A million motorists embarrass road price ministers
Embarrass a minister? How does one do that? They are gold-plated, index-linked, unfireably (actually in Mr. Blunkett's case that's no true, but he did turn it into a nice earner) immune from the consequences of their actions... or inactions.
"...he said that many of the claims made by those promoting the petition were “falsehoods”. He promised that there would be safeguards to protect motorists’ privacy and that the system would not be used to catch drivers speeding."
Speaking of falseho... errors of omission... this is followed by..
"Mr Alexander did not offer assurances that the scheme would not raise the overall tax burden on motorists."
With a slight silence on the main point, which is most motorists don't trust the money raised to go towards improving transport infrastructure.
Trust is wearing thin, guys, and no amount of smoke and mirrors will avoid that.
And as we are juggling numbers, a million is probably about the number of legal (we'll ignore all the untaxed, insured guys they can seem to catch) drivers who were entitled to vote, did so, and gave this government their 'mandate'.
Telegraph - Downing St to email road pricing protesters
BBC - More road-charging debate pledged - There is an interestingA/V snippet off this that is worth listening to. from the headline I thought it was going to be about methodology. I after all have about 20 email addresses, so I guess I could boost any petition without thorough checks by simply using these. That said, the old paper one was equally subject to problems of checking. You could argue that it used to be more difficult, but in an e-age, why should that prevent feelings being expressed and supported.
Actually, the main thrust by an 'expert' (actually a guy from an industry in danger of being put out of business by such people power) was that it was only becuase it was from a well-organised lobby. Was it? I thought it was a guy who started a ball rolling. It is also insulting to say there are more important issues people care about. For me it was not so much road pricing, but ill-considered, inequitable legalisation being pushed through by self-serving pols. And that I do care about very high on my list.
Telegraph - One million people can't be wrong
'...going on to suggest that the signers were misinformed.'
How? I have also seen that notion floated that the level of response is as a result of 'coordinated action'. A guy posts on a petition and the people respond. What would they prefer.. a public funded campaign to tell us what to think?
Such crass attempts at dismissing genuine people power shows how out of touch these guys are.
I do believe we will need some sort of controls to manage traffic and emissions, but not the ill-considered, unfair and self-serving ones these bright young advisers and their political dinosaur masters have tried to stuff through.
I signed because I would want to see where my money went in helping transport, not to fill a hole in their index-linked pension plans.
Telegraph - Capital paid heavy price for congestion charge
Telegraph - Road tolls could be Labour's poll tax
Independent - The road to nowhere: Government urged to stick with plans for road pricing
This is typical sloppy reporting. I was interested to see who was doing the urging and on what basis. There's also a list of pros and cons. One I note missing is that there is no clear information on where the money will go.
2 comments:
Just to add a couple of additional tuppenny's worth to the argument about charging per mile.
There is already a huge discrepancy in what the motorist hands over to Gord and what our Government actually spends on road transport. The total paid in all the various motoring taxation is over £42bn p.a., the total spend on roads is ~£6bn p.a. (Source AA Motoring Trust).
So all charging per mile is going to do is to enlarge Gord's pot allowing him to spend lavishly on anything else he wants to.
On top of that, the ABD (Assoc. of British Drivers) have calculated that what motorists already pay in the various taxes applied to road usage is already paying for their carbon emissions fives times over. They go so far as to accuse Gord of misappropriating this tax revenue for other areas.
See www.abd.org.uk and locate press release number 513 (7/11/2006) for full details of the latter.
Dave.
For an ardent advocate of e-action, I often find myself uncomfortably on the critical side of initiatives such as this.
It's just that I have greater interest in actual climate changing (as in man's actions moving it back to where we'd like it to be, with private auto use in the Uk - accepting national scenarios are not the point - being how relevant?) ROI, motivating the masses and plain what's fair and sensible.
I am prepared to accept that travel in any form (other than walking or cycling)is a greenhouse gas emitting activity, and hence worthy of addressing. Whether it is a priority up there with fox-hunting...
It is just that this does not seem to be the way to do it on any of the criteria I have listed.
It is a vastly complicated isuue, and the government seems to be trying to 'solve' it, in typical fashion, by first and only considering how they can boost the Treasury's coffers. This has produced a climate of mis-trust, and in so doing yet another backlash.
If we are to get folk out of cars, we need to take away their reasons to be in them. As has been reasonably pointed out, no one wants to be in a Mondeo on the M5 on a miserable March Monday (Ok, it's Feb. but I was on an alliterative roll). So how do we avoid this? School Mums. Going to work. All this legislation is by advisers and pols who either tube in from Islington or are whisked to Westminster by the chauffered Prius. With daily demands on time and the need to work, simplistic penalties for covering miles is not such an equitable option, at least not up front.
Especially, as we keep saying, there is no clear idea where this cash is going.
That is why I signed, and it's starting to really irritate me when my democratic voice is being ignored or twisted to justify and/or push through something other than that claimed.
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