Petitiion to stop 'Pay As You Go' Driving

[Radley]

Hi All

Please read the below and act upon it asap - deadline is 20 February...

Subject: Tax on Cars

Radio 2 talked about the proposed Road Pricing car tax scheme on the radio.

Apparently there is only one month left to register your objection to the 'Pay as you go' road tax. The petition is on the 10 Downing St website but they didn't tell anybody about it.

Therefore at the time of the comments only 250,000 people have signed it so far and 750,000 signatures are required to stop them introducing it. Once you've given your details (you don't have to give your full address, just house number and postcode will do), they will send you an email with a link in it. Once you click on that link, you'll have signed the petition.

The government's proposal to introduce road pricing will mean you having to purchase a tracking device for your car and paying a monthly bill to use it. The tracking device will cost about £200 and in a recent study by the BBC, the lowest monthly bill was £28 for a rural florist and £194 for a delivery driver. A Stay at home mother who used the car to take the kids to school paid £86 in one month.

On top of this massive increase in tax, you will be tracked. Somebody will know where you are at all times. They will also know how fast you have been going, so even if you accidentally creep over a speed limit in time you can probably expect a Notice of Intended Prosecution with your monthly bill.

If you care about our freedom and stopping the constant bashing of the car driver, please sign the petition on No 10's new website (link below) and pass this on to as many people as possible.

petition

Oh Filly, you miss my point ENTIRELY

And please don't pull that statistical rubbish about cars killing more people than guns.

Off this thread now, because I can feel my blood pressure rising

my car broke for a week.

breakfast club starts at school at 8AM, so i can get into work for 8.30.

without the car this would take two bus journeys, including a half hour wait for the 2nd one. The only 1st bus that i could get would be at ten to seven. after dropping the children at school, i would have to wait another ten minutes or so for a bus, then a twenty minute journey, then another ten minute walk. oops! twenty to nine - thats me ten minutes late for work everyday. when our car broke down and I couldn't afford to get it fixed until i got paid, I got a bus to afterschool ( half an hour or so) & walked home from afterschool (which is a twenty minute or so walk from school, nearer to my house. that took fifty minutes. we weren't getting in until after half past six. then three sets of homework to supervise, cook tea, make packed ,unches for tomorrow, check school bags, baths etc etc etc.

or i can leave home at a quarter to eight. drop the kids off at school and park a twenty minute walk from work and be there on time. I pick up the kids and get them home in around forty minutes as well. time spent travelling with car = 1 hour 20 a day and a relatively calm mummy. without = 3 hours 10 minutes no time to do anything except be exhausted.

i agree that excessive car use is damaging to the environment. I would agree with a tax increase om petrol - in fact I'd be 'happy' to pay double my petrol, because i spend around £10 a week. but this scheme just seems daft.

Filly point is, that maybe if there was better and cheaper/affordable options in place there wouldn't be a need for this in the first place, because people probably would NOT use their car so much?
I try to avoid using my car as much as I can and rather walk 2-3 miles or so each way to a shop then use a car for such short Journey, however there are times where I can only use a car to get where I want to go too, and that is not necessarily due to having maybe 3 Kids in tow, but because of the way the public transport system is completely under develloped.

The government is finally doing something about climate change. It is finally tackling this one head on, by doing something to curb car use.

There is no way round this, somehow car use will have to be reduced. Its all of our responsibilty, yet we are using our cars more than ever. The situation is getting pretty desperate.

I am not saying the system doesn't need tweaking. Obviously. Would expect midwives etc to get money towards this, on top of mileage allowance.

oh and btw, I have been a poorly paid community worker who had to travel to far flung parts of the city. I got a bike, I used the bus, its not impossible. And yes for at least part of the time I had kids in nursery. It was complex. Not impossible.

But basically, the idea of charging people to drive. Well yeah. Driving is an act that negatively impacts on those around us. So damn right we should have to pay quite a lot.

oh and what, guns kill more people than cars? In the UK? really? Show me those stats please. Thats just daft.

and AGREE utterly 3lovehearts BUT

then why don't we actually DO something there? Petition for better public transport?

I'd sign a petition for better public transport.

