"Pay As You Go" Road Tax

[UK-Fishing-Tackle.co.uk]

Cars now burn much cleaner than they did in the 70's and the environmental pressure to make them this way has probably only been around 15 years or so.

 

We will get cleaner cars, my timescales might be slightly off, but they'll be twice as clean if not more so in 15 years - Car manufacturers are already under immense pressure to do this for numerous reasons (including the rules on company cars being taxed on emissions). Technology evolves at an exponential rate (look at computer processing speeds and how they have risen so quickly over the last two or three years). Fuel companies will not be able to hold back the technology of new generation engines (like they do at present) for that much longer....

 

My point about pollution was if the cars pollute less (and people seem to agree that there will not be that many MORE cars in 10 years than we have today) why not build more roads to cope??

 

Also though my main point that everyone missed is that London is congested because everything is put there! Better planning regulations for businesses/attractions/airports would mean that people all over the UK would have reasonably local access to such facilities without having to sit in the M25 for three hours just to go on holiday!!!!

[UK-Fishing-Tackle.co.uk]

Before anyone mentions you can fly from outside London the subsidies often make this less cost-effective than travelling to heathrow and paying £40 a week for parking - even for a couple!

[UK-Fishing-Tackle.co.uk]

In response to Chesters1.

 

I agree in that we don't really have enough historical data to know if what is happening at the moment is not a cyclic thing (even though this may happen over many thousands of years) or an actual problem.

[chesters1]

you could have clean cars now and solve the worlds poorest people ,grow sugar cane in the hot countries and sugar beet in the colder ,use the sugar to make alcohol and run cars on that ,the result from the exaust is water ,brazil being doing for years its only because "civilised" countries have huge profits to make out of fossil fuels were not joining them

the resulting CO2 from the fermentation process will be used up by the same increase in plants producing the sugar.

the planet earth has been "balancing out" for a few billion years nothing man can do will stop it.

 

forget also this global warming crap ,the earth has froze and toasted a 1000 times in its existance and will do in the future ,do we blame a few million neanderthals for the last ice age? or for making it end ,they must have used huge quantities of resourses to do that :confused:

 

not only the climate but the earths magnetic field has changed every so often (its all written in the rocks) who's to blame for that a dinosaur in a tantram or shall we form a group to tell us if it happens again its the fault of motorists

 

congestion is pure and simple cheap cars ,cheapish fuel and the need to have a car.

my old man had a car in the fifties (hey hey) but it rarely moved fuel was costly and cars used lots of it ,unlike today public transport was not only plentyful it was relativly cheap and on time ,nowaday only city dwellers get all this ,us people living in the sticks can rarely walk out of our house straight onto a bus or train or tube ,we need our cars and the problem gets worse as jobs are fewer.

start penalising the car owner for his now essential mode of transport wont solve anything ,the rich will pay up the poor will get poorer ,if we want a third world country pricing the car out of our reach (as it is in third world countries) will result in a third world country just off france called not so great britain

 

if the government truly wanted to save resourses they would bring in mandatory laws forcing house builders to provide thermally better houses using recylcled material in its construction,on every roof would be solar panels ,every cup of water would be recovered and reused and trees would replace "set aside" fields of weeds ,they would provide a better public transport system and then cars would revert back to pleasure vehicles not essential items

 

[ 08. June 2005, 07:41 PM: Message edited by: chesters1 ]

[UK-Fishing-Tackle.co.uk]

Perhaps we worry about the inevitable too much....Anyway if NASA are to be believed we are all going to be killed by a bloody great asteroird long before the UK develops a saharan climate!!

 

Incentives for home working (i.e. tax breaks for employers) would probably help alleviate it a lot - since a great deal of inner city commuters can probably do their job remotely anyway (this is a matter of trust, but one which I think employers will be forced to look into anyway).

 

House builders should be more responsible but within reason - I Read an article last week about new plumbing regs - telling us we must have thermostatic bath taps that limit the temperature of the water. If you are too bloody stupid to know how to use a cold tap then you shouldn't be allowed to bath on your own anyway (without armbands)!!

[Vagabond]

Elton:

It'll be great for the rich, though, as they'll be able to use their roads without the proletariats getting in the way.

Yeh, Vote Labour and keep the riff-raff off the roads

 

That will be :

 

Great for 97mph Rio and other overpaid footballers.

 

Great for Two Jags

 

Great for politicians with mileage allowances

 

Not too bad for me - most of my fishing is reached via low-cost country lanes, so I could still afford my annual trip to Scotland.

 

If I want to fish abroad, I can reach Gatwick airport via rural by-ways.

 

So OK by me Jack.

 

Well, you put 'em in. demon demon

[Tony U]

From MORI today:

The government's proposal for a national road-pricing scheme appears to have tentative support from the public, according to an opinion poll published today.

The Mori study of 1,000 people commissioned by an IT company, Detica, suggests that 47% would support paying higher prices for road use in peak hours than at off-peak times so long as the scheme was matched by a cut in vehicle excise duty. Just 34% were against the idea.

 

The transport secretary, Alistair Darling, wants to introduce a pilot road-pricing scheme within two years, to be followed by a nationwide initiative within 10 to 15 years.

Opposition parties have offered their backing to the principle of road charging, although the shadow transport secretary, Alan Duncan, wrote to Mr Darling yesterday asking whether residents would have a say in setting rates on local roads.

 

There will be a great deal more debate on this

[Lid]

I still don't buy into global warming and CO2 emissions not mattering. I agree that the amount of matter on earth stays the same and that plants and tress convert CO2 to O2. However huge areas of natural forest have been cleared by man and we churn out CO2 at an unprecedented rate, not seen since the Earth was forming.

 

Of course the Earth has gone through many climate changes, but I believe we are desperately affecting this one by burning carbon based fuels like there's no tomorrow.

[UK-Fishing-Tackle.co.uk]

Has anyone ever listened to the weather forecasts........

 

"This was the hottest UK summer since 1873, or we've never had so much rain since 1912." - You've all heard it I know I have.

 

The question is if it was that warm in 1873 or whenever surely they must have been at the height of global warming or some other ecological disaster *** OR *** (more likely) this is scientists scaremongering people and what is actually happening is CYCLIC - i.e. like ice ages, which are known to reoccur at reasonably regular and evenly distributed times (given the length of time the earth has been here they are fairly consistent).

[UK-Fishing-Tackle.co.uk]

I was also talking to someone today who agrees that this is a logistical problem that is easily solved through dencentralisation of popular attractions and services.

 

Also, whilst people sort of rubbished my idea about cleaner cars in the future. One of the reasons the government is probably looking at different ways of getting tax out of our arse pockets is because when petrol becomes obsolete in vehicles (which one day it will - maybe not in 10 to 15 years but it will) the government will have to replace the billions lost through fuel taxes. Making the tax non-dependent on the type of fuel is the ideal way of doing this and blaming congestion (which I STILL BELIEVE IS EASILY RESOLVED) is ****-poor justification.

 

Build a second thames crossing, build a heathrow sized airport in the north (with proper transport links). Introduce a car sharing lane (or lanes) on the M25 and make it (and most motorways) a simple toll road of a few quid a day. If anyone wants to offer me a think-tank job contact me via my website, I'm yours for six figures!!!

 

Darling will lose his job over this without question (probably some time away) because the motivation for this is clearly not to clear roads (IMO).