Where do you think the money for those subsidies comes from? The magic money tree? Every subsidy gets paid for with higher taxes.
I use my car more often since moving back to rural France .
But even though the number of car journeys has increased , they are shorter and hardly spend any time in traffic . I can go to the supermarket and back in a few minutes , whereas in the UK it would have taken me hours because of the traffic . I obviously take my bike when I can .
re the protest itself , I dont fully support it . We , as a society , want everything , expensive phones , sat tv etc ... It all cost money .
@ Ed , we looked at Zoe last week but being in a small town the local dealer could not give us the deal advertised on tv otherwise i would have got one .
When I was a kid my dad car-shared his trip to work with a few other people. I’ve cant remember the last time i heard about anyone car sharing (the odd school run parent, but even that seems much rarer than it used to be)
There are signs dotted all around where I live in North Wilts promoting car sharing. Not something I could do, I work 15 miles from home, and I’m the only one out of over 100 employees who lives where I do.
I’m sure some smartass will be along telling me I should just get a job closer to home. Tried that, there’s roughly 3% unemployment locally, most jobs are pretty uninspired, supermarket, warehouse type stuff. I was pretty lucky to get the job I have, so I have to put up with driving around 155 miles a week now, and spending over £100 a month on fuel. There is public transport, but I’m not sure how reliable it is when I’m doing early shifts starting at 7am, and finishing at 4, or starting at 10 and finishing at 7pm - I can be at work in around twenty-five minutes on an early shift, I’ve actually done it in fifteen on one occasion. A bus would probably take two hours, a train means going to Bath and changing for Westbury, then walking from the station, another twenty minutes or so.
Cycle? Not a chance!
Marseille kicking off today, apparently.
I was at friends last night and one of them (in dark glasses) sang us his modified version of the Marseillaise, but he sings flat so roped a couple of us into doing it for Youtube for him, I'm on guitar... . He printed a couple of hundred copies for the local manif today with the intention of getting everyone to sing
He made the local press including his lyrics if you flick through the images.
Marseille kicking off today, apparently.
I'm not sure there's much they could do to make Marseille worse.
Organise an England-Russia football match there.
Smart road user pricing – the tech is there now to track vehicles and charge by the mile. Cost partly offset by reducing motoring “fixed” costs like VED and fuel tax. Large, or polluting, cars charged more.[quote/]
Road pricing will be implemented in the Uk and all across the EU within 7 years. With the uptake of electric vehicles the fuel tax take will drop significantly and governments will have to replace it with something else. I was at an Australian infrastructure conference in early November and they said that Australia would be road charging in that timescale.
Simple answer - make car drivers pay their way - stop the massive subsidies from the public purse. Put these costs on fuel. Gradually over a generation to drive behaviour change. Petrol would be £4 a litre or so at todays prices if this was done.
Commuting becomes prohibitively expensive so rural workers can once again afford to live in the communities in which they work. Local shops become viable again. The polluter pays
couple this with making all car drivers pay for their parking space in towns and cities. Its usually public land that is used for free or very cheaply by the affluent few. About a thousand pounds worth of land for every car parked in cities
Zero tolerance for illegal road use.
Large, or polluting, cars charged more.
A tax on fuel will do this far more effectively and doesn't require tracking infrastructure. The general public won't like the idea of the government tracking individuals in their cars. And it's just not required to get the desired outcome. If you tax the fuel more then if you choose to run an uneconomic car you pay more, if you choose to do high mileage then you pay more, if you do low miles but want to run an uneconomical car you pay relative to your usage. If you choose to drive your car more economically rather than drive with a heavy right foot then you pay for the fuel use and environmental impact you cause. Absolutely no need for tracking and cost per mile charging, just load up the fuel with more tax.
Governments don't run peoples lives. Ultimately if people value the environment the change has to come from them. The government can try to influence or gently nudge peoples behaviours and minds, but the government is the slave of the people and not the other way round. If our lifetstyles need to change then that change has to come from the people - and generally does...we're still mostly recycling even though we know most of it still ends up in landfill. the government has a responsibility to keep the electricity flowing so people can run their lives and business and industry can continue and remain competitive...so of course governments are still doing deals with traditional fossil fuel industries because it takes decades to change over to renewables and to completely transform your transport infrastructure.
