Your Blog

Scrap the Intrusive Road Pricing Scheme

Posted by IanWhickham on Monday, 19 February 2007 00:23:07

National Road Pricing, the Government's plan to price car drivers off the road using an intrusive satellite-tracking based system is surely one of the most unpopular policies they have proposed.

Again, as with the NHS Spine and the NIR, New Labour is moving towards a large-scale high-tech approach to a perceived problem. Again, they have disregarded concerns that they are riding roughshod over personal privacy, as they prepare to bring in a scheme that will not entail the compulsory installation of a GPS device currently costing around £200 in everyone's car. This is mass surveillance of all law-abiding British drivers, and will require extremely costly and technically very challenging (Christopher Booker) infrastructure to be put into place.

The views expressed by over 1.5 million British residents who have signed the travel tax petition ought to be heard and taken notice of. New Labour has responded to them not by reconsidering, but by saying that road pricing is "surely part of the solution". Their claim to be interested in debate is pure hogwash.

David, how about showing once again, as you have by pledging to scrap ID cards, that you do care about personal privacy and will not plough ahead with this mass surveillance scheme.

David, will you pledge to scrap satellite tracking-based National Road Pricing?

Ian
SELECT Privacy

Post edited by IanWhickham on Monday, 19 February 2007 00:38:32

, , , , , , ,

You could comment if you logged in | Read comments


 

Posted by blackpikex on Monday, 19 February 2007 01:14:18

This road tax surveillance system solves two problems for the government. The first being a need to extract more money out of the pockets of your average worker, who has to travellel to get to work. Secondly they need to know where to go if you don't pay your road tax surveillence bill. The motoring public still hasn't woken up to the amount of taxation there is on fuel, which is about 400%. Consider the fact that if you claime business milage the taxman allows drivers to reclaim about 40 pence per mile driven. IF the government was rearly bothered about gobal warming they would reduce the taxation on bio diesel and ethanol/methanol fuel cars. All the car surveillence system will do is push more people into poverty, cause more businesses to go under and provide more work for baliffis. No doubt a whole new office block full of paper pushing/ computer mouse clicking goverment officials will be brought into existance. Maybe they could use the offices at canary wharf where they will have an ample supply of paper pushing/ computer mouse clicking goverment officials after the useless CSA id disbanded. You just know its going to be a total buraucratic nightmare, if you look at the long government history of messed up IT initiatives. the CSA for starters. The reason we all need ID cards is cause the UK passport database hase become non viable for its sole purpose of identifing uk citizens. What about all the over payments of tax credits that poor impoverished families are now trying to pay back. Then there is the latest government IT messup the England's Rural Payments Agency (RPA) which has put alot of farmers out of business.

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that goverments don't provide the solutions to societys problems, they ARE the problem if not held in check. I am also coming to the conclusion that politicians become as addicted to power as junkies are to heroin and peadofiles are to children. We should have a bill of right like America that would outlaw ever increasing surveillence and the nanny state.

Posted by webcameronator on Monday, 19 February 2007 03:26:42

I would love to see David Cameron make a policy commitment on this, via webcameron. It would be brilliant if as he does so he would state that the petition at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/ was something that was considered when making that policy decision. This would be an opportunity to promise again to keep improving methods for interacting directly with the electorate when he becomes PM.

Posted by monad on Monday, 19 February 2007 08:09:20

Road Pricing is a very regressive form of taxation. Why not provide all Adults with certain amount mileshours per local area and country wide allowances. This will encourage everyone to think about how to prioritiese their journeys within their allowance. In the longterm may even introduce a scheme for trading the allowances. This way it is not just the rich who can afford to travel in to London or other area subject to road pricing scheme. Also ensures the market puts a value on what is a limited commodity but ensures everyone has a share in the limited road capacity and therefore gain from any market value that is created.

Posted by blackpikex on Monday, 19 February 2007 18:25:53

This satellite car tracking system is more todo with keeping an eye on everyone rather than raising taxes. After 9/11 were all suspect terrorist now don't you know. It's got nothing to do with fair use either. Does a rich city executive have more of a right to get to work on time than a person on minimum wage?. Opening up the road usage to some kind of free market economic system will just increase the cost of living in the UK. Try and learn by studying all the public utilities that were sold of by the conservative party under Margret Thachers time in office. She privatised off the british gas, british telecom, the rail network, water utilities, electric utilities and lots of council social housing stock, Saying that healthy competition between companies would improve efficency and bring down costs. Now as yourself DID IT.
lots of these utilities are now owned by forign companies who take their profits abroad and extract money directly of the UK economy.

Posted by blackpikex on Monday, 19 February 2007 20:43:23

This is probably the satellite system that will be used to track our cars.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4486187.stm

quote ---
Compatible and interoperable with the American global positioning system (GPS), the European network will bring a step change in the accuracy and reliability of location and timing data receivable on Earth.

And for the companies with innovative ideas on how to use this improved data, there are expected to be some big new markets to exploit.
--- end quote

Not only will the government tax you by the mile but your local council won't even have to have traffic wardens walking around to know you parked on a double yellow for 30 seconds. And they will also charge you for the use of the road over night when you park your car up. Just ask the residents of York who pay about £64 just to park outside their own property. Just watch the proliferation of double yellows every where.

Can you remeber the box you ticked on your V5 log book telling the DVLA that they could give out your details to every cowboy
clamping opertion in town?

