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

yikes furball, the one where we live is £1 per family, return !

And there's no way costs would be recoverable from work- if work exists- he works in the transport (haulage) industry

I have signed the petition, as a tax payer, I don't want to pay anymore than I have to. I can't afford to buy my first home so am stuck in social housing, so I will not be forced to pay even more bloody taxes!

The government need to put more time and money into public transport, instead of selling it off!
I start work at 6am - there are no buses at this time of day. I walk in the dark and cold on my own for 30 minutes to my City Centre. Dh will drive the car to pick me up outside with ds at 9am. We swap seats and he walks few mins to his office. I would love to get a bus, but can't. I can't afford a taxi, and can't afford to run 2 cars.
When I was heavily pg and working full time (in the same job)I had to start work at 7.30 just so I could catch a bus or ds would have to drive me in.

And at £1.80 each way I would rather walk anyway!

lulamama - which is the price it should be, ours are just targeting people who don't know the area so are on the bus before they realise. The bus stop also is very different for the return journey which they don't actually tell you! Not passenger friendly at all. I'm sure your one is well used as to park and shop is only £1 rather than the cost of intown parking.

Filly, there is obvioulsy also some work to be done about peoples "mentality" towards public transport, etc...!
In germany public transport is really good, at least teh places I lived, and it does make all the difference, also, far more people use a Bike, but then in germany we have many cycle paths, so, you don't endanger yourself by cycling (o.k. you still got carfumes to deal with, but less likely to be knocked down), and walking really has gone out of fashion as well...I mena, like I said, I easily walk when go shopping, about 2 miles or so there and back and really not a problem ( we are a family of 5), and I am honestly considering getting one of those "grannytrolley" things for once I won't use the Buggy anymore, as I don't know if I can face carrying the bags...but people are often very surprised I walk that distance....I mean wtf...you'd think I try to attempt the london marathon or somehting, lol!
Filly, why don't you set up a petition for proper public transport ( I wouldn't know where to start), I think most of those that have signed the petition against the pay as you go tax would happily sign a petition for better public transport, too...

We've had to move to the outskirts of town to be able to afford to rent anywhere to live. I've always been the sort of person to walk rather than drive if I possibly could, or if I don't have the children with me I cycle when I can. I always park well away from dd's school and we walk the rest of the way. However, now we live here I really need the car. I've recently been carless for a few weeks and it was a nightmare. It is impossible to get dd to school on time using public transport from where we live, no getting around it (and believe me I tried). Ds gets picked up for school by taxi as he goes to a special school on the other side of the city, therefore dd and I can't leave until he does. Despite running as fast as we could to the bus stop there was no way we could catch an early enough bus to get her to school on time. Coming home was even worse as we couldn't get there before ds so we had to ask for him to be dropped off outside dd's school. This meant I had to take his SN buggy with me and then dd and I would have to wait around for 1/2 hr in all weathers. Then a nice long walk to the bus stop, get on a bus with an autistic ds who spends the whole time trying to kick the other passengers or escape (and is rapidly getting too strong for me), and then another walk up a steep narrow pavement with lorries just inches away. My friend's dh was actually knocked unconscious there by the wing mirror of a passing lorry. He's lucky he wasn't killed.

Now, I don't dislike buses. I can't remember the last time I took the car into town on my own as I will take the bus in preference but some things are just too much. I'm really worried about what will happen if we can no longer afford the car, so yes, I've signed the petition, though I've no faith whatsoever in this greedy government taking the slightest bit of notice, however many people sign. I know our situation atm is a bit extreme but I actually grew up in this area and the only reason I learnt to drive in the first place was because I was having trouble getting to work on time due the number of buses that would sail past without stopping as they were already full. Things haven't improved much in 20 years(!) so I've no reason to believe they will magically do so in the near future.

Pixel makes some important points- will parents who have to provide transport for children or adults with SN or disabilities get exemptions or discounts? Highly doubtful.

We are all going to be f**ed over more and more in the future I fear. Remind me wth we all live here again?

I'm beginning to wonder that, charlie.

Quite seriously, unfortunately .

I think I get dh and the Kids to learn german and we move there....houseprices are better...and wine is dirt cheap, you get a decent bottle of red for a £1...what more could one wish for

Expat- what possessed you to move here?

Presume it was for love and not for the splendid standard of living and caring, organised government?

I'd be out of here like a shot if DH wasn't bizarrely wedded to the place (and London too, the very belly of the beast).