'oh and btw, I have been a poorly paid community worker who had to travel to far flung parts of the city. I got a bike, I used the bus, its not impossible. And yes for at least part of the time I had kids in nursery. It was complex. Not impossible. '

For many, it really is. There is NO public transport in some areas. Or it is such an expensive alternative that people literally cannot afford it.

Most people would ditch their cars if there were decent, reliable, cost-effective public transport in place.

But there's NOT. And this plan doesn't come with a plan to give that to us.

So it's just another way to hit those who can least afford it.

don't agree, sorry

round here, the public transport is fine. good even. Its cheap and on time and theres a good network

people still use their cars

That's great for your area.

Not true UK wide.

Where my husband works, it is NOT serviced by public transport.

At all.

Someone else posted on another thread that it costs her husband £400/month to use a train to get to work.

That is unbelievably expensive.

i have to travel 300 miles one way - to visit a very ill relative.

at £1.35? per mile the whole trip would work out at £810.00

however to catch train / and hire a car( and pay milage probably) for my family of 5 would not be financially viable.

so sh'es got to die alone - becuase i'm sure there wont be exemptions people can exploit.

so, i drive around 6-7 thousand miles for work - maybe the costs will be recoupable from the company - one would hope.

so i work 20 miles from work. at £1.35 per mile? that would be a daily rate of £54.00 non recoupable.

i cant afford to live in the city

I guess to save the planet i will have to leave my house at 6am get the fucking train and not get in until 6.30

then watch me get battered by the c*nts who wonder why our society is going downhill and out children arn't parented.

now, for those of you who have childminders - or dont need them at the moment - becuase your car is expedient, faster and convenient - but you may need to employ one becuase you have to leave earlier for the train. and get home later.

dya know what - i think i might just say - fuck it. go on sick for weeks and then when that runs out claim benfits. - becuase having ang hope, dreams ambition in this fucking country is a waste of time.

tax me twice you bastards. i pay road tax - you want to tax me twice?

try a proper policy making objective and actually truly invest in renewable energy sources like an electric car that can go for any distance - oh no i remember, that would stop rich people getting richer, stop money from going into your campaign funds and party funds and have a detrimental effect on our economy becuase amercica will get pissed - right them tax me again you fucks

Luka, costs my dh £300 a month to travel 25 miles. Thing is, railways are full anyway - no room to take any more passengers. So where are the journeys supposed to go if people are priced off the roads?

My local rail service was supposed to be upgraded in 2000, with longer platforms that could take longer trains. Still not happening. Government pulled the plug on the whole project last year after a whole year of major disruption to get the sodding rail line ready for the work.

To make it worse, idiot civil servants who know sod-all about railways are messing around with the details of timetables. And making stupid decisions like 'ooh, I know, shall we make ten times as many journeys start and finish at Birmingham New Street, because hey, the station's full already, so it's clearly a good idea to try to squeeze even more trains in and piss off everyone who uses those services now and won't be able to in future'. So where is everyone going to go?

" Would expect midwives etc to get money towards this, on top of mileage allowance. "

Now that begs the question: how much will this road tax cost the NHS? And what other services will be cut to pay for it? Epidurals, anyone?????

Luka, my local bus service costs best part of a fiver for a five mile return journey. Hate to think how people on benefits survive.

Have mentioned this before on MN, but South Yorkshire Metropolitan Borough Council cracked the 'getting people out of their cars' thing in the 80s. They made public transport frequent, comprehensive and dirt cheap. There was no incentive to use your car because buses and trains were so cheap and just as convenient (cost me 6p a day return fare to go 15m each way to school. Would have been 10p for an adult). Worked in the city, small towns and rural areas. Saved millions of pounds and thousands of lives (according to rigorous analysis comparing their policy against other demographically identical area).

Sadly everyone involved in transport policy seems to have completely forgotten this after Maggie abolished S Yorks. Maybe the high-tech punitive approach makes politicians feel big and clever, or something.

but this will cost us even more even if you don't drive! The retail companys for everything including mr postman will have to pass this extra cost of their transportation on to us.

