RE: C charge to hit families hardest
Wednesday 15th November 2006
Vauxhall Zafira: banned!Response to the Mayor of London's proposed £25 per day congestion charge - due to come in by 2009 -- has been rapid and unanimous.
C charge to hit families hardest
London to be no-go area for most?
Vauxhall Zafira: banned!
The motor trade body, the SMMT, pointed it won't just hit 4x4 drivers.
The SMMT put together examples of 10 of the family cars – people carriers, estates and family saloons – that will also be liable for this 212 per cent hike in the central London motoring tax.
- Vauxhall Zafira people carrier (2.0 litre petrol)
- Renault Espace people carrier (2.0 litre petrol)
- SEAT Alhambra people carrier (2.0 litre petrol)
- Jaguar X-Type estate (2.5 litre petrol)
- Peugeot 407 estate (2.2 litre petrol)
- Honda Accord estate (2.4 litre petrol)
- Ford Mondeo estate (2.0 litre petrol)
- Saab 9-3 estate (2.3 litre petrol)
- VW Passat saloon (1.8 litre petrol turbo tiptronic)
- Citroën C5 saloon (3.0 litre petrol)
- Source: www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk
'You might have read that Ken's latest wheeze is all about taxing 4x4s, but the truth is very different', said SMMT chief executive Christopher Macgowan. 'Families that need people carriers and estate cars, but who already pay the penalty through higher road tax and fuel costs, are set to be hit by the mayor's triple whammy. In his war against the affluent, he seems content to ignore this collateral damage to families.'
What's more, the latest news is that the Mayor has asked Transport for London to look into ways of introducing it by 2008. There's only one answer: don't go there...
Discussion
A quick bit of research reveals that the cars CO2 output varies according to the tyre size.
For instance,
MB CLK Cab 280 245 Tyres at rear A7 Petrol 227 Group G
MB CLK Cab 280 225 Tyres at rear A7 Petrol 222 Group F
How on earth are they going to cope with identifying the width of tyres to ensure that the car complies...your average traffic warden or camera is not going to know this.
For instance,
MB CLK Cab 280 245 Tyres at rear A7 Petrol 227 Group G
MB CLK Cab 280 225 Tyres at rear A7 Petrol 222 Group F
How on earth are they going to cope with identifying the width of tyres to ensure that the car complies...your average traffic warden or camera is not going to know this.
Edited by x332race on Wednesday 15th November 11:11
ianrbt said:
My daily drive is a mid blue vectra elite. The only thing that says its a 3.2 v6 is the badge on the back, can the cameras pick this out?
Yes, they read number plates. Unless your car is registered with the DVLA as a 1.8?!?
As for Ken...about time he was deported to his beloved Cuba, where the cars are all 50 years old or Eastern Bloc cast-offs. Love to see his reaction out there...
Feel sorry for anyone in/near London who has to drive there for anything other than a business appointment...but I can genuinely see this disease spreading rapidly to the other cities!
So basically this is a tax on anyone that has more than 2 children.
On the one hand we have the government encouraging us to procreate so as to produce a bigger future workforce.
And on the other you have some communist penalising you for moving them about in anything other than a family saloon. Even though, with the new child seat laws, you cant get 3 child seats in most family saloons.
Lunacy, the whole damn thing!
On the one hand we have the government encouraging us to procreate so as to produce a bigger future workforce.
And on the other you have some communist penalising you for moving them about in anything other than a family saloon. Even though, with the new child seat laws, you cant get 3 child seats in most family saloons.
Lunacy, the whole damn thing!
Alex said:
When is the next Mayoral election? I can't see him being re-elected if he pushes this through.
I can - remember who is and isn't eligible to vote for him. And how many people owning band-G cars which frequent London DON'T live in the London electoral 'footprint'?!? As opposed to how many people who're lucky to afford a 10 year old ex-minicab (which probably pollutes far more than any people-carrier!).
havoc said:
I can genuinely see this disease spreading rapidly to the other cities!
Manchester City Council has said that it 'will' be using congestion charging to 'pay for the extensions to the Metrolink tram system'.
No Edinburgh-style public consultation, no suggestions as to where the CC-zone will be, just 'we will do it'.
And what are the odds that, for some reason, the Manchester CC will remain after the Metrolink improvements have been made? 2/1 odds-on Favourite I'd guess.
All this will do is kill economies and drive companies out of business. The Congestion Charge, whilst it has appeared to 'work' in London in that it's reduced the number of cars on the road, has simply made it more expensive for anyone to have anything delivered, or to receive a delegation etc. Business has become more expensive and it's about to become even more expensive. This has a knock-on effect on salaries (they drop) and rents (they rise), and after a while no-one can afford to live or work in our major cities unless they're on mega-money.
And where do the businesses go? Abroad. Or they relocate to an area of concreted-over green belt on a floodplain somewhere. People lose jobs, companies lose money.
