Labour's newest tax on motoring

[4D]

In an ideal world it would be nice to be able to use public transport, and I do from time to time.....but for me to get to work without my car would mean either of the following.................

a) Walking / Cycling  (9 miles on a road that is not pedestrian friendly)
b) Liftsharing (don't know anyone from my town who commutes at my time)
c) Get a taxi ( I may as well drive  )
d) Using public transport (which would take 30 minutes by bus, and I would still be a 2 mile walk from work)

 

[flammableBen]

In an ideal world during a recession, the country will borrow and spend as much as possible.

[pauld]

Yup, same as. Whether I'd like to use public transport to work is neither here nor there because it's just not practical (distance/hours worked/reliability). Some of these gits in Whitehall should spend a week or two in the real world. But this scheme is more about window dressing than any real effort to force people not to use cars - its bullshit PR which will have minimal effect on car use (even in Nottingham after 2012) or tram use or the economy which is being whipped up into a "Labours new tax attack on car users" storm in a pre-election teacup

[pauld]

In an ideal world during a recession, the country will borrow and spend as much as possible.

Are you related to my missus or just in her pay?

[flammableBen]

I wish I was in pay from someone. Surely it's just common sense? Whilst as individuals we're better off cutting down on our spending and saving up, if everybody does that it makes things 1000times worse. Spend Spend Spend, Borrow Borrow Borrow.

[Crozzer]

The window tax will be next, energy savings with less windows.

The tax was introduced under the Act of Making Good the Deficiency of the Clipped Money in 1696 under King William III[1] and was designed to impose tax relative to the prosperity of the taxpayer, but without the controversy that then surrounded the idea of income tax. At that time, many people in Britain opposed income tax, on principle, because they believed that the disclosure of personal income represented an unacceptable government intrusion into private matters, and a potential threat to personal liberty.(JOHN STUART MILL, PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, BK. V, CH. 3, SECTION 5)[citation needed] In fact the first British income tax was not introduced until the late 18th century and the issue remained intensely controversial well into the 19th century.[2]

When the window tax was introduced, it consisted of two parts: a flat-rate house tax of 2 shillings per house and a variable tax for the number of windows above ten windows. Properties with between ten and twenty windows paid a total of four shillings, and those above twenty windows paid eight shillings.[3] The number of windows that incurred tax was changed to seven in 1766 and eight in 1825. The flat-rate tax was changed to a variable rate, dependent on the property value, in 1778. People who were ineligible for church or poor rates, for reasons of poverty, were exempt from the window tax.[4] Window tax was relatively unintrusive and easy to assess. The bigger the house, the more windows it was likely to have, and the more tax the occupants would pay. Nevertheless, the tax was unpopular, because it was seen by some as a tax on "light and air".[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax

[Phil_S]

The government use green as an excuse for hiking tax. If you want to get the country greener it's simple use a stick & a carrot, not just a bloody stick.
If public money were invested in a decent transport system at a decent price it would be used. I lived in Doncaster for a couple of years in the 70's & the bus service was second to none. It was cheap, frequent (a bus every 5 or 10 mins) & ran for long hours. Very few people I knew used cars within the town & surrounding area.
Lets take the trains. If I want a night out in say Bristol or Bath the train is NOT an option because the last train back is before 11.00 pm. If I want to go to London it costs more than it costs my missus to fly to Alicante to see the mother in Law.
The only Time I would use the train is if it got me to where I wanted to go, when I wanted to go & at a reasonable cost. Only happens occasionally the last time being a journey to Gatwick & back where the train does run to the airport (unlike Brissle) I picked up a deal onthe train tiockets & saved on two weeks parking.
Then there is the question of electricity generation. Why the hell don't they invest imore in real renewable energy such as a Severn Barrage. The US did something similar in the 30's during the depression & built the Hoover Dam which is still working today. That would have been a far more effective way of spending the 12 billion that the goverment pissed away by cutting VAT by 2.5% !

And that last point brings me to my second point. Gordon Browns approach to fiscal management has always been the same. Raise taxes. He started off by taxing our pension funds & has been coming up with spiffing wheezes to hike tax ever since. Most of it has been wasted.
Its like he is trying to fill a collander (The goverments budget) by turning the tap on more (Taxes). He does sod all to address the real problem which is blocking the holes (waste). The waste of tax payers in this country is horrendous. One example is the NHS. Sure more money goes in & some has actually been going to the right place, but this is more by accident than design. We have seen doctors salarys rise from 40 k pa to over 100 k pa. The HHS super computer has sucked billions out of the system, layers of beauracracy created where a press officer I knew earned 53 k pa for a 2/3 day week.

[Nemo]

Most of it has been wasted.
Its like he is trying to fill a collander (The goverments budget) by turning the tap on more (Taxes). He does sod all to address the real problem which is blocking the holes (waste). The waste of tax payers in this country is horrendous.

That's some proper Alvin Hall metaphor stuff there.