I do think that what with road pricing and also rubbish pricing (which I hear they're thinking of) the government will actually succeed in driving a lot of people who aren't super-rich enough to take advantage of their wealth-creating policies out of here.

Unfortunately I will probably be stuck here until the tax on my nursing care when I'm old and batty finally drives my dc's to chuck my bathchair off a cliff.

I do find it quite amusing that everyone who doesn't live here wants to and everyone who does doesn't. Do you think that one day may be one day we'll all be sunning it overseas with a cheaper cost of living whilst the UK is awash with people who weren't born here?

I met DH here whilst on holiday here and married him.

He wanted to stay here.

It was by chance, I didn't have this burning desire to live here.

More people are using the rail system:
trainuseup

So why not more money being plowed into making it a better, cheaper, more reliable system, as in Europe?

I don?t drive so this doesn?t affect me directly, but I think that two parallel, but really contradictory arguments are being put forward here. On the one hand ? I can?t afford/don?t want to pay more tax. And on the other ? look how brilliant things are in northern European country of choice. I?ve never lived in Germany, but I did work in the Netherlands for a year, and yes there is a brilliant public transport system. But, you are taxed way more than in the UK so that the government can afford it.

Presumably (or, granted, perhaps only hopefully) this tax will be used to improve the public transport system.

Leda- if I believed that road tax would really be used to improve the public transport system here, I'd be all for it.

I just don't and can't believe it. This country has no record of useful investment in infrastucture. Successive governments seem to be obsessed with paying private companies massive amounts of interest to do their investment for them. I think it's a legacy of Thatcherism- private has always got to be better.

Oh, and we need the tax for important things like wars, don't we [signs off before starts to rant too much off topic]

It will affect non-drivers, too, because industry uses auto vehicles to transport goods to you. And they'll pass the higher cost on to you.

Yes I accept that indirectly this tax will also affect me, Expat. I?m prepared to pay more for things if that brings it closer to their true cost. I know that?s easy to say if you?re not living on the breadline as it is, but in an ideal world, cheap public transport should level out the cost (if that makes sense).

I don?t mean to sound so evangelical btw and I?m no fan of the Blair government, but I do get slightly exasperated when there appears to be no relation between what people expect from a government and what they are prepared to commit to personally.

"cheap public transport should level out the cost"

What cheap public transport?

Yes they should put more money into the rail system

however unfortunately for us, there isn't a station here- the only way you can get thre is .... oh yes.... drive

and they won't be building a station where Dh works (Cribbs Causeway) any time soon

It seems to me if the Govermnemnt really wants people out of cars (as opposed to wanting their money) they suhould stop people building all the supermarkets / workplaces / amenities out of town- DH's workplace comprises a shopping mall, out of town entertainment centre, and a few buisines parks out the back 9where he is based)

We could move there,e xcept we couldn't afford a house, and oh yeah- I'd have to commute back here as bristol doesn't run a comparative Uni course

Agree with you regards out of town miles from station business parks and malls PeachyClaire. They?re soulless and depressing places to work too (on top of being almost impossible to get to without a car). Think my perspective is perhaps skewed by having lived near a Tube station in London most of my adult life (can?t afford a mortgage though?).

A lot of people can't afford a mortgage anymore. The rate of first-time buyers has fallen to its lowest ever levels, at least up here, last year.

So, I can't afford to buy a house, and soon, I won't be able to afford to drive. Marvellous. Anything else, Tony Blair?

We don't have a mortgage either, did once but Dh got ill and well-.
We coulda fford to repay a mortgage, but we could never afford the required deposit, so we've ended up renting a nice house instead. Have to say (with blinkrs to future on) its better than the postage stamp we had the mortgage on.

cut and pasted from bt internet news:

Tony Blair is to email the one-and-a-half million people who have signed an online petition against plans to bring in road pricing. He will tell them it is needed to help tackle the growing problem of traffic congestion.

Writing in The Observer, the Prime Minister admitted he did not expect to win critics over immediately.

But he said the petition, on the Downing Street website, had provoked a useful debate.

Mr Blair said: "I believe road pricing is surely part of the answer here

as it is in many other countries."

The PM noted that, after being criticised in the past as a "control freak", he was now "under attack for allowing dissenting views on my own website".

The strength of feeling against Department of Transport plans for a national scheme reached such levels at one point that it brought the site down.

The petition calls the policy "sinister and wrong" and warns the charge would be unfair to those who live away from their families, and poorer people.

Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander has accused its organisers of spreading myths and pledged to go ahead with plans to pilot the scheme