PAY BY THE MILE
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Discussion

TDTH1975

Original Poster:

631 posts

279 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
Is this not seriously the most rediculous suggestion that the government have proposed in decades. Phase out car tax and petrol duty so that they can introduce costs of 1p to a staggering £1.34 per mile for all motorists. The cost is one thing, my bigger issue is the satellite monitoring system that locks onto every car to monitor its every move. As quoted in the metro, this is just another "Big-Brother-style" monitoring system. The end result will be that it is pointless having ANY vehicle other than emergency vihicles that travel more than 70 mph because no doubt the postman/lady will deliver a nice note saying - "You travelled 73 miles on Saturday at a cost of £xxx - oh and by the way - you did the 76 miles in 52 minutes so take 3 points and give us another £60 in the process". Boox to that I say....... Thoughts ?

judas

6,234 posts

288 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
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As has been said many time, by many people here: over my dead body.

But this is all beside the point. Does anyone seriously think, given the gov's track record in implementing large scale IT projects, that this idea stands any chance of being anything but a bottomless money pit, which gets canned after several years of overrun and failure to work?

mrmaggit

10,146 posts

277 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
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Just another way of employing more civil masters.

just trouble

700 posts

283 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
It won't happen as I am sure that some where it will infringe our Human Rights.If Blair did try then if he thinks the petrol strikes a couple of years ago was bad he hasn't seen anything yetDid you know that we are the most watched/monitored nation in the worldJT

DustyC

12,822 posts

283 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
1p per mile? sounds cheap to me.

bassfiend

5,530 posts

279 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
DustyC said:
1p per mile? sounds cheap to me.


Well 1p per mile *WOULD* be fine but it's the £1.34 per mile for the busiest roads that scares the sh*t out of me...

I live in Winchester and work in Langley which is 130miles a day round trip to work. I work in Langley because that's the only place I could find employment after being made redundant and that takes me up the M3 and around the M25 every day (and you can bet your ass they'll not be 1p per mile). I rack up about 36,000 miles a year with my commute to work (30,000miles) and personal mileage (about 6,000miles) and I don't have a company car, I don't get my fuel paid for by the company and I sure as hell won't get my road charges paid for by the company either.

Phil

DustyC

12,822 posts

283 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
bugger, I was too busy thinking about the Griff. Didn't even consider the 500 miles a week in the Golf.



Then again thats still gonna be cheaper than fuel duty I think?

li'l pugs

1,323 posts

288 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
As said above, 1p per mile doesn't sound that bad really, or even 1.34p as long as Road Tax and the tax on fuel is scrapped..........but having a black box "Big Brother" GPS system installed into every car is too much !

Psychobert

6,318 posts

285 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
DustyC said:
Then again thats still gonna be cheaper than fuel duty I think?


In a word, no. It will cost billions to set up the infrastructure to do this, and chances are it will be som sort of pfi arrangement; if it is ever successfully developed the revenue to do this will be gained from the charges imposed. I can see this making a lot of money, (especially if they are allowed to do the same as the M6Toll - the Australian bank that financed it is allowed to levy any toll they like, no regulation at all).

If I'm to get to the office, I have no choice but to drive as the public transport system is shot to hell and it would take me twice as long to get there. I can't see any point in this new scheme, other than to make money. Sort the bloody public transport system out so we don't have to use our cars all the time. I thought that was the point in the 'integrated transport policy'? Stupid, stupid fdwits. Can't find their ar4eholes with both hands and a diagram..

TDTH1975

Original Poster:

631 posts

279 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
Correct me if I am wrong but in Y2K, in the UK alone which is the highest tax paying country in the world for fuel shows that 73% of every litre is tax and 27% is cost. I am no mathematician but scrap tax and we are still paying even more on the higher bracket roads.

DustyC

12,822 posts

283 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
If public transport was adequate and reasonably priced for me to get to work then I'd happily do it every day.

In fact I much prefer to sit on the train reading than staring at someones brake lights for an hour each morning.

What Im trying to say is that there is no need to tax us all out of our cars. Just improve public transport and we'll use it!

deeen

6,391 posts

274 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
I like the idea of £ per mile, and reducing fuel tax to compensate. If they took it to the extreme, my 5.0 v8 would cost the same to drive as a Metro. Excellent! I'm sure this is exactly what they intend.

granville

18,764 posts

290 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
No f@cking way.

What gets me are the comparative costs for various car users - the BBC going to the specific length of identifying not just a person doing 20,000 miles a year...but a BMW driver doing 20,000 miles a year! (The slimy bastards!)

Apparently, I'd be £56/month worse off.

Er, ok then...

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how many farthings per hectare I'm going to suffer tithage on when blasting of a Sunday morn; how much it will cost for a weekend by the banks of Loch Lomond, a trip down to the ferry at Portsmouth or indeed, 8 hours lapping Silverstone in my Zastava Soup Dragon LXi?

