Replacement for Fuel Duty

[threaded]

TonyEnglish: The system proposed is "pre-paid". That means you have to give the government lots of money in advance and if you don't use up all your tokens then they'll be redestributed to hard working familes. If you use up all your tokens yet continue to drive then they'll sieze your car. It is only fair you see.

[ladymuck]

and there's also the joy of all that satellite tracking being used to catch you you 110 mph down the M1 (as if there aren't enough cameras watching our every move)

[BoredBloke]

threaded : my point was that there needs to be something which informs the driver of the cost before he uses the stretch of road.Even if you pre pay, you still don't know the cost per mile before getting onto the stretch of road in question. Prsumably it will all be on the sat nav system wherby poor drivers can opt for the route of least cost while rich drivers can go from a to b without having to go via cdef and g.

[threaded]

TonyEnglish: I don't think the UK Gov would like that. It serves their interests best if people don't completely know what the price will be in advance, e.g. stealth taxes.

I doubt you will get a discount for using an alternative route, it'll probably cost more: people complain of "rat runs" as it is.

[bfg]

Variable charging

Spin Spin Spin, divide and rule again, they just want make all the people who don't use the motorway think they will be saving on road fund licence and fuel duty so they will support it.

It will work like this:

Charge is based on how busy the road is.
Motorway costs £1.20 rush hour and the A road cost 20p.
So the people who use the A road support the scheme, enough to give out the '73% of people think it's a good thing' stats to the press.
Loads of people switch to the A road and fill it to capacity.
It is now a congested road and rises to £1.20.
So everyone switches back to the motorway which now costs the same as the A road.

Result, the motorway is still as congested as ever and it costs loads more than you saved.

AND now the people who used the A road all the time and thought they would be the winners will also be paying £1.20. Never mind '73% of people thought it would be a good thing' so the government is enacting the will of the people like the good little democrats they are.

Then they introduce the 'Climate Change Levy for Liquid Vehicle fuels' to save the planet, which happens to be at the same rate as the old fuel duties. This however will be introduced at the behest of the EU or some other supra-national body or because of some treaty signed by Margaret Thatcher so they will only be fulfilling their international obligations and it's nothing to do with them, honest.

[DimPrawn]

Congrats. You receives DimPrawns award for the most cynical post of the today. Keep up the good work.

PS. I would have added that they'll probably spend the extra money raised from the motorists by promoting poverty amongst one armed lesbian immigrants in a nationwide awareness initiative.

[Alf W]

Haven't we already got a system that charges people who do more mileage, more tax? Called Fuel Duty. Why piss millions up the wall to someone like EDS to balls the whole project up and only really achieve the same aim?

If the government want to raise more money from Road Users how about taxing horses, bicycles and caravans (very ******* heavily indeed in the latter case)?

[Lucifer Box]

I just hope the scheme is made extra especially fair for Britain's hard-working families. The bastards.

[Rebecca Loos]

Alf, you still don't understand NL, do you - NL is there to give the likes of EDS a lot of money (Tony and Gordon will need their non-executive directorships once they've been ejected from power, you know - one needs one's pension strategy)
Secondly, yes there is already one tax on mileage, and I bet that Gordon looks at that every day and screams to his aides "THERE IS ONLY ONE TAX ON MILEAGE? WHAT THE F**K ARE YOU LOT DOING? I HAVE AT LEAST 2 TAXES ON MOST THINGS AND YOU ARE TELLING ME THAT MILEAGE IS ONLY TAXED ONCE?"