Fight back against motoring stealth taxes: 19 June, 2010
Discussion
Bikers from NTBPT will be protesting, with a procession around the M25, against Westminster Council's latest initiative to stealth tax motorists*. Regardless of what sort of road user you are, this is a chance to show solidarity and resist the ever-increasing tide of new ways to milk the motorist. We have now reached a stage where it costs the equivalent of the take-home miminum wage to bring a car into central London, allegedly to encourage the use of public transport. Yet, meanwhile public transport costs are rising well ahead of inflation, e.g. 20% increase in bus fares. Feeling ripped-off? Now is the time to say "Enough!".
Meet 11am, Sat 19 June:
Ace Cafe London
www.ace-cafe-london.com
Ace Corner
North Circular Road, London NW107UD
More details: http://www.notobikeparkingtax.com/
Meet 11am, Sat 19 June:
Ace Cafe London
www.ace-cafe-london.com
Ace Corner
North Circular Road, London NW107UD
More details: http://www.notobikeparkingtax.com/
- Westminster, whose parking revenue is some £80m pa, raised car parking fees by 25% in the last year or so. Now they have introduced a fee to use the previously free motorcycle bays with no added benefit. OK, "only £1" now but you can bet that's just the thin end of the wedge to ease acceptance. They have increased parking fees by 10 times the rate of inflation since they piloted parking meters. You'd be paying 45p ph to park in central London if it has merely increasd with inflation. WCC have been implicated in some very dodgy dealings and are being investigated, see www.nutsville.com for full details.
Edited by esinem on Monday 14th June 14:44
Article from Evening Standard:
Why the parking war on drivers? Well, it's a nice earner
Simon Jenkins
There's nothing a London bobby likes as much as a new bit of kit to keep him inside a warm office. Not content with its £2 billion email register and the largest array of cameras this side of Hollywood, the Home Office is testing unmanned drones for overhead detection of “theft from cash machines and antisocial driving”. I imagine that only a stingy Treasury stands between PC Plod and a tactical nuclear missile.
The objective of this shock and awe is not terrorism or street violence. It is the London motorist, pummelled again last week by news that Westminster council wants to ban yellow-line parking in evenings and weekends. Now the enforcers are to get airborne drones, as if Camden were Waziristan and Westminster the plains of Helmand. The Met's new commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, is clearly eager to call in air strikes on fugitive Chelsea tractors.
No wonder Sir Paul's beat officers still refuse to walk the streets singly and are stab-vested up to their eyeballs, for fear of improvised explosive devices laid by passing members of the public. They prefer to patrol in cars, acting as cavalry to the poor bloody infantry of community support officers and parking wardens whose ubiquity flies in the face of claims that local security is short-handed. Wardens are the true beat policemen of our day, except that their only criminals are motorists and the crime against which they must swear jihad is that of overstaying two minutes on a meter.
The official assault on London's dwindling band of drivers has two causes unrelated to motoring itself. A friendly constable once told me that the reason he and his colleagues loved chasing private motorists was that they are mostly middle-class and submit meekly to numbskull discipline. A London cockney, fined £80 for parking an inch over a white line or £350 to recover his white van from a car pound, would unleash a stream of obscenity, usually enhanced by threats of grievous bodily harm. Volvo-driving offenders mumble “Frightfully sorry, officer” and accept the most outrageous punishment.
Any law that impacts on the middle class is more pleasant to enforce than one of wider application — yet meets the same performance target. The police are currently using the Government's paranoid counter-terrorism laws as a Trojan horse for ever greater surveillance and intrusion on otherwise peace-loving citizens. Powers to film private property and search rubbish, intended to catch terrorists, are used to enforce recycling, litter and school catchments. Powers to stop photographs of security buildings are being used to arrest innocent photographers.
The second reason for the assault on car owners is that they tend to have more money than most. London's biggest and richest council, Westminster, wants to activate its parking meters at night and weekends, banning parking on single yellow lines so as to increase its phenomenal income from the resulting fines and tow-aways.
I am strictly an occasional urban motorist but find London incomparably an easier city in which to drive than, say, Paris, Rome or New York. The chief reason is that parking is relatively plentiful, even if locations are a mystery known only to the seasoned Londoner. But the freedom to park in the city centre in evenings and at weekends is a boon. Though the streets can be as crowded as during weekdays, the additional parking does not seriously impede the flow of traffic.
Two groups will clearly be hit by the change, West End shops, for which the weekend car trade is vital, and restaurants, clubs, theatres and concerts. Customers will simply avoid the hassle of trying to park at a drastically reduced number of available bays and join the drift to suburban hypermarkets and malls.
The reason for the change is revenue. Westminster's Cabinet member for city management, Danny Chalkley, claims that his new measures are needed because of “the huge amount of pressure on Westminster's parking network … and the competing needs and demands for kerbside space”. The give-away to this nonsense is a final reference to preparing for the 2012 Olympics, a sure sign of a politician about to pull a fast one on the public.