What troubles me, is that horrible social engineers like the English-hating Professor himself, Arnold 'call me Hess' McBegg, are redoubtably steering the policy making quangos in this hateful direction and no matter how much sheen our beloved transport minister (another Wallace sympathiser incarnate) attempts to smear over the questions being raised viz a vis the costings, this can only work if car use per se becomes more expensive! My God!

It raises all sorts of issues ito wider civil liberties and with any luck, the scope of any such Labourite imposition would be hugely curtailed at law but since when did that stop our assembled Kremlinites chez numero dix?

More, bigger, faster roads are the answer; less ruinous financial hemorrhaging via the infinite sponge of the social security budget - and we could soon see a 160 mph cruising boulevard 'twixt the urban zones.

Alas, a vision so removed from that which actually occupies the mindsets of these grotty, socialist vagabonds in power, who do nothing but pursue the obsessive strangulation of the productive classes, I fear it is nought but a deeply wet fantasy, until that is, the hammer & sickle of the leftist-centre zeitgeist that discolours the debate apparent as in in so many arenas of Albion today, is neatly cleaved by the broadsword of an almighty Arthurian restitution.

God save the turf of Agincourt and may the deceivers find their destiny in gentle swayage by the neck, at the end of an old, old oak.

The dogs.

plotloss

67,280 posts

299 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
'We cannot build our way out of congestion' said Begg on C4N last night.

It would be nice if you at least tried first eh?

I travel to work on the busiest roads in the UK to pay a quite horrendous amount of taxation of which I never see a penny and probably never will.

Now they want to tax me in order to make this contribution?

The dole is becoming a seriously alluring prospect...

diddyman

3,646 posts

270 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
I did some quick maths on this.

Assuming that you do 10,000 miles in a year and average say 8 miles/litre (roughly 30 mpg) that works out as 1250 litres of fuel pa

Currently, assuming 70% of fuel is tax and 30% is the actual fuel, and petrol is 80p a litre, this works out as:

1250l x £.8 = £1000 in fuel, of which £700 is tax and £300 is fuel

So, £700 in tax plus £150 road duty is £850 in total under the current system.

Assuming the new system scrapped road tax and fuel duty your 1250l of petrol would cost you £375 pa

If we took an average of 80p/mile (some roads are 1p a mile, some are £1.34, so 80p seems like a good average) then 10000 miles would cost you £8000 in tax.

So, as it is: £850
As Bliar would like it to be: £8000

Or have I got it all wrong?



deeen

6,391 posts

274 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
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plotloss said:
'We cannot build our way out of congestion' said Begg on C4N last night.



This oft repeated lie annoys me, of course we can, we just choose not to. This statement is often backed up with some empty mantra about traffic expanding to fill the available roads, bollox, there are a finite number of people who can only drive one vehicle at a time so if we keep building roads the demand will, at some point be satisfied.

swilly

9,699 posts

303 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
20 million car users.

20 million bills every month.

??millions not paying, querying the bill, moving house, going on holiday, dying, selling the car, not registering the car, blocking the tracking equipment.

This monsteructure is going to be run how? by whom?

And when the bills get too high and people reduce travel by car and get rid of the car, tax income from fuel duty drops and the greater industry and economy based around tranpsort declines.

Great thinking.

bassfiend

5,530 posts

279 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
plotloss said:

The dole is becoming a seriously alluring prospect...


Actually plotloss it isn't...

...well, not if you own your own home and pay a mortgage anyway.

I was made redundant a few years ago and if I had been living in rented or council accomodation I would have had some or all of my rent covered by "the Social".

As it was, with a house of my own and close on a grand a month mortgage I qualified for the grand total of £17.50 a week! (And that was everything I could get.)

I also made two cockups when I was unemployed - firstly I was under the mistaken belief that I couldn't sign on for six weeks after being made redundant. That was incorrect but I'll come back to this.

Secondly after being out of work for six months I was no longer eligable for the £17.50 and they were going to send me on "retraining" courses to be a street cleaner or something (Project management jobs for the localisation industry are a bit hard to come by which is what I was doing) so - with a job opening coming up I signed off and started my new job 4 weeks later.

I'm now being chased by the DSS and income tax for what I was doing in those "missing" 6 + 4 weeks and are trying to claim that some money I was loaned by my father in law to tide me over that last month is "undeclared income" and want to tax me on it at 40%!



Phil

plotloss

67,280 posts

299 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
See this is the thing.

We rent and have a young daughter. So DSS would pick up the rent fully for a period.

We are also not married. So loads of benefits come if I piss off and swerve the CSA - I would have no job after all.

Bit of small scale fraud, and disposable income is higher than it is currently because we would both get benefits for all sorts.

Its this absolute bollocks that I cant stomach. If you know the system you know how to work it, meanwhile good honest hardworking people who find themselves in an unfortunate position like your good self get shafted when in need of geniuine help.

I often wonder if its worth staying at all...

and

197 posts

286 months

Wednesday 21st July 2004
quotequote all
whilst the dominant govt mentality remains to enforce punishment against broken systems rather than fix them we're headed right down the pan.