We need to be simplifying the tax/charging system...when you buy a car you pay VAT, tax on servicing like annual services, MOT's, insurance, VED etc. then tax on fuel. Another charge on top of all that is unnecessary...just load up fuel tax more - it's a self regulating tax, free for the government to implement and maintain and far more effective than per mile charging.
Whilst I have no objection to taxing cars and big heavy diesel cars in particular (I drive a Zoé), cars really aren't the main motivation of the gilets jaunes interviewed by the media or the ones I know. They want the rich and in particular thr rich that curently avoid tax (starbucks and Co.) fairly taxing which would automatically reduce the proportion of tax paid by the poor.
If you read those lyrics you'd see Fred mentions tax avoiders, the super rich, and Amazon but there is no mention of car or fuel tax.
We came back to Saint Sébastien from Bordeaux last Sunday, the GJs had taken over all the gares de péage and put the barriers up. Ended up paying zero for a journey which is close to 20eur in tolls. It was getting ugly at the border though, gendarmes were letting cars into France but holding the lorries, they were tailed back some 10km.
More than happy to get the train, we are in Bordeaux every couple of months, but it's about three times the cost of fuel, péage, parking.
ugly at the border though, gendarmes were letting cars into France but holding the lorries, they were tailed back some 10km.
Happens every Sunday, trucks aren't allowed on the roads in France on Sunday so they queue up at the border.
Every day a school day. But there were trucks going south, mostly Spanish. Does the ban apply to French registered trucks only?
All trucks with a few exemptions whatever the nationality (because this is Europe) whichever way they are headed. The ban starts at 22:00 on Saturday and ends at 22:00 on Sunday. In most areas there are enough service areas, aires and truck stops to mop up the trucks but at the Spanish border they are in the habit of pulling over and waiting on the autoroute. Once the autoroute opens the southbound lane into Spain gets going again in minutes but in France the trucks are checked for drugs, immigrants and so on, so it takes a while to clear the backlog northbound. When there's a manhunt on the backlog is permanent.
Simple answer – make car drivers pay their way – stop the massive subsidies from the public purse. Put these costs on fuel. Gradually over a generation to drive behaviour change. Petrol would be £4 a litre or so at todays prices if this was done.
Commuting becomes prohibitively expensive so rural workers can once again afford to live in the communities in which they work. Local shops become viable again. The polluter pays
couple this with making all car drivers pay for their parking space in towns and cities. Its usually public land that is used for free or very cheaply by the affluent few. About a thousand pounds worth of land for every car parked in cities
Zero tolerance for illegal road use.
Genius. Also thourghly unworkable. People work in different places and need mobility, unless you offset that loss of mobility with a massive increase in public transport provision then it's just totalitarian bollocks.
Your comment about rural workers also has no bearing in reality, I seriously doubt anyone is commuting from Arran, Mull or the like to Glasgow. Second home discount is what you should really be targetting.
but how do they know which side to lob bricks at?
https://twitter.com/alfonslopeztena/status/1094381713306857472
i predict that the euro elections will see lePens far right & traditional far left will lose votes to the GJ candidaates &
En Marche will do well out of it
but how do they know which side to lob bricks at?
Easy. Whichever side last threw a brick at you.
Far-right yellow vests and far-left yellow vests fight one another.
Are the left the ones on the left or the ones on the right of the screen? Why both sides in vests? I think they should have thought this through in a bit more detail for the casual viewer.
I did actually check public transport availability and approximate costs - by train, it would take a bit longer than by car, (although that all depends on what time trains run, and how often) and would cost me £12/day, so roughly £240/month, bus would cost about the same, and take closer to two hours. Without traffic, on an early start, I can and have got to work in fifteen minutes, without speeding, but usually around thirty five minutes. And I pay, depending on fuel costs, between £120-150/month in fuel.
I would also have to factor in walking to and from the station at each end, which would add easily an hour to each day. I have no idea where the nearest bus stop is for work, I’m on a big industrial estate, I’ve never seen a bus around there, so I could easily see me spending four hours a day traveling, for a distance of fifteen miles.
Bugger that, as they say, for a game of soldiers!
And I’m not cycling either, I’d be having to be up around 3am to get ready to set off at 5am, at nearly 65 I’m too sodding old, with arthritis.
Not gonna happen.
I would also have to factor in walking to and from the station at each end, which would add easily an hour to each day.
It's a bit late now but if you'd done that every day of your working career you'd be as fit as Madame E.
