Don't tax me for your selfish, urbanite point of view, otherwise known as a labour voter!
*consults the Election Results 2010 map*
Oddly most of the remaining Labour voters appear to be "outside main urban areas" to me.
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New transport secretary = idiot
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Posted 1 year ago #
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what I really hate about your argument, and the general argument for leaving the idea of motorised transport in the last century is the complete and utter lack of an alternative other then huddle in a muddy village and start your own hemp based transport policy.
If Greenpeace and friends of the earth and all those middle class pointy wagging finger type organisations supported technical development for realistic alternatives, rather than ill conceived hijacks of oil platforms and other stupidity, then we would be in a better place right now.
[\rant]
Posted 1 year ago # -
GrahamS,
You mean apart form inner London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham......
Posted 1 year ago # -
TandemJeremy - Member
Keiran - direct quote from you
An increase in VED none of which has been put back into the road infastructure.
That is not what VED is there for. It is a tax. General taxation pays for major roads, local councils for minor and urban roads.
Still don't understand your point about changing wheels - you want the civilain motorway patrol guys to change car drivers wheels for them?
TJ - I agree that it is not what it is there for. However, our road system in this country is a joke. I'm in a position where I have to drive over 750 miles per week (Sales Engineer) and the one area that i would like to see my taxes being spent has largely been ignored by the previous government - local and national, if taxes direct from motorists arn't used to maintain the systems we use then what should? Surely the fairest method would to be use revenue from VED.
On the matter of the HATO's my (now ex) girlfriend had a puncture on the motorway. She had a spare and the tools with which to change it. However she did not have the strength to undo the wheel nuts. She phoned the AA but was told, even as a lone female, that she would have to wait around an hour for a patrol.
Whilst she was waiting a HATO vehicle arrived and she asked for assistance to undo the wheel nuts only to be told that they couldn't help and if the AA didn't arrive within the hour they would have her vehicle recovered at her expense. Now what on earth are we paying these jobsworths for if they cant even help when required?
Posted 1 year ago # -
is the complete and utter lack of an alternative other then huddle in a muddy village and start your own hemp based transport policy.
a hit in one! Take a little ganja and travel in your imagination :o)
Posted 1 year ago # -
Yes, Hammond sounds like a Tory from the 1950s
Thats why he is MP for Chertsey and Weybridge. A good old safe seat for one of the boys if ever I saw one.
Posted 1 year ago # -
How many Mitsubishi Shoguns were bought nationally for the traffic wombles?
There's another saving in the bank for Osbourne
NEXT!
Posted 1 year ago # -
GrahamS,
You mean apart form inner London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham......
I was more thinking of the more general lack of blue in the rural provinces such as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
I actually agree with you that folk in't country currently need personal transport as there is little viable alternative - I just don't think that characterising the issue with party politics is helpful or accurate.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Yes, but do you think increasing reliance on cars is a good long term strategy?
No, but rather than penalising cars now they should be improving other transport. You can't penalise the car owner BEFORE ensuring there's a decent/reasonable alternative available at the same or lower cost. No party seems good at this.
Posted 1 year ago # -
AndyRT
you still miss the point about costs of motoring. all the taxes paid on car usage are far less than the amount of money car driving costs the country - VED, Fuel duty, Vat on cars - the lot of it does not come close to covering the costs of motoring.
We need to stop the massive subsidy on private motoring
It took 50 years to get to where we are now. I expect it to take 25 at leat to get back to a sensible situation. We need to start working on it now as the energy costs of personal transport is unsustainable.
Rack up the cost of petrol and use theis money to improve public transport - and over a time span of decades we will get more economical cars as well. If petrol was £20 a gallon how long till we had 150mpg cars?
Slowly over a generation steadily increasing fuel prices with that money put into alternatives will change the pattern of the way we live move and work. It is completely unsustainable that rich people who work in towns live in the country and use their cars to commute - whereas poorer rural workers have to live in towns and commute to the countryside - the economics of the madhouse!
Whith people being priced out of travelling so much by car rural village shops become viable again - and so on.
Tehre is a lot more to this but the only answer to the energy crisis is to plan for it and to change the way we live and work so as to make more efficient use of energy.
It needs to be done gradually over a generation.
Posted 1 year ago # -
No, but rather than penalising cars now they should be improving other transport. You can't penalise the car owner BEFORE ensuring there's a decent/reasonable alternative available at the same or lower cost. No party seems good at this.
