When I read The Sunday Times on good old-fashioned paper at the weekend, there was what seemed like an old story reheated, namely poll taxing the motorway.
Late last year there was a brief outbreak of ‘Poll Tax on Wheels’ headlines as proposals were being floated around as part of an overhaul of the motorway network.
It didn’t cause that much of a stink then, what with Christmas and everything, but a slow burn on this story now seems to be filtering through to other papers and outlets. If it wasn’t for the fact that our burgers now have added horse power, such a proposal should be nearer the top of the news agenda.
We really need to make a fuss about this: £150 is the figure that has been plucked out of the air, probably on the basis that driver’s won’t notice it that much. After all, it is not much more than a fill up and a half at the pumps, and not far off the £145 I have to pay to the BBC each year for some reason. Well if I don’t, they will arrest, fine and possibly imprison me.
Now I don’t need the BBC to survive, but the motorway is quite vital to my way of life and income. In that respect £150 isn’t a lot. If I work a little bit harder, charge my customers an extra few quid then perhaps I’ll make the money in no time. That is of course just what they want everyone to do. I don’t want to pay any more to drive my car on badly maintained roads and neither do you.
The trouble is that if we all ignore this it won’t go away. Indeed it will come to bite us very badly indeed, like the urban fox in your suburban garden with keys to the patio doors. Yes, news agendas are there to distract us from what’s really going on, whether it is the killer NHS, or ways of squeezing more money out of drivers.
So who’s written to their MP, made a banner or mixed the first Molotov?
Join the debate
Add your comment
We should avoid anythings
We should avoid anythings whic is bad for human and accept which is well for all of us. click here is my pleasure
Pay for what you use
Except that if you left your car in the garage then you would still be paying (road) tax for not using it. What Autocar should do is organise a 'utilise your road tax' day. Get every car in the country out onto the roads and show the political parties the folly of their taxation system and environmental policies. As 'harf' has already explained, the (fair) tax on petrol means that we are taxed on the amount of driving we do and in which car we do it in and how we drive it. Any increase in (motorway toll) taxation just means that the CEO's providing rail services to the public on a lowly £900k to £1.1 million per annum, will each see their pay rise even more. Abolish road (and toll) tax, and to compensate for the loss in revenue reduce pay in the public service to below that of the Prime Minister. No more talk of reducing VAT to promote economic growth, just think of what an extra £285 in the pocket of consumers would do for growth, you could even call it quantitative easing!
Sounds like more lobbying
Sounds like more lobbying from the road toll business wanting to get their teeth into the UK market, it will not raise extra revenue for the exchequer as people will drive less/slower to take into account the extra expense, people are already doing this because of the devalued pound reflecting on the price of fuel, you still see people in the outside lane doing 80, but these are in general new cars (probably leased and the fuel on expenses), you see many more in the other two lanes sticking to 65 or under.
The only advantage of the toll system that I can see is more directorships for ministers. Why is it in the UK only the wealthy are allowed to be corrupt and the others get the book thrown at them?