If Chalkley were concerned about traffic circulation he would deal with the chief cause of congestion, his own obsession with red lights and one-way streets and the roadworks that have left both him and the Mayor, Boris Johnson, helpless in the face of London's road-digging anarchists. He should cure this before making further assaults on other road users.
Chalkley knows this is not the issue. He is concerned not with keeping traffic moving but with revenue. His council now raises far more from motorists in parking charges and fines (£81 million) than it does even from council tax (£48 million). This is a serious fiscal distortion. What should be a local tax on residential and business space is constrained by government rate-capping. As a result, pressure to find extra resources for the council is diverted to other revenues, almost entirely parking and traffic fines. They now raise £560 million across London as a whole and constitute nothing more than a supertax.
This is the sort of manoeuvre that gets local government a bad name. Evening and weekend parking is not the be-all and end-all of living in London but it is a real convenience for millions of people and sustenance for hard-pressed West End businesses. That this convenience should be jeopardised because neither the Labour government nor the Conservative opposition has the guts to uncap council and business rates is woeful.
Why the parking war on drivers? Well, it's a nice earner
Simon Jenkins
There's nothing a London bobby likes as much as a new bit of kit to keep him inside a warm office. Not content with its £2 billion email register and the largest array of cameras this side of Hollywood, the Home Office is testing unmanned drones for overhead detection of “theft from cash machines and antisocial driving”. I imagine that only a stingy Treasury stands between PC Plod and a tactical nuclear missile.
The objective of this shock and awe is not terrorism or street violence. It is the London motorist, pummelled again last week by news that Westminster council wants to ban yellow-line parking in evenings and weekends. Now the enforcers are to get airborne drones, as if Camden were Waziristan and Westminster the plains of Helmand. The Met's new commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, is clearly eager to call in air strikes on fugitive Chelsea tractors.
No wonder Sir Paul's beat officers still refuse to walk the streets singly and are stab-vested up to their eyeballs, for fear of improvised explosive devices laid by passing members of the public. They prefer to patrol in cars, acting as cavalry to the poor bloody infantry of community support officers and parking wardens whose ubiquity flies in the face of claims that local security is short-handed. Wardens are the true beat policemen of our day, except that their only criminals are motorists and the crime against which they must swear jihad is that of overstaying two minutes on a meter.
The official assault on London's dwindling band of drivers has two causes unrelated to motoring itself. A friendly constable once told me that the reason he and his colleagues loved chasing private motorists was that they are mostly middle-class and submit meekly to numbskull discipline. A London cockney, fined £80 for parking an inch over a white line or £350 to recover his white van from a car pound, would unleash a stream of obscenity, usually enhanced by threats of grievous bodily harm. Volvo-driving offenders mumble “Frightfully sorry, officer” and accept the most outrageous punishment.
Any law that impacts on the middle class is more pleasant to enforce than one of wider application — yet meets the same performance target. The police are currently using the Government's paranoid counter-terrorism laws as a Trojan horse for ever greater surveillance and intrusion on otherwise peace-loving citizens. Powers to film private property and search rubbish, intended to catch terrorists, are used to enforce recycling, litter and school catchments. Powers to stop photographs of security buildings are being used to arrest innocent photographers.
The second reason for the assault on car owners is that they tend to have more money than most. London's biggest and richest council, Westminster, wants to activate its parking meters at night and weekends, banning parking on single yellow lines so as to increase its phenomenal income from the resulting fines and tow-aways.
I am strictly an occasional urban motorist but find London incomparably an easier city in which to drive than, say, Paris, Rome or New York. The chief reason is that parking is relatively plentiful, even if locations are a mystery known only to the seasoned Londoner. But the freedom to park in the city centre in evenings and at weekends is a boon. Though the streets can be as crowded as during weekdays, the additional parking does not seriously impede the flow of traffic.
Two groups will clearly be hit by the change, West End shops, for which the weekend car trade is vital, and restaurants, clubs, theatres and concerts. Customers will simply avoid the hassle of trying to park at a drastically reduced number of available bays and join the drift to suburban hypermarkets and malls.
The reason for the change is revenue. Westminster's Cabinet member for city management, Danny Chalkley, claims that his new measures are needed because of “the huge amount of pressure on Westminster's parking network … and the competing needs and demands for kerbside space”. The give-away to this nonsense is a final reference to preparing for the 2012 Olympics, a sure sign of a politician about to pull a fast one on the public.
If Chalkley were concerned about traffic circulation he would deal with the chief cause of congestion, his own obsession with red lights and one-way streets and the roadworks that have left both him and the Mayor, Boris Johnson, helpless in the face of London's road-digging anarchists. He should cure this before making further assaults on other road users.
Chalkley knows this is not the issue. He is concerned not with keeping traffic moving but with revenue. His council now raises far more from motorists in parking charges and fines (£81 million) than it does even from council tax (£48 million). This is a serious fiscal distortion. What should be a local tax on residential and business space is constrained by government rate-capping. As a result, pressure to find extra resources for the council is diverted to other revenues, almost entirely parking and traffic fines. They now raise £560 million across London as a whole and constitute nothing more than a supertax.
