Stop vehicle tracking-petition Blair

Hi all,
clicking this link should(!) take you to a petition to show support for s.c.r.a.p.ping the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/

This 'travel tax' will require you to purchase a tracker device and pay a monthly bill to use it. It is estimated the tracker will cost in the region of �£200 and a recent study by BBC, lowest monthly bill was �£28 for a rural florist and �£194 for a delivery driver.
But the bit I most object to is being tracked at all times. Someone will always know where we are,what speed we are going, how many stops we took along the way... :eek: :eek:
Where is this going to end???????????????

[ 12. January 2007, 04:33 PM: Message edited by: windy miller ]

 

It appears that there's not much interest on here for what will be an expensive and unjust 'travel tax' :eek:
As someone who lives in a rural area, whose nearest supermarket is a 10 mileround trip - I, for one, cannot afford this tax to be passed.
I pay my road tax and insurance, I really can't afford to pay money per mile aswell. If I wanted to do that - I'd get a taxi!!!!!! :D

 

I can appreciate your point of view, Windy, as my family out on the West Coast have exactly the same problem - but I do believe the only way to ct down on emissions is to make driving less attractive. I don't know how I'll cope myself, as my business doesn't bring that much profit in, and I can see that being swallowed up.

It IS unfair on people who live in the country, and they need to get a REAL alternative in the way of public transport going first - but I don't see that happening. They'd have to subsidise so many routes, as again, it's the remote areas that don't have many people which have most problems with this. Bring back the post bus! But I know it's impossible at the moment to gbet to where you work at a sensible time by public transport unless you live in a town. And if you have to pick up kids, and do all the other things that the flexibility of a car is essential for, I don't know the answer. But I don't know alternative answers to the emissions and global warming either...

 

Well - no offence anyone here - they should wallop the people in the cities who have decent public transport and can only drive slower than walking half the time
My last job without a car would have meant 3 different buses and I would arrive just about the time to go home!!!! If I can't drive, I can't work They really haven't thought this one through..........

 

While I agree with you, windy, something has to be done to discourage people from casual use of their cars (and that includes me!!).

Sticky problem!

 

The trouble these days is that people generally have to travel to get to work and that's not always conveniently near a public transport route. It used to be that people worked nearer home, but things have changed.

Where I lived in Herts, it would have been totally impossible for me to have got to my work by any form of public transport. We actually tried it - it would have involved 3 separate buses, like with you, Windy, (2 nowadays, it's been changed a bit) - and it was impossible to get there for 9 - which is a lot later than school actually started......

Yes - they have to sort all that out first. I totally agree with that. And they also need to seriously tackle city traffic, where walking is faster than driving, and you can see the pollution all the time......

High feelings all round on this one!! :rolleyes:

 

Its got nothing to do with wether you live in a town or in the countryside, I live in an urban area but I work 12 miles away, thats two buses and a train.
Any way it just a money making scam on behalf of the government, the last thing they want is for you to stop using your car.
If we all stayed off the roads for one week the tax structure of this country would crumble.
The so called "greens" are giving the goverment every excuse possible to raise more money from taxes.
When you see what is happening in China and the far east, with their massive populations and rising living standards, anything that we might do is just a drop in a very big ocean.
Nature will get its own back, one day, that is inevitable, and there's not a single thing we can do about it.
And a good job too.

 

Hate to say it, Pete - but I totally disagree. If we did all limit our use of cars to necessity, and the occasional trip, and shared cars where possible, it would make a difference. The places you mention with such high populations don't have the same ratio of people to cars that we do.

In any case, if we do nothing, we're definitely not helping - and I can't agree with that as a philosophy. Sorry! :D

 

Cars are polluters, yes, but so are buses, planes, trains, everthing we do pollutes the atmosphere, your heating, the supermarket with all that lighting and fridges, electric cars need charging so probably pollute just as much as any other.
We've even got a thread on here about garden lighting
Unless your prepared to go back to 1900, forget it, and that includes population as well.

 

I do agree with you Pete. We are so small compared to the rest of the world - most of whom don't seem bothered about doing anything. I think our very small contribution will not change anything. Que Sera Sera - as they say!

 

The thing about cars, though, is that we're all in our private little world, happily going around polluting the place, often with just 1 person in it - whereas a bus will have lots of people, so it's got to be better.

I totally agree about planes - and guess what - I haven't flown in years.......

I doubt very much if we'll ever get the energy consumption down to the levels we'd want - for exactly the reasons you give, Pete, we're all too used to having supermarkets with lights blazing all the time, and all that sort of thing to give it up, unfortunately. Do you remember the dingy little shops like the co-op, where they used to send little canisters whizzing up and down on cords from the till to a cash office up in the ceiling? Ah, those were the days...... :rolleyes:

 

The buses around here dendy are either totally full or running around empty, likewise the trains.
The commuters are falling out the windows morning and evening and the rest of the time they run empty.
Efficency or what, at least my car is only used when I want to go somewhere.

 

Just think of the situation out in the country too - where buses are naturally going to be run empty a lot of the time - so they don't run at all in many places - so people are forced to use their cars......

There's no simple solution to it, Pete - I just can't go along with not doing things to help a bit because what we do can't help enough.....

I do appreciate the points you make - but we surely ahve to do something, however little it is?