75ZT Community

It's OK though, as the sheeple will still vote for it!

Absurd and, would very likely cost more to implement/police than is allegedly being lost on VED for other reasons.

The only sensible way to approach this subject is by charging tolls on motorways or at least some proportion of them and, actually using the funds accrued to support the road and motorway systems instead of using it to finance just about everything else. VED could then be solely used to support all the other social amenities including the NHS as it does now along with fuel duty and VAT on fuel duty.

"The government has made clear it will not implement tolls on existing road capacity and has no plans to replace existing motoring taxes with pay-as-you-go road charging."

Well what do you know? Just how stupid is that? Seems to work just fine in France, Italy etc. AFAIK

It looks like stupid ideas are not confined by national borders.
Over here politicians are talking about an additional charge for using the motorways, too. All they are thinking about is how to increase the revenues. Safety isn't on their agenda. Motorways are much more safe than rural roads. An additional tax will divert traffic to secondary roads, resulting in more lives lost due to accidents. It's sad.

‘Tis a diversion, with similar appurtenances to those diversions we often see on the roads that have no apparent, or a misleading, reason for being there. They lead nowhere, only serve to confuse, and have no purpose other than to draw attention or metaphorical traffic away from the real, or less outrageous and therefore minimally acceptable, imposition.

Why would a government already under barrage over ’pleb’ based national disgust deliberately announce a bare-faced reinforcement of such class-ridden prejudice? After all, the length of time these things take to implement would take us perilously close to an election. Or am I too cynical.

Note the report purports to come from ’insiders’ through a deputy political editor (anyone with any experience of news publishing would appreciate the lowliness of the journalist concerned) and declares it is only one of many alternatives considered. We are in the new-ish territory of government by leakage of frenetic escaping hares rather than parliamentary process, so beloved of the Blair years.

The remedy for all road spending AND VED dodgers is to put an extra tax on fuel and dispose of the road tax completely. Those who use the roads the most, pay the most. Simple... this was proposed in the sixties but never came about.

bopperbrian wrote:to put an extra tax on fuel and dispose of the road tax completely.

A simple solution indeed. It covers road usage, production of CO2 etc. But it's just too simple, politicians can't cope with such simple solutions. Their solutions have to be complex by design.

And another thing, you are supposed to use your car less, but you are not supposed to save money by doing so.

Well the poor dears have got to raise the £12 Billion that they give away in "Foreign Aid" somehow, haven't they.....