bloody hell, that's even less efficient than my gas guzzling truck!

Difficult to see how anyone could avoid major roads (unless they just potter around a small town). Seems just a way of increasing the overall tax take (which already more than covers road maintenance, etc) and pricing people out of working. Presumably, they'll need to increase the revenue stream so that private operators can pay a handsome return to their shareholders and pay for lots of "enforcement officers." Also, they'll need to cover the costs of giving the taxpayer funded network away to the prospective operators.

All in all seems another show of "fairness" in these austere times. It will certainly prptect the most vulnerable in our society - who need to attend / be escorted to regular hospital appointments, etc.

This really is a joke! I commute from Wigan to work in Runcorn every day using M6/M56. I live two minutes from the M6. The alternative of using the already congested A49 through Warrington doesn't bear thinking about. Public transport during the morning rush hour is ridiculously expensive (best part of twenty quid/day on the odd occasion I have used it vs £35 /wk diesel). This will just line the pockets of big business while everyone else suffers. It will drive people off the motorways leading to further urban congestion and pollution and possibly force some to consider giving up work due to increased travel costs.

Of course its a joke and by the way the idea was to include major trunk roads so your A49 route would not be allowed either. Know of any B road routes from Wigan to Runcorn?

The idea is simply a means to increase road tax for majority under the false pretense that there is a cheaper alternative when in fact there isn't.

As one of the articles linked to suggested the reason they need to do this is falling revenue from road tax due to people driving cleaner cars.

It doesn't cost any less to maintain the roads though, so what do you suggest they should do? At least they are looking for ways to make it fairer, rather than just hiking up taxes for everyone.

Then they have several options. They can raise car tax across the board. They can raise fuel duty. Or they can raise income tax and corporation tax.
I know which I'd prefer and believe is fairest. But all 3 of those options are fairer than introducing a 2-tier system that penalises certain people and restricts others.

Bless, you still think road tax goes to maintain the roads.

Taxing foreign lorry drivers would be a start.

The amount the Treasury rakes in from motor vehicles is obscene. Tax on fuel is just one part of it and that is bad enough but people seem to overllok they also then charge 20% VAT on top including VAT on tax! Us taxpaying mugs of course already paying this extrotion out of what is laughably called our "taxed income". Add in road tax, add in the tax and NI that they take from the people employed to stock and sell the stuff, why they even have the cheek to charge tax on my insurance premium



If they ever got the huge companies that import and refine the stuff to pay some corporation gazillions that would go in the mix too though for all I know they are allowed to do a Starbucks.

I wouldn't mind so much if the rake was spent wisely, but instead most of it disappears in foreign adventurism and guaranteeing gold plated civil service pensions the liability for which is I think about half the national debt.

Quote DaveO="DaveO"Of course its a joke and by the way the idea was to include major trunk roads so your A49 route would not be allowed either. Know of any B road routes from Wigan to Runcorn? '" The A49 is not a trunk road. You are assuming all A roads are trunk roads, this is not the case. www.roadsuk.com/documents/trunk_road_map.pdf

Quote DaveO="DaveO"Of course its a joke and by the way the idea was to include major trunk roads so your A49 route would not be allowed either. Know of any B road routes from Wigan to Runcorn? '" The A49 is not a trunk road. You are assuming all A roads are trunk roads, this is not the case. www.roadsuk.com/documents/trunk_road_map.pdf

Simply avoiding the shortfall in VED isn't what's driving this proposal, I wish I knew what was but it certainly isn't that.

To mitigate the shortfall requires a simple raising of VED rates, taking into account the (fairly predictable) numbers of "cleaner" vehicles that will be in the vehicle parc. Keep the cleaner bands low and use the higher-polluting bands to make up the shortfall. It's not fooking rocket science.

The introduction of the proposed scheme would result in a dog's breakfast. How could anyone predict who would use what roads when? Commensurately, how would they then be able to predict future revenues?

It's a balls-up of a smokescreen to take everyone's eyes off just how much these chancers and fooking-up the nation

Why not start taxing aviation fuel? You land here with empty tanks then you've got to pay to get anywhere else.

Why is it laughably called our taxed income?

It's our income, and it's taxed, so surely 'Our accurately named taxed income' would be more accurate.


And to whoever it was that commented on one of my scooter's lack of fuel economy - it's been tuned for high power and minimum reliability.