[Talk Talk]

Erm, I was taking the piss. I'm with you (whereas TalkTalk is off with the pixies)

Why I am 'off with the pixies'?

The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is about 350 parts per million. Yes, that's per million. If you study the numbers I gave above, man made emissions contribute almost nothing to that tiny amount.

Water vapour accounts for about 96% of greenhouse gases. What are we going to do, start trying to reduce the world's water?

As for CO2 having such a powerful effect, then historically the concentrations in the atmosphere have been two to three times higher and the planet still self regulated.

As for 'global warming'? Earth's temperature has not risen since 1998 and has been falling since 2002, even with massive increases in spewing Chinese factories and coal burning power stations. Oh, let's call it 'climate change' instead - ah, funnily enough the earth's climate always changes. Bonkers old thing the short and long term solar sunspot cycles, eh?

I'm with Phil S. That's what governments do. They find as many ways to increase taxes as they can. The global warming hysteria is a gift when it comes to squeezing more money out of us, just like taxing parking spaces.

'Off with the pixies'? Nah, I prefer to use my own considered judgement on the reasons why so much of my income (getting on for 70% now) disappears down the government black hole.

[jonny72]

If public money were invested in a decent transport system at a decent price it would be used.

Simple solution - make all public transport (buses, trams, trains) free and pay for it by increases in income tax.

It would totally shaft the car industry, but we can get the people working on the public transport system instead. It would also totally shaft the oil industry, no need to do anything about that - the fuckers deserve it.

Plus by paying for it through income tax the rich would pay more in proportion.

[leefer]

Simple solution - make all public transport (buses, trams, trains) free and pay for it by increases in income tax.

It would totally shaft the car industry, but we can get the people working on the public transport system instead. It would also totally shaft the oil industry, no need to do anything about that - the fuckers deserve it.

Plus by paying for it through income tax the rich would pay more in proportion.

Thats too simple Johny...cant be having that!

[Phil_S]

Don't get me wrong global warming is a problem. Not for the planet, as Talk talk says the planet self regulates over millions of years. But for human beings, or more to the point modern human beings as
CO2 DOES generally increase temperatures (& rainfall).
But as has been said it's not the only or the most powerful greenhouse gas. Methane is a lot more powerful, & there is a hell of a lot trapped at the bottom of the oceans. Currently it is trapped by the pressure & temperature down their, but a small rise in the oceans average temperature to above the boiling point of methane at that pressure will turn the methane into gas & release huge amounts. The real but possibly remote danger is that this will cause the planet to become like venus, but as that is much closer to the sun, it's not a good comparison & by that time humans would probably be extinct any way.
Other than that the main problems seem to be that of rising sea levels & climate change. Things that have happened to the planet mnany times before, even in the time that homo sapiens has been around.
So to summarise my thoughts yes we need to try & be clean & green etc, for our OWN comfort & well being, but as far as taxation is concerned its just an excuse. And for a so called socialist government its a bloody disgrace as these taxes affect the poorest far more than the rest.
 

[Phil_S]

Simple solution - make all public transport (buses, trams, trains) free and pay for it by increases in income tax.

It would totally shaft the car industry, but we can get the people working on the public transport system instead. It would also totally shaft the oil industry, no need to do anything about that - the fuckers deserve it.

Plus by paying for it through income tax the rich would pay more in proportion.

Something radical like that would have an effect. Stealth / green taxes don't. By their very nature they are designed so we don't really notice & carry on as normal until we suddenly realise after years of mismangement that we've been shafted. Bit like the toad in boiling water.

[cib]

As for 'global warming'? Earth's temperature has not risen since 1998 and has been falling since 2002, even with massive increases in spewing Chinese factories and coal burning power stations. Oh, let's call it 'climate change' instead - ah, funnily enough the earth's climate always changes. Bonkers old thing the short and long term solar sunspot cycles, eh?

So you're attributing climate variability exclusively to "Solar sunspot cycles"? There is evidence to suggest that change in solar output does have an effect on global climate - it has been used to explain temperature decreases predominantly, rather than increases, and the majority of these were during times when the earth was in an ice age. This is because during ice ages the climate is much more unstable and any change can have a larger impact than during warmer periods.

On top of this the Little Ice Age (which was 1500-1850ish) has been attributed to reduced solar activity - but even that has been argued to have been localised rather than global. So "solar sunspot cycles" are yet to be proven to cause climate change on the scale we've seen in the past 150 years or longer periods of time and on a global scale - it may explain an annual change for example La Nina and the cooler period associated with that but frankly thats about it.

[jonny72]

Regardless of the environment, it is just plain stupid that we all use cars as much as we do. Its just common sense that things would be better if we didn't have to travel as much and used more efficient forms of transport.

Just imagine if we were to squash all of Swindon in to an enlarged town centre, with no roads and a new transport system (tram or monorail) which meant you never had more than a 5 or 10 minute walk.

Surely that would be a lot better than what we have at the moment.