The trouble is that raising taxes to improve alternative public transport makes policians very unpopular - particularly when the press says "New bus service will cost £10million and no one even uses the existing one" etc.
So instead thay have to squeeze and squeeze until drivers insist that they provide an alternative.
A nice case in point was the proposed Congestion Charge scheme in Edinburgh. They drew up budgets showing new public transport hubs, new proposals for 3 new tram routes, 6 park and ride facilites, a new train station, new bus routes and increased services, cycle routes etc.
Then said they'd fund it by charging non-residents £2 to come into the city centre by car.
Rejected by nearly 75% of votes at a referendum.
Posted 1 year ago # -
TJ I think you are barking up the wrong tree.
Reliance on public transport wont help small business grow, won't help tradesman get to the site and keep their prices affordable.
Raising duty on fuel is not the answer. Yes Our infrastructure is groaning under overuse, but then if you take into consideration the population density of the UK, I don't think we're coping badly. Humanity is at its best at times of crisis. Dependance on fossil fuel for energy consumption, for what ever use is unbalancing the world at economic, geological, ecological and yes, POLITICAL levels.
I view the issues in regards to the state of our roads as endemic to the larger picture. You can treat skin complaints and ill health with vitamins and ointments, or you can wean the patient off maccy D's as their staple diet!
I think we have been suffering from too much Gov control. Too little money spread too thin is never a winning strategy. Let the potholes be resolved at their seasonal time....at the end of this financial year.
Posted 1 year ago # -
More people voted against the Edinburgh congestion charge than drive in the city. Weird,
remember that motoring is cheaper now in relation to incomes than at virtually any other time.
Posted 1 year ago # -
but we have less rich people than the old days. So raising fuel tax will hit those that are already vulnerable, the single mums and dads, the rural working and middle class, the sole trader.....
There has to be another way!
Posted 1 year ago # -
Raise fuel tax, but give tax breaks for any petrol station further than 50 miles from the nearest city?
Posted 1 year ago # -
Andy - so waht would you do then? to scarcer and more expensive and in a decade or two it will be far more expensive and scarcer than it is now. Personal transport is far too energy intensive.
We need to go back to living and working in the same locality and to use remote working where possible. We simply will not have the energy available in a generation to sustain the commuting that goes on at the moment.
So if you don't want to see more money put into alternatives to the private car how are you going to provide the energy for these cars in a generation when the oil is gone?
Too much government control? what have you been smoking? How on earth do you get a national transport policy without government control - and actually they don't have enough - the road lobby is far too influential and the government runs scared of it.
Posted 1 year ago # -
AndyRT - Member
but we have less rich people than the old days. So raising fuel tax will hit those that are already vulnerable, the single mums and dads, the rural working and middle class, the sole trader.....
There has to be another way!
rubbish - we have a greater divide between rich and poor than for generations. You point has been comprehensively disproved over the years - remember I am proposing a gradualist approach that will benefit all those groups - as those groups you mention have ( except the sole trader) are less likely to have cars, and more likely to use the improved public transport I espouse
Posted 1 year ago # -
TJ
I advocate the Hydrogen solution, which already exists, and just needs support. It would also not mean a change of social harmony, and xill use the most abundant element in the universe!
I don't have the answers, but blaming cars is not going to help. There are bigger fish to fry. Fossil fuels should not be part of our future, but resolution to change will only happen at times of crisis.
Look around, I think the world is in a bit of a mess! The balance of power will be with those that embrace new technology.
I don't think we can un-evolve(if indeed that is what we have done) or suggest cultural change that won't support our cities needs (which seemingly includes fleecing commuters on a daily basis). So we must keep moving in the same direction as the rest of the planet. Just without burning old tress and rotten dinosaurs.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Trouble with hydrogen is you need three times the amount of energy that running the car takes to create enough hydrogen. You still need to get he energy from somewhere and hydrogen use increases energy usage 3 fold.
I would rather we planned the coming transition to an economy where energy is much more expensive ( which will happen) so we can do it with the minimum pof dislocation. If we wait for the crisis it will be a lot worse
Posted 1 year ago # -
And another thing, you have started using big words.
(although hydrogen is a bigger word than espouse) and will have never been seen dead in an Alistair Maclean novel, so not in my usual vocabulary, unless I happen to glance across at the witterings of Michael Winner in my wife's sunday times.
Play fair!
Posted 1 year ago # -
I don't have the answers
We can tell....
So you want cars with all the badness taken out?
