Doctor? wrote:
Jeremy Clarkson may be a nutter with a popshield for a hairdo, but he uttered much wisdom on this.
We already HAVE a fair system of road pricing, whereby, those who drive more, pay more, and those who choose appallingly inefficient vehicles pay through the nose, it's called fuel tax.
Based on that, rather obvious and correct assessment, it seems clear this has fuck all to do with transport and everything to do with building a national monitoring system to track people's movements. And given the Govt's record on IT realted things ( 12billion or so to Mr Gates from oour health service, for...well....erm fuck all actually, nothing, not a line of code, just selling off kidney machines to line that cunt's pockets), I think we can see a major fuck up becoming a truly biblical disaster.
That's not really true though, fuel tax is a crude instrument, because it doesn't take into account _where_ you drive and _when_ you drive. Roads are a scarce resource that have to be rationed somehow. There's a difference in the value of driving on roads in central london in the rush hour, when everyone wants to use the space, and on a country lane which is otherwise empty. Fuel tax doesn't account for that, nor does it account for the fact that pollution pumped out in a crowded city causes far more harm to others than if its on a motorway miles from any housing.
Its like paying for food out of a general 'food tax' that ignores what you eat, where and when.
On the other hand, somehow I doubt that road pricing would be a 'revenue neutral' measure, i.e. I doubt fuel tax or road tax will go down when road pricing comes in. Just like if councils start charging by weight for rubbish collection I doubt council tax will go down. If people were able to trust the government on that I reckon there'd be much less opposition. With the opposition there is you are probably right that it won't work, it'll probably end up like the CSA, costing more to administer than it collects.
I really don't think its about 'tracking people's movements'. Frankly that seems mad to me. Tracking movements is just a side-effect of charging for something. Do you complain about the phone company knowing who you phone because they monitor that in order to know how much to charge? If you use a service you have to pay for it, and to pay for it people have to record that you've used it. If you don't want it recorded, don't use the service, simple.
Anyway, people seem addicted to driving, and no amount of charging seems to deter them, so it probably won't actually reduce congestion anyway. 40 years ago most people didn't drive, yet now somehow its become almost compulsory.
it would more than that a day here in the south