Road pricing bill before Commons

[Zorba]

I'm not really clear why 1.8m blinkered idiots going onto a website and clicking a button should have earned any sort right to force the other 60 million of us to put up with their noise, smell, speed, psychopathic behaviour, obesity and general destruction of the countryside and clogging of towns.

Owning and running a private car is an outrageous luxury which people have got away with for way too long, and a feeble road pricing bill will go nowhere near as far as it should.

Absolutely right. I mean, if only 1.8 million people petitioned against it, surely this means that 58.2 million people are for it, right?

I'm going to go and run over a cyclist to compensate.

[angusglover]

Cyclists...get a bloody car you cheapskates!!!

[Churchill]

Absolutely right. I mean, if only 1.8 million people petitioned against it, surely this means that 58.2 million people are for it, right?

I'm going to go and run over a cyclist to compensate.

Come to Cambridge. Wall to wall fecking cyclists! I hate the bastards!

[Zorba]

Come to Cambridge. Wall to wall fecking cyclists! I hate the bastards!

Bizarrely enough, last time I 'brushed' one was in Cambridge. Near the station. Few years ago though - he's probably better now.

There is one thing worse than cyclists (at least) - drivers who don't know how to overtake them! Aaarrgh!

[Numptycorner]

Just before the local elections there was a government MP on newsnight claiming Tony was indeed listening to the electorate and hence for example scraped the road pricing scheme. I just wish I could remember who it was.

[VectraMan]

Come to Cambridge. Wall to wall fecking cyclists! I hate the bastards!

Owning and running a bicycle is an outrageous luxury which people have got away with for way too long.

[dang65]

I've posted this before, but look at it this way:

If you want to go swimming then you have a few options. You could build a private swimming pool in your back garden; you could take out membership of the local private health club; you could go to the local community leisure centre; or you could go and swim in the nearest river.

Walking or cycling is the equivalent of swimming in the nearest river; getting a bus or the train is like the leisure centre; using a taxi or first class on the train is like the private health club.

Running your own private car, or more than one, is like having a private swimming pool in your back garden.

The problem is that people have become so mollycoddled in this country that they have no idea of how much of a luxury they are able to afford - to the point where they actually get upset when anyone even makes a feeble attempt to reduce car useage by a fraction.

Here's a good example of someone a bit thick over on the BBC Have Your Say page:

So how many times do this clueless bunch want to tax me for driving a car ?

I pay around £200 road tax every year. The petrol \ diesel I buy is 60-65% taxed and then has 17.5% VAT added on that. The money I use to buy the fuel is taxed at up to 40% before I get it. And if I want to drive into central London to sit in a traffic jam, that's another £8 per day.

And now they want to add another tax to charge me to actually drive on the roads. No solutions here, just tax as usual.

Right, for the slightly retarded, let's try and explain. We don't want so many cars on the road. They stink, they're noisy, they're dangerous, they're driven by twats. For this reason, we charge a lot of money for you to use your car. So much that you can only afford to drive if you are very wealthy indeed. Unfortunately, it seems that our calculations about how many ridiculously rich people there are in this country were slightly wrong, so we're going to have to keep charging more and more until people stop driving so much. Like, everywhere. All the time.

[threaded]

they're dangerous, they're driven by twats.

Agree for the most part. I've actually posted in my blog about one idiot car driver I had the misfortune to meet this morning.

[Churchill]

I've posted this before, but look at it this way:

If you want to go swimming then you have a few options. You could build a private swimming pool in your back garden; you could take out membership of the local private health club; you could go to the local community leisure centre; or you could go and swim in the nearest river.

Walking or cycling is the equivalent of swimming in the nearest river; getting a bus or the train is like the leisure centre; using a taxi or first class on the train is like the private health club.

Running your own private car, or more than one, is like having a private swimming pool in your back garden.

The problem is that people have become so mollycoddled in this country that they have no idea of how much of a luxury they are able to afford - to the point where they actually get upset when anyone even makes a feeble attempt to reduce car useage by a fraction.

Here's a good example of someone a bit thick over on the BBC Have Your Say page:


Right, for the slightly retarded, let's try and explain. We don't want so many cars on the road. They stink, they're noisy, they're dangerous, they're driven by twats. For this reason, we charge a lot of money for you to use your car. So much that you can only afford to drive if you are very wealthy indeed. Unfortunately, it seems that our calculations about how many ridiculously rich people there are in this country were slightly wrong, so we're going to have to keep charging more and more until people stop driving so much. Like, everywhere. All the time.

Ban cars.

Don't try and tax them out of existence. Ban them for non essential users.

[VectraMan]

If you want to go swimming then you have a few options. You could build a private swimming pool in your back garden; you could take out membership of the local private health club; you could go to the local community leisure centre; or you could go and swim in the nearest river.

Walking or cycling is the equivalent of swimming in the nearest river; getting a bus or the train is like the leisure centre; using a taxi or first class on the train is like the private health club.

Running your own private car, or more than one, is like having a private swimming pool in your back garden.

That's all very lovely, but a car isn't a luxury like having a private swimming pool. It may not be completely essential, but it does make life an awful lot easier, so much so that most people would consider it essential.

And if we say that about cars, what else do we count as an outrageous luxury? How about getting rid of mains water and electricity? Are those essential? Or better yet, let's get rid of public transport as well as cars. After all, travelling out of your immediate area is also a luxury.

As for "they stink, they're noisy, and they're dangerous", well so are trains and busses, and cyclists are a menace.

But FWIW, I do kind of agree with congestion charging as long as it's done in the cities in rush hour and not a blanket per mile charge.