A far-left anticapitalist in charge of running one of Europe's most eminent economic powerhouses? How on earth did that happen.
Twincam16 said:
All this will do is kill economies and drive companies out of business.
Or at least out of the cities.
I am looking for another job, and am treating roles in central Birmingham or central Oxford with real caution. Far rather get a job somewhere a little less rabidly anti-car.
Good old Red Ken!! Lenin, Stalin, Mao are all pussies compared to this bloke. What a Tw4t!!
Lucky for me i go into London once in the bluest of blue moons so not such an issue but as has been said before i feel sorry for those that live in and commute to London on a daily basis. £140p/w minus the odd holiday is over £7K p.a. He really is taking the p1ss and i don't see him lasting out much longer!!
It wouldn't be so bad if public transport was as good as the rest of Europe but UK PT is absolutely diabolical.
Anyone know a good HITMAN!!
Lucky for me i go into London once in the bluest of blue moons so not such an issue but as has been said before i feel sorry for those that live in and commute to London on a daily basis. £140p/w minus the odd holiday is over £7K p.a. He really is taking the p1ss and i don't see him lasting out much longer!!
It wouldn't be so bad if public transport was as good as the rest of Europe but UK PT is absolutely diabolical.
Anyone know a good HITMAN!!
This type of thing is typical of our current politicians who prefer to be seen to be green rather than actually do something positive.
Under the current Band G criteria it will simply encourage the use of pre March 2006 vehicles, encourage the use of Non EU imports and encourage the use of pickup trucks such as the Mitsubishi L200 rather than a Mitsubishi Shogun 4x4. All of these escape the Band G penalty whilst producing higher emissions than many vehicles that fall into that high tax category.
The only way to encourage the use of lower emission vehicle is to do it at manufacturer level on new cars by encouraging the car manufacturers to produce cleaner, lower emission vehicles of all sizes. Reintroduce a new vehicle tax on high emissions vehicles if necessary to hit sales, but introducing punitive measures on existing family cars is both pointless and unfair. Ultimately what is Mr Livingstone suggesting? Send the people carrier to the scrap yard and buy a small fleet of Smart cars to transport the family? That's hardly environmentally friendly.
Under the current Band G criteria it will simply encourage the use of pre March 2006 vehicles, encourage the use of Non EU imports and encourage the use of pickup trucks such as the Mitsubishi L200 rather than a Mitsubishi Shogun 4x4. All of these escape the Band G penalty whilst producing higher emissions than many vehicles that fall into that high tax category.
The only way to encourage the use of lower emission vehicle is to do it at manufacturer level on new cars by encouraging the car manufacturers to produce cleaner, lower emission vehicles of all sizes. Reintroduce a new vehicle tax on high emissions vehicles if necessary to hit sales, but introducing punitive measures on existing family cars is both pointless and unfair. Ultimately what is Mr Livingstone suggesting? Send the people carrier to the scrap yard and buy a small fleet of Smart cars to transport the family? That's hardly environmentally friendly.
havoc said:
Twincam16 said:
All this will do is kill economies and drive companies out of business.
Or at least out of the cities.
I am looking for another job, and am treating roles in central Birmingham or central Oxford with real caution. Far rather get a job somewhere a little less rabidly anti-car.
Yes. I was having plenty of luck getting interviews in London but I've gone off the place a bit. Salary offers seem to be getting lower, house prices look like a Porsche's acceleration curve, and they hate cars too. It only makes sense to move to London if the work is outside the square mile and I get paid enough for a garage.
The rail transport links into Manchester from Cheshire are good, which is a relief - if I got a job in central Manchester I certainly wouldn't want to live anywhere where I ran into a congestion charge zone whilst going about my everyday business.
Twincam16 said:
No Edinburgh-style public consultation, no suggestions as to where the CC-zone will be, just 'we will do it'.
I think I read somewhere that there will be a public consultation on the "gas guzzler" charge increase in London. I suppose that will be just like the public consultation on the CC zone extension, where it was opposed by both business and the public, but Ken went ahead anyway.
As Jeremy Clarkson once said, you think they hate your 4x4 because it's wrecking the planet, but you're wrong, they hate your 4x4 because it shows you're well off! Unfortunately Ken's kind are too blinkered by class hatred and their greed for more tax and more control to see that normal families get caught out by their fines on success and achievement.
badgersport said:
This type of thing is typical of our current politicians who prefer to be seen to be green rather than actually do something positive.
It's not even 'green' though. I'm working on a news story about this today - the average lifespan of a modern car is now down to 13.5 years. That means it's dropped steadily over the last ten or fifteen years or so. No matter what their environmental credentials, cars are being made difficult to fix, harder to convert engines to alternative fuels and easier to write off than repair.
The government should incentivise keeping cars on the road past 15 years old, and introduce grants for poorer families to convert their cars to run on alternative fuels.
Gassing Station | Motoring News | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff