Stealth tax by any other name
Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 9:13 AM
The roads in Britain are congested. There is no argument about that. This affects many areas of society, not least the time lost in traveling, environmental and health costs and the disruption to businesses.
In recent weeks the UK Government has instituted studies on how to ease this congestion. One of the most iniquitous being a proposal to charge by the mile to use roads. At least one congestion charge scheme (London) has been in existence for some years, and has recently been extended in both area and cost to enter the center of the city. Obviously road users are most concerned that any extension of such a scheme to the rest of Britain would put intolerable financial burdens on both private and business motoring, not least the cost in ensuring that ALL vehicles could be tracked 24 hours a day !
A petition was posted on the Prime Minister's web site requesting that any such studies and proposals should be dropped immediately. This petition was electronically signed by 1,801,558 motorists - including myself. The wording of this petition was as follows.
"The idea of tracking every vehicle at all times is sinister and wrong. Road pricing is already here with the high level of taxation on fuel. The more you travel - the more tax you pay. It will be an unfair tax on those who live apart from families and poorer people who will not be able to afford the high monthly costs. Please Mr Blair - forget about road pricing and concentrate on improving our roads to reduce congestion."
I agree that the idea of some super computer being able to track vehicles is both sinister and wrong, and have a shrewd suspicion that this is yet another stealth tax - despite Prime Ministerial denials.
In reply, all signatories to the petition received an email from the Prime Minister, the text of which can be read here.
Let's hope that reason will prevail and that the scheme will be scrapped.