This is the sort of manoeuvre that gets local government a bad name. Evening and weekend parking is not the be-all and end-all of living in London but it is a real convenience for millions of people and sustenance for hard-pressed West End businesses. That this convenience should be jeopardised because neither the Labour government nor the Conservative opposition has the guts to uncap council and business rates is woeful.
Edited by esinem on Tuesday 15th June 05:47
I work alot in the evenings around the Picadilly and Leicester Square area, and about a year and a half ago mysteriously almost overnight a vast area of previously single yellow lines became double yellow, hence no parking at any time. I can see this happening again to make all of Westminster double yellows soon, in which case I can't work as there will be no parking and need my car to transport equipment.
Oh, you mean this? The plan to extend restrictions till midnight?
Free evening parking would be scrapped across much of the West End in plans being considered by a London council.
The move, which has outraged motorist and tourism groups, would extend parking meter charges and single yellow line penalties until midnight from Monday to Saturday in Westminster’s central controlled zones. Currently, there is free parking in those spaces from 6.30pm on such days.
Theatres, restaurants and late-opening shops fear they would be hit by the changes as customers would stay away. Motoring groups claim the council has designed the move to raise money they have lost from drivers during the recession.
Westminster council is also considering raising parking charges with a doubling of rates suggested for St John’s Wood from £1.10 per hour to £2.20.
Central zones currently charge £4.40 per hour but this could rise to £5. The F zone south of Marylebone Road is marked as a potential target as well as all other zones except B and C, which are north of Marylebone Road.
Residents with parking permits would be exempt from the new enforcement structure, which was discussed at a council Cabinet meeting on Monday.
The option to raise meter charges was said not to go “above inflation”. But although residents would be exempt from the longer charging hours, the price of their permit could still rise above inflation.
A council report last month said that parking charges needed to go up for “harmonisation” purposes so they are on a par with those in neighbouring Camden that charges £4.80 per hour.
It is understood that council chiefs were asked to find “additional income” from parking and noted it was “earmarked to contribute to” £14?million of savings.
Richard Pulford, chairman of the Society of London Theatre, said: “The proposition is ridiculous and would be gravely damaging. We have a lot of people who come into the West End from out of town by car because they often cannot get back on public transport. To add parking to their cost would be extraordinary. It would be a huge blow to the night-time economy.”
Paul Pearson, a campaigner who runs the penaltychargenotice.co.uk website said: “I think it’s disgusting, it’s just for revenue-raising, pure and simple.”
Cllr Danny Chalkley, Westminster council’s cabinet member for city management, said: “As one of the most congested boroughs in the UK there is a huge amount of pressure on Westminster’s parking network.
“We have a challenging role in striking a balance between the many competing needs and demands for our kerbside space in order to keep the city moving.
“At the start of the new decade and with the London Olympics just two years away, now is a sensible time to re-examine parking policies in parts of central London.
“It’s important to stress though that no decisions have been taken yet as to any potential changes to parking in Westminster.”
Free evening parking would be scrapped across much of the West End in plans being considered by a London council.
The move, which has outraged motorist and tourism groups, would extend parking meter charges and single yellow line penalties until midnight from Monday to Saturday in Westminster’s central controlled zones. Currently, there is free parking in those spaces from 6.30pm on such days.
Theatres, restaurants and late-opening shops fear they would be hit by the changes as customers would stay away. Motoring groups claim the council has designed the move to raise money they have lost from drivers during the recession.
Westminster council is also considering raising parking charges with a doubling of rates suggested for St John’s Wood from £1.10 per hour to £2.20.
Central zones currently charge £4.40 per hour but this could rise to £5. The F zone south of Marylebone Road is marked as a potential target as well as all other zones except B and C, which are north of Marylebone Road.
Residents with parking permits would be exempt from the new enforcement structure, which was discussed at a council Cabinet meeting on Monday.
The option to raise meter charges was said not to go “above inflation”. But although residents would be exempt from the longer charging hours, the price of their permit could still rise above inflation.
A council report last month said that parking charges needed to go up for “harmonisation” purposes so they are on a par with those in neighbouring Camden that charges £4.80 per hour.
It is understood that council chiefs were asked to find “additional income” from parking and noted it was “earmarked to contribute to” £14?million of savings.
Richard Pulford, chairman of the Society of London Theatre, said: “The proposition is ridiculous and would be gravely damaging. We have a lot of people who come into the West End from out of town by car because they often cannot get back on public transport. To add parking to their cost would be extraordinary. It would be a huge blow to the night-time economy.”
Paul Pearson, a campaigner who runs the penaltychargenotice.co.uk website said: “I think it’s disgusting, it’s just for revenue-raising, pure and simple.”
Cllr Danny Chalkley, Westminster council’s cabinet member for city management, said: “As one of the most congested boroughs in the UK there is a huge amount of pressure on Westminster’s parking network.
“We have a challenging role in striking a balance between the many competing needs and demands for our kerbside space in order to keep the city moving.
“At the start of the new decade and with the London Olympics just two years away, now is a sensible time to re-examine parking policies in parts of central London.
“It’s important to stress though that no decisions have been taken yet as to any potential changes to parking in Westminster.”
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