Once again Mr.Blair has succeeded in gaining a vast amount of enemies. This time through the 'magical' idea of Toll Roads!! He is proposing that we will have to pay around £1.50 per mile. That means that for me to get to college and back every day it would cost £40 just on Toll!! This is £210 A WEEK!!!! And thats without petrol money!!!!! What the hell is he thinking? Well....he's not.
While I think there's a number of fundamental problems with this proposal, it doesn't help reasoned debate when people can't even be arsed to familiarise themselves with the facts (an old-fashioned concept, I realise) before ranting on. The actual proposal is for a varied system of charging, from as little as 2p a mile on country lanes to £1.30 in busy areas.
but not every one lives in the country. How are small companies going to cope. congestion charging in london has taken its TOLL financialy on small companies.
I didn't say they did. Nor did I say that this plan's a good one. What I did say was that it's a good idea to discuss the actual facts, rather than some exaggerated distortion of them. For instance, do you have any idea which roads are likely to be charged at the highest rate? As far as I was aware, nobody's indicated whether this would just be the most congested, central roads.
right time for some rebecca rioting! back in the old days when that happened in wales, a load of guys dressed up as women to avoid detection, and attacked toll houses
You beated me to it! Darn you *shakes fist!* I'll carry on from where you left off though! (taken from Wikipedia)
I think the proposal is for this variable toll system to replace road tax; for those who don't drive often, or who don't drive in heavily congested areas they may well pay less than they do at the moment. It's a system designed to charge those who cause the most damage to the environment and society with irresponsible car use to pay proportianately for that damage. I don't know if this proposal is necessarily the best system but the thinking behind it is sound. Something drastic needs to be done to get people out of their cars.
One interesting downfall of this system is the proposal to have every single car on the road traceable by satellite in real-time. The potential for abuse of this system presents a huge civil liberties stumbling block.
there are stacks and stacks of satalites up there already, most of which pointing straight back down at earth, tanyone that really wanted to use a satalite to track someone...probally already could
At the moment it would require a vast amount of effort to do that. If everyone has a tracking box in their car, the information will be being collected all the time, about everyone, with records kept of where they are now and where they have been
Chuck mobile phones, credit cards and ID cards into the mix, and you have a pretty complete picture of just about everything that a person's doing.
why can't they just charge by the mile..and stick a device on each car like trucks have (can't remember the name ?? round things??)
tachometer? not a bad idea. the main problem i see with the idea of a variable toll is that people will use their cars just as much, but will find alternative routes to avoid the most expensive ones. this has the potential to put alot more cars out in the countryside and will move polloution rather than get rid of it. if the idea is to abolish road tax and have this as an alternative then i'm not sure i'm that against the idea. but then again, i dont drive regularly and when i do it's more country roads than motorways, and i hardly ever drive in cities, so i would probably have cheaper tolls than those driving through a city day in day out. i definately would not be in favour of a tracking system for each vehicle. the day that becomes compulsary i will be on the first ferry out of here, never to return. that would be going way to far in encroaching civil liberties. to be honest though, i cant see it ever becoming a reality, coz on a practical level there's just no way they would be able to afford to put this device in every single car on the road. the systems involved to get something like this up and running would be so complicated i just cant see how they'd ever manage to do it. peace and love stardust xxx
Civil liberties as mentioned also cause me angst, but I seem to be coming round to the idea that with ID cards also, that Big Brother is going to arise. The story is a prophecy rather than a warning ? A different world to the one I know, but worse ? Who knows, every generation is disturbed by the prospect of a changing world for their offspring. My parents were, I am, and my children will also I am sure.