Welcome to the matix as predicted by Alex Jones

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=8646306163762195517



Posted by mkpdavies on Tuesday, 20 February 2007 11:35:36

Read the EU Directive 2004/52 (quote from page 3)
"It is necessary to provide for widespread deployment of electronic toll systems in the Member States."

Article 6: Implementation (page 16)
"Member States shall bring into force laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with the Directive"

UKIP have commented on this. The LibLabCon-sensus have not.

1.7 million people signed the Downing Street e-petition opposing the electronic road pricing scheme. It would have been honest for Blair, Cameron and Campbell to have mentioned that the scheme is going to be imposed on them by the EU no matter what the British people think.

Posted by DaveJC on Tuesday, 20 February 2007 15:15:36

This is yet another Labour "big brother" tactic to step up surveilance of law abiding people.
Shame this Labour government cant put the same effort into tracking and removing illegals from our country.
What does David Cameron think about this intrusive, tax raising scam ?

Posted by Dortom on Tuesday, 20 February 2007 20:00:23

Mr Cameron-this alone could win you the election if you stand against it. People hate this evil Orwellian plot from Blair.. We have a regime now which wants to impose road charging to supposedly (rot) ease congestion",which also says there are "no limits"! to the numbers who can settle in this country. These lunatics must be stopped.

Posted by MrTeddyEars on Wednesday, 21 February 2007 11:07:19

Scrap it end of story as I will hack any device they put in my car end of story and by the way its easy to track cars today using nothing more than a mobile phone.

Come on David sign up with the rest of us and put Anthony on the back foot

Posted by AndrewFarnden on Saturday, 24 February 2007 15:22:19

This policy is mad and its a shame we haven't got a clear line on it as a party.

Our policy appears to be "we are in favour of a degree of road pricing......." at which point people think we are just as mad.

Why can't our clear line be that as a party we think "national road pricing already happens through the road tax and fuel duty"

We can leave ourselves open to a policy that allows individual cities or bridges to charge if they see fit.

Posted by DaveGould on Saturday, 24 February 2007 19:18:15

Agree, Andrew. Add in something like "We don't think innocent people should be tracked in their cars and we don't think rich people should be able to pay to get poor people off the roads."

Posted by Freethinker on Friday, 02 March 2007 21:36:11


Dear Mr Cameron,
As has been said in an earlier post by Dortom, this rediculous road charging Cash Cow scheme presents you with a golden opportunity to blast this Labour / Lib Dem Anti-Car Westminster mafia into oblivion where they belong.
EDINBURGH has already said a clear NO to road charging, and it is clear that the rest of Britain is also aware that government's Anti-Car meddling is not the cure for congestion but rather the CAUSE of it.
Top marks to David McLetchie Conservative MSP for taking a stand against road charging in Scotland and for his opposition to congestion charging in Edinburgh.
While he can be sure of my vote, I'm sure many more Scottish voters would support the Scottish Conservatives if they could be sure that you too were against this lunacy, many say "what's the point of voting for a change of government if David Cameron turns out to be also in favour of road charging ?" fair comment if this is just a UK issue but irrelevant if all UK governments are now fully controlled by Europe. Either way, the country needs an answer, so that the public can know what's what. Europe rules ? NO. I don't think so ! British people vote for a British government.
Just picture the reaction if Margaret Thatcher had been ORDERED by Europe to introduce road charging.
Freethinker, Edinburgh.

Posted by IAmNoOne on Sunday, 04 March 2007 03:05:49

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of a pen they will create enough money to buy it back again. However, take away from them the power to create money, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they OUGHT to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money." - Sir Josiah Stamp, former Director of the Bank of England, 1940

"We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only questions is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent." - Paul Warburg (architect of the Federal Reserve System), to the US Senate, 1950

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the NY Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But now the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards world government. The supra national sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries." - David Rockefeller, to the CFR, June 1991

Posted by Shaftmonde on Wednesday, 07 March 2007 01:23:02

The apparent dichotomy between the public's desire to do right by the environment and it's wholesale objection to road pricing is easily explained.

Road pricing is being sold to us as an equitable arrangement, replacing other punishing taxes by a pay-as-you-go policy. All well and good - if it were so.

Do we actually believe this? Are we that daft?
Of course not. Some of us are not that gullible.

Road pricing will be applied on top of vehicle licence tax, fuel tax, congestion charges, bridge tolls and parking charges. With no savings to be made by reducing bureaucratic administration costs from these other sources, but huge costs incurred by the new technology.

The only way to convince the electorate to embrace road pricing is with a cast-iron, gilt-edged guarantee to sacrifice these other charges.

But Hey-ho! When has the government ever needed consent from us?

Posted by DaveGould on Wednesday, 07 March 2007 01:32:59

"Road pricing is being sold to us as an equitable arrangement, replacing other punishing taxes by a pay-as-you-go policy. All well and good - if it were so."

Errrr no. You've missed 2 basic points, also largely ignored by the media:

1. The petrol taxation we already have is a pay-as-you-go policy. It is efficient and fair.
2. Road pricing is the rich paying to get the poor out of the way. It requires forcing 33 million drivers to install a £200 satellite tracking system in their car, never mind the cost of the actual satellites themselves. It is a thinly veiled mass-surveillance policy, like all Govt policies these days.