pbhj's Journal: vehicle taxation petition response

On Wednesday 17 January 2007 19:10, *******@aol.com wrote:
> Hi Everyone
>
> This came to me from my sister in Bedfordshire Police and sadly is
> genuine. Register on the website stated and pass on to anyone you know
> urgently.

This may come from a reliable source, but it smacks of an email scam to me - one of my "hobbies" is scam busting, but take a pinch of salt with anything you read in an email.

Firstly there is no corroborating evidence enclosed.

Secondly, and more importantly, the trial petitions site (http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/) allows anyone to register a petition about anything. So the use of the term "THIS IS REAL AND IT IS A PROPER GOVERNMENT SITE!!!" rings huge alarm bells. The petition may be on a government site but it is not from the government nor does it's presence on the site mean anything. If you want you can create a petition that the PM had beans for his breakfast - but that won't mean that the government is planning an entry on the statute books to enforce it.

Some information before you sign:

The BBC report referred to appears to be the one mentioned in the following link. It is a report on an imagined future with imaginary road charges as an attempt to see how things might change. http://www.bbc.co.uk/herefordandworcester/content/articles/2006/11/18/congestion_charging_feature.shtml

The report was spawned to contemplate the use of tracking devices in future in which cars have such devices as standard - their would likely be very little additional cost to motorists for equipment.

In that report it mentions that the figures come from an experiment by Professor Stephen Glaister of Imperial College - you can download a report [I think it's the report in question] by Professor Glaister from the Institute of Economic Affairs website @ http://www.iea.org.uk/record.jsp?ID=70&type=release. Further news stories associated with the report include:

1) a story in The Times [London] suggesting that road tax would be used to reduce council tax payments by up to 50% - people who use the roads would pay for the repairs, sounds fair to me. It also notes a trial wouldn't start until 2010 : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2149456,00.html

2) in another Times story Friends of the Earth cautioned that the studies proposed charges might replace fuel duty entirely and that this could be a bad thing : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1641476,00.html

3) an alternate view comes from the Telegraph : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/05/nroad05.xml

4) this BBC article seems to be a balanced summary : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4610755.stm. It quotes the RAC Foundation spokesman Sue Nicholson, thus: "Providing this tax was substitutional to fuel tax and road tax and provided we had some other guarantees then I think, for a lot of people, this would be a tempting option, ...".

These stories all broke quite a while ago; so you've got ask why all of a sudden we're getting an email about it.

So my view is that to sign a petition against this new method of taxation would be a knee-jerk reaction.

I personally think fuel based taxation makes more sense and that the direct Vehicle Tax should be dispensed with and instead we should have a number plated based insignia to show payment of insurance and passing of an MOT. That aside if we had the proposed system of mileage based Vehicle Taxation I think it would be better than the current lump sum "road fund license".

In summary I say don't sign!