You know this wonderful idea for pay as you go road pricing that Alastair Darling and his two pet slugs are on about at the moment? He's saying that there isn't a 'Big Brother' type issue, as many cars have sat nav etc already......BUT, don't the sat nav boxes identify where THEY are from the GPS satellites which send out a constant 'clock' or whatever? I can't see that the signal is sent back to tell the satellite where you are at any given moment. However, for the system they are proposing to work, then a data signal of where you are/where you have been and at what time would have to be sent back in order for the department to charge you? In which case that IS Big Brother! :nono:

Just build a little more roads. We already paid for them so lets have em. The population isnt growing anymore by itself so if you dont keep allowing wasters in who dont tax and insure anyway you will get back to a point where it all frees up again. The expression that "cars will fill any new roads" is crap and based on an ever expanding poulation that doesnt any more. Then get rid of half the MPs and their secretarial staff to free up the roads around Westminster and also cure the hole in the ozone layer with all their hot air and wind emissions. The other congested bits will sort themselves out as people say enough and move or do something else.

I'm tempet to move away it pisses me off, this country is getting worse.

 

They should stop wasting time and money and actually solve proper issues such as, homeless people, all these little s***s causing trouble and getting away with it or imagrants etc.

The hilarious thing about all this is that, unless I'm mistaken (and let's be honest, I certainly could be), the idea of this tax is to replace the current road tax AND fuel duty, BUT the government is selling it as charging people who cover more miles more than those who cover less. Yeeesss, that's true as far as it goes, but... well.... duh... doesn't driving more miles mean that you use more fuel which in turn means that you pay more fuel duty (aka tax), which means that even under the current system this is exactly what happens? Honestly, politicians must think we're all morons if they think we can't join that set of dots.

 

Now I'll admit that it's possible that we as Z owners could find ourselves a lot better off if (i) we drive at off-peak times, and (ii) we stick to country lanes (admittedly these are more fun anyway). But there is the slight issue of the amount you pay also being related to the engine size of your car so we could get fairly well stung. From experience (and slightly cynically) I have to say that even with the fairly minimal amount of driving I do nowadays I'd be incredibly surprised if this tax left me better off rather than worse.

 

OK, now lets do some numbers. I reckon I get between 12mpg and 26.5mpg (that last one is reasonably accurate based on a 210 mile journey to my parents house and the fact that I put almost exactly 36 litres of fuel in to fill the tank when I got there, having started off with a full tank).

 

Now I pay 93p for Optimax and of that around 63p is VAT and fuel duty... actually probably a bit more than that because the VAT will certainly be higher. The problem here is finding hard figures for the amount of duty we pay on a litre of petrol: I googled for it but I don't think the government necessarily want it published because people might get a bit upset. Anyway I did find this: http://www.bized.ac.uk/current/mind/2003_4/061003.htm; which suggest that the actual amount of fuel duty is around the 50p / litre mark. There are 4.546 litres in a UK gallon so that's around £2.27 in fuel duty per gallon.

 

Right, so per mile depending on the type of driving I do I'm paying between 8.6 and 19p per mile (just divide the amount of fuel duty per gallon by my highest and lowest mileage figures). In my old Clio I got 34 - 42 mpg so I'd be paying 5.4 - 6.7p / mile (yowza!?!? This zed is expensive!!!).

 

So on the face of it the 2p / mile baseline for the new tax is looking good. However we really need some more hard information from the government to make an accurate judgement on this because I strongly suspect that that figure represents a 1.0 litre Micra on a country lane at 4am and that when you factor in a 3.0 litre engine, driving on either B or standard A roads (ignore the motorways even), and a sensible time of day, the baseline is going to be a lot higher. Or even if you forget the zed and talk about my old Clio.

 

Bottom line is that whilst you can get around the country on lanes and minor roads it takes a very long time to cover any serious distance, and I'd suggest that forcing people to drive in the middle of the night so they can afford to make a journey is just going to lead to a lot of tired drivers and more fatal accidents caused by people falling asleep at the wheel.

 

Personally I think that whilst a minority of people will benefit from this tax, most people will end up paying more, and I consider it an insult that the government are attempting to suggest otherwise. I live in Cambridge, now think of all the people who live in the surrounding area and work in Cambridge who HAVE to drive to work along the A14 or M11 because there's no way they can afford to live in Cambridge, most of the jobs are concentrated in Cambridge (some aren't but most are), and that currently the local public transport is completely inadequate provide a substitute and you tell me that people aren't going to be crippled by this.

 

It's absolutely appalling. I'm not even talking about middle-aged executives driving 6-litre Audis and BMWs (or us with our zeds for that matter). I'm talking about your average commuter in a sensible car like a Fiesta, Micra or Focus. These ordinary, hard-working people, who incidentally I'm pretty sure would prefer NOT to have to drive for 45 minutes to get to work anyway if they didn't have to, are going to get completely screwed.

 

Anyway, rant over. Sorry, got a bit heated there.

 

 

Cheers,

Bart

Oh, BTW, for simplicity I didn't include the standard road tax in my calculations because the amount this adds obviously depends on your annual mileage. For 6000 miles its something like 3p / mile, for an average-ish mileage of 12000 (which I was doing in my Clio) it's obviously half that at 1.5p / mile and continues to drop the more miles you do. This obviously means that the real tax cost for running my Clio increases to around 6.9 - 8.2 p / mile, whilst the zed becomes even more frighteningly expensive because I'm doing less miles than I was in the Clio.

 

It's an interesting piece of government spin that they can take this fact (and it is a fact) and make it sound like people who drive further pay less tax though, because of course the majority of the tax that all of us pay for using the roads is in the form of fuel duty.

 

Anyway, I've really finished now.

 

 

Bart

The pay as you go roads are not replacing tax and fuel duty. It said it could replace tax and some of the fuel duty.

The trouble is, in this country, as in many others we allow ouselves to be walked over! So many people are of the belief that the goverments have the power. The truth is the people do in a 'democratic' society. But we do not use that right! Labour slipped this road charging in after the election (very wise) because they knew if it had been talked about before the election then their majority would have been weakened considerably, maybe even cost them the election. They rely on the fact that announcing it after the election no one can do a thing about it. Well thats what people think as labour have been elected for another 4 years. Wrong!

 

The difficulty, as already ponted out, is that we as a people (50+ million strong) do nothing about it. If 'us' 50 million people said tomorrow, as one voice, we don't want you as our goverment then they could not do a thing about it, 4 years elected or not. There are probably quite a few ways to do this if everyone stuck together, but there is the real problem, getting people to stick together instead of just accepting things and saying 'oh well, we cant change anything' At the end of the day we can.

 

As far as I am concerned '....' the road mileage taxing unless it is going to be a fairer way of charging people who use the roads' rather than just a way of taking more money from the 50 million. And if it is just another stitch up we should all stand up and be counted and don't let them get away with it AGAIN!

Srrae, that just makes it so much the worse. :( I can't see that anybody will be better off and a lot of people are going to be completely punished by this.