Posted 1 year ago # -
ideally, yes
Too much to ask? Isn't that the role of the uneducated punter?
Posted 1 year ago # -
but we have less rich people than the old days.
unless I happen to glance across at the witterings of Michael Winner in my wife's sunday times.
More of a Daily Mail man?
Posted 1 year ago # -
Actually, your viewpoint is probably an accurate representation of the way people think about transport; it's a big problem..
Posted 1 year ago # -
kieran
On the matter of the HATO's my (now ex) girlfriend had a puncture on the motorway. She had a spare and the tools with which to change it. However she did not have the strength to undo the wheel nuts. She phoned the AA but was told, even as a lone female, that she would have to wait around an hour for a patrol.
Whilst she was waiting a HATO vehicle arrived and she asked for assistance to undo the wheel nuts only to be told that they couldn't help and if the AA didn't arrive within the hour they would have her vehicle recovered at her expense. Now what on earth are we paying these jobsworths for if they cant even help when required?
not all wombles are the same!
Posted 1 year ago # -
depends on your scale. I suppose. My point was, the business world will keep on turning, writing off the costs of business, or worse, writing off the UK. If you raise the cost to conduct business in the UK, from the UK we will no longer be able to expect international firms to want to invest here.
My main argument is that although roads and transport is a mess, surely there are better places to find economic salvation for the countrys bottom line?
Posted 1 year ago # -
Actually, your viewpoint is probably an accurate representation of the way people think about transport; it's a big problem..
Most opinions I hear about transport come down to: "I want everything to be cheap and I want everyone else to stop driving".
By that standard the discussion here if pretty informed.
Posted 1 year ago # -
So much for the new caring sharing tories cutting back on excessive spending - the lazy fecker lives half an hours walk from his office but gets picked up by a driver every day.
Posted 1 year ago # -
not all wombles are the same!
No, but unfortunatly the official line is as I've said.
Posted 1 year ago # -
More people voted against the Edinburgh congestion charge than drive in the city. Weird,
That congestion charge proposal was so poorly thought out that even people who might be generally in favour of such a scheme would have voted against it. Not that it should ever have went to a vote, considering that the earlier public consultation indicated that it had no chance of success, even with the weightings given to those likely to be for such a scheme. Taking it to the vote, and starting to spend money on the implementation of the scheme, was idiocy. They'd have been better spending the money on trying to understand what might have made a charging scheme acceptable (e.g. just the inner charging zone perhaps).
Posted 1 year ago # -
@ Andy RT
If Greenpeace and friends of the earth and all those middle class pointy wagging finger type organisations supported technical development for realistic alternatives, rather than ill conceived hijacks of oil platforms and other stupidity, then we would be in a better place right now.
[\rant]
POSTED 1 HOUR AGO # REPORT-POST
AndyRT - Member
GrahamS,You mean apart form inner London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham......
Yes I can see how inner London, Manchester, Liverpool etc. are full of those nasty middle class finger wagging types...
Posted 1 year ago # -
Do you live in a city/town?
Are you aware of the lack of alternatives outside main urban areas?If infrastructure allowed us to use Bio-ethanol, then great, or even better, march those new hydrogen powered cars into production. I'm not tied to fossil fuels, just personal transport. Don't tax me for your selfish, urbanite point of view, otherwise known as a labour voter!
Fine, but the people I see clogging up the roads every day in Birmingham do live in urban areas, and do have alternatives, and the use of private cars in that environment is largely absurd. Pointing out that for some people it's different doesn't make it any less true.
Any suggestion that people use the bus and the train more is always met by someone pointing out that in some places there's only 1 bus a month and then you have to walk 10 miles to get it, but it doesn't mean reducing car use should be off the agenda.
Posted 1 year ago # -
M
Posted 1 year ago # -
. If petrol was £20 a gallon how long till we had 150mpg cars?
Physical impossibility. Motorbikes just about do this currently. It would take a step-change of about 20% in efficiency and about a 75% weight reduction to get that, it that just isnt possible. They're struggling to get 1-2% currently despite hundreds of research labs working on it.
Posted 1 year ago # -
75% weight reduction seems perfectly plausible to me. Start of the 80's, most cars weighed around 800-1000kg. Now every school run mum is dragging 1500-2000kg of 4x4 around.
I'm quite sure that with modern materials and engineering a lightweight car is not unrealistic, provided we dont insist on driving around on a leather lounge suite with electric everything double glazing aircon climate control gps guided beerfridge and heated mirrors. FFS.Posted 1 year ago #
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