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Red ken wants to make band G cars pay £25 congestion charge
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
and band A & B pay nothing....
i say it's a good thing
i say it's a good thing
0
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There are plenty of people who need their 4x4 and only have one car, and are going to get hit very hard by anything daft like this. It won't affect the chelsea tractors as their owners have enough money to pay anyway. It's another underhand tax.
OK the admin costs are estimated as going down in future years (I'm not sure whether they did or in didn't), but even in 05/06 they're estimated as £79.2m.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2780249.stm
There may be an argument about reducing car use, but in that case they'd be better hiking up car tax or petrol prices (and giving better tax breaks to public transport providers with the extra revenue), rather than set up a new and expensive mechanism to gather it.
But surely people who are taking pre-schoolers to learn a foreign language ought to be commended, not taxed.;)
How many people who live or come to work to London need a 4x4 and only have one car?
About 0%, that's how many.
Absolutely fantastic proposal, and a sensible one. If some people insist on being so incredibly fucking selfish as to drive a monster truck designed for off road use in the busiest city in Europe they should bloody well paid for it and be encouraged to switch to an adequate form of transport.
Ken Livingstone is the best thing that has happened to London in years, and if there was any doubt of him getting reelected that's gone now.
Remember the congestion charging area isn't London - it's the center of London.
I think you'll find you're wrong. Anyone that tows regularly or has hobbies that involve lots of outdoors will find that the car best suited to them is a 4x4. These people can either take the long route round the congestion charging zone (thus increasing emissions and road wear), or if the congestion charge is reasonable take the direct route.
with that i would perfer to park my car on my dads drive in london then in some random car park where someone with steel from it, or open there doors denting it.
Most londoners would disagree - he's probabl one of the best mayors they've had. So I don't like all his policies myself - this one included - but I'll put up with it, because he does a fucknig good job.
And maybe one day, I'll cruise round London in a 5.0 Litre '77 Trans Am to piss him off.
oh i forgot about all those farmers in london who must drive around their land hurding sheep!
yes they can afford big cars so should pay for the consequences a big car that produces above average emiisions! go Ken!
use the tube or buy a smaller car, easy!
Well apparently you've rigged the Euromillions draw, so that should be possible
IIRC, when it comes to London-based Chelsea tractors the figure is 95%.
And of the 5% of all 4x4s that do go off track, how many are for work reasons (i.e. having to travel on peak times between Mondays and Fridays)?
And of the remaining few (if any) 4x4 drivers who live in London, who go off road and who need to do it during peak hours, how many don't have/can't afford another car?
Please let's not kid ourselves. Practically nobody at all whatsoever in London needs a 4x4. There might be 1 in a 100. 2 at the very most. Well, to put it blantly, tough luck. The needs of the many millions outweigh the needs of the few dozen.
I realise that lots of the Chelsea tractors don't get used for their fit purpose.
I will also admit that I have a personal gripe, I use a 4x4 for loading kayaks onto and taking to nice bits of water. By using the Landy we can take 4 people and 4 sets of kit in one car, if we use my brothers Clio then we need 2 cars. Why should people who genuinely use them be punished?
I get your drift, you want to take more money off those nasty rich people with big cars, but why should it be done as a congestion charge.
But the problem with taxes like these is the super rich arent really fussed. And a lot of the people driving in central london are super rich. So from that point of view, it just seems to be about maximising revenue. Also, I'm not sure I agree with it being free for category A and B vehicles, because they're still contributing towards congestion which causes in itself a lack in fuel economy x 100s of cars that are congested, x slower transport = all bad things.
Scary monster: 'nice bits of water' aren't in the central of london though...
when car tax changes to road tax with GPS and all that, you'll get taxed depending on the type of roads you drive on and when. The cheapest will be out of town B roads, the most expensive will be innercity congestion hotspots like central london. Makes perfct sense to me, because it provides a disincentive for people to drive in central London, which is a good thing for the opposite of the reasons above.
Start taxing industry and freight for it's carbon emissions and I might go along with taxing private drivers too. They are already paying more through the high fuel tax which they pay more for because of their higher fuel consumption.
Congestion charge should punish those who add to the congestion . Making A and B free is ludicrous, like ShyBoy said, that'll only add to congestion (and emissions).
I feel that if people can afford a rumbling 4x4 in London, then they can probably afford an extra amount in their tax. However, the cars that Ken has lined up to be 'free' from congestion charges (hybrid cars etc) are really not very good for taking families around in. Most of them are tiny, flimsy little things ... not much space for a family.
You keep hearing 'they can afford it so they should pay for it'. Maybe we should just charge everyone 0.01% of their annual income to drive in the congestion charging zone, maybe we should resort to communism, or maybe we could charge everyone the same for the congestion they cause.