of scabby old 1989 BMW 540i's free to kick out goodness knows what for £210 a year whilst my far cleaner, far more modern engined vehicle is penalised?
2005 cars are not old. 2005 cars are already on the road. Yet 2005 cars are being hit with this tax. Nobody is going to scrap a 2005 Range Rover Vougue becuase its tax has gone up by 200 quid. Infact, I dare so nobody would scrap one if it was going up by £2000...
Which does make my comment re your car relevant - its an unfair comparison in the first place between your low mileage car and the high mileage rep... the mileage is irrellevant they are trying to get people to downsize to less polluting cars and their policy would seem to be working.... the fact that you choose to ignore it doesn't change anything.
How is their policy working? How many cars have been removed from the road since the changes were announced PURELY due to taxation? None I would imagine. Remember, just becuase you trade your 740i in for a C1 doesn't mean it ceases to exist. It is sold on, where somebody else buys it and continues to drive it.
The net benefit for the environment of retrospectively applying the punative VED is nil.
I can see and completely understand and even support applying the new bands to new cars. Just not existing cars.
Edited by Webmaster on 20/08/2008 at 01:49
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Remember just becuase you trade your 740i in for a C1 doesn't mean it ceases to exist. It is sold on where somebody else buys it and continues to drive it.
Quite. In addition, the pennies you will have to sell said 740i for in order for its next owner to justify the running costs means the next owner is likely to run it into the ground without maintaining it. Who, in their right mind, would fork out several hundred quid to a grand+ for a service or parts replacement on a BMW / Merc / Audi / Volvo when they bought it for a few hundred quid in the first place? Better to run it til it dies and buy another.
This means we will end up with many of these so called 'gas guzzlers' being driven around by people who won't maintain them. It means for the last few thousand miles before they cough their last, they'll be running with clogged air filters, binding brakes, filthy oil and worn spark plugs, belching even more rubbish into the air.
Cheap cars don't get maintained. Cheap, non maintained big engined cars are an environmental disaster.
In any case, even the environmental lobby wants to distance itself from these proposals because they will end up dragging the whole green tax thing into disrepute while simultaneously achieving nothing. That's unprecedented, and speaks volumes.
Cheers
DP
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How is their policy working?
Look at the market for s/h post 2001 cars in the higher ved bands....
As for pre 2001, I agree, and would answer "Watch this space!" Once they've got this bit through I can see them extending it to older cars....
Interesting point regarding badly maintained cars... so which pollutes more, a badly maintained small engined car or a badly maintained large one?? Talking of maintenance is a good argument for more stringent emmission tests of older cars, which, personally, I think is long overdue....
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>> How is their policy working? Look at the market for s/h post 2001 cars in the higher ved bands....
Making them even more affordable and thus still on the roads and still pulluting..
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SNIPQUOTE - and not for the 1st time for you!Making them even more affordable and thus still on the roads and still pulluting..
Might make them cheaper, but the market for them has shrunk as most people don't want them, so its likely they'll disappear quicker than they would if the ved rate had been kept as it is now....
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 20/08/2008 at 01:46
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SNIPQUOTE also!Might make them cheaper but the market for them has shrunk as most people don't want them so its likely they'll disappear quicker than they would if the ved rate had been kept as it is now....
Not really - once they get cheap enough people will be able to easily justify the cost of taxation. I'd pay £1000 a year in tax if you could buy a mint 10 year old 7 Series for £500, for example.
It's money generation pure and simple. The retrospective element makes no sense, no matter what brainwashed greeny liberals try and say.
Applying it to new cars is a good idea - it provides incentives for manufacturers to reduce emissions and helps shape buyer behaviour. If somebody decides not to buy a certain new car, it isnt built - it doesnt go on the road.
The same cannot be said for used cars.
All they've done is make it harder for people to upgrade to cleaner cars, as their cars are worth less, and sufficiently annoy the rest of us. When I pay £400 a year for tax you can be damn sure I'll be getting my moneys worth.
Less train, more car methinks!
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 20/08/2008 at 01:46
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Not really - once they get cheap enough people will be able to easily justify the cost of taxation. I'd pay £1000 a year in tax if you could buy a mint 10 year old 7 Series for £500 for example.
You may look at that way, as do many others on here... but the general public don't, they will see a high annual cost and walk away, even if other costs are low, thats just the way of the lemmings!
(PS Sorry, DD - it was the first one for a while!!).
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Because:
1. It is a very cheap tax to collect;
2. You get an annual reminder about MOT and insurance;
3. It raises a lot of money
Because encouraging people into smaller cars that burn less fuel is not going to either
1. Particularly damage the environment
2. Harm their pockets
The car scheme at work is changing significantly soon. I am totally convinced that a vast number of the larger Mercs/BMWs/Audis will disappear to be replaced with Aygos/Corsas and Jazzes.
Edited by hxj on 19/08/2008 at 13:23
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Congestion is automatically self limiting as at some point people get fed up of wasting their lives in jams and either change jobs or change routes or change times of travel.
The problem with that idea is that if you look at the current state of the roads, it's quite clear that congestion has to get very bad before people start switching their travel plans.
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it's quite clear that congestion has to get very bad before people start switching their travel plans.
If it doesn't make them change their travel plans, then it clearly is not a major problem for them :-)
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