'try a proper policy making objective and actually truly invest in renewable energy sources like an electric car that can go for any distance - oh no i remember, that would stop rich people getting richer, stop money from going into your campaign funds and party funds and have a detrimental effect on our economy becuase amercica will get pissed - right them tax me again you fucks'

Custardo and others are so right & I share your despair. Can it get much more unpleasant to live in this crappy, badly managed, greedy little country....

We would undoubtedly be better off without the vile, climate-destroying and child-killing petrol driven vehicle.

However, we live in an economy which is entirely driven by oil. We are then basically penalised for 'choosing' to drive using oil and petrol although due to the policies of successive governments, we do not actually have any choice.

Or rather, we have the 'choice' to rise at dawn to conduct a Kafkaesque tour of whatever farflung suburb we have had to live in order to afford a house for our kids. While the 'wealth-generating' classes will continue to swan around the trendy central districts which are now their exclusive abode, in their lovely tax-generating Mercs and BMWs. Cos I can't see Gordon banning those any time soon.

'then watch me get battered by the c*nts who wonder why our society is going downhill and out children arn't parented.'

absolutely.

fillijonk, I'd have absolutely no chance supervising three primary age children on their 4 mile trip to school on their pedal cycles, including a boy of 5 and a boy of 6 at the time on two unavoidable busy main roads. obviosuly it would be lovely if all we all used bikes and we had cycle paths and a fully integrated public transport system where children travel free ( I'm still in awe at London for this.) but we don't. At the moment, I wouldn't let my kids cycle to and from school in the dark along some main roads that are unlit.

I used to live nearer the kids school and work and I used to walk in, via school fopr my daughter to nursery for my boys at the time, pushing a double buggy because it was easier than getting them out of a bus when i saw it coming, collapse the buggy with one hand, watch everyone who turned up at the bus-stop after me jump on the bus befoe me and then fight for a seat holding onto a two year old and carrying a one year old. public transport only works well if people actuially have manners.

ok

am retiring from debate now

am glad I live at the top of a hill and can cycle really

poor people and their kids are currently worse affected by our love affair with cars. poor kids are most likely to die in crashes or in speeding incidents. they also suffer more from pollution related dieseses, eh asthma

its not fair i agree. life isn't fair.

i'd have a LOT more sympathy if anyone was doing anything proactive re public transport.

I would love to catch the bus/train to work - did so for years when I was in the city and it was so much less stressful than the car.

However I now live in a rural area and commute 20 miles each way to work for which there is NO public transport.

DH wherever possible will commute by train - which costs around £400 per month.

So until there is a viable alternative in place it will have to be the car...

i think its a good idea but people who are registered as disabled should not have to pay it cos they have little other choice.

I'm with you Fillyjonk,instead of signing petitions against road pricing let's campaign for decent and affordable public transport.
Society's love affair with the car has to end.

it would be a perfect world if public transport was great but it isn't. my mil took the bus to get here this week it took her 2.5 hours. it's a 20 min car journey.

my dp takes the bus to work, it takes him 1.5 hours, it's also a 20 min car journey. this is in the south east where public transport is supposed to be good.

we attempted to go to our local town (2 miles away) by bus. Then we discovered it would cost us as a family £10 I'm sorry, but those prices are outrageous.

public transport does need to be cheaper and more accessible in all areas imo before this pay as you go road tax thing can work. also if they bring in the pay as you go tax the original one should be abolished. i don't see why people should have to pay twice.

park an ride around our way is horrific too. £1 each way per person so if dh and I go to town it's £4! where's the incentive?

Dh had over 20 interviews for the job he has now (he' shy and interviews poorly), only job he can get was nights over the bridge

motorway all the way

tehre's no train station here, and nobody he works with he can share a car with as they all work odd hours and they live in Bristol

not an awful lot (ie zilch) buses run from trading estates outside bristol to small welsh towns at 5 am to come home

we couldnt afford the fees for this, we'd have to pack in Dh's job, its not worth it financially

fab

All for the environment- recycle, do organic, food miles etc- but people have to able to work.

I also rewuire a car as I cant hardly take my 3 kids, 2 disabled (but not blue badge qualified- they dont do them for ASd round here) on the bus to go shopping and there's no supermarket here