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The Motorists Enemy |
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The Motorists Enemy |
Just what have the new Labour government done with transport? Basically nothing. Public transport continues to be over priced, over crowded and dangerous. Any commuter train heading to London at peak times is packed full. People are standing in the doorways and aisles. It resembles trains you'd find in India rather than the UK. It's surprising that the death tolls for Southhall and Ladbrook Grove crashes were not higher.
In addition to an expensive and over crowded service, trains are frequently late or cancelled all together. Public transport simply cannot be relied upon. In the years I've been commuting into London I've seen many shocking examples of how bad public transport is. People having to stand from London to Cardiff because there are no seats. People regularly being charged penalty fares because the pricing structure and times you can travel are so complicated no one understands it.
But Labour want us to abandon our cars for this shoddy excuse for public transport. It is a noble cause, but how exactly are they going about it? They are using a very simple strategy. Labour believe that they do not need to improve public transport, all they have to do is raise the cost of motoring out of reach of most people and force them onto public transport.
A seemingly effective plan. But one with so many drawbacks it's simply not working. Most people simply cannot use public transport to get to work. Either a service does not run near their house or place of employment, or the times are unsuitable for the UK working culture. i.e. get to work early in the morning work like a dog and then commute back late in the evening. The simple reason people continue to use their cars is because there is no alternative.
Under John Prescott and the Labour government the amount of stealth taxes we now pay on motoring are phenomenal. 80% of petrol prices is tax. £150 tax for a "road fund license", 2% tax on Car insurance. The lists goes on and on. According to The Association of British Drivers useful Tax Calculator I pay £1500 in tax on fuel. This is out of my net income which has already been taxed at >40%. A tiny fraction of this money goes on roads.
The police have also got in on the act. The roads are massively over policed. Speed is the new social crime. Gatsos are springing up all round the country. Speeding fines of £600 are not uncommon. Compare this to fines for other sorts of crimes including violent crime.
On a London news program a Police Commissioner said he considered speeding in the same category as rape, murder and drug offences. He used the number of fatalities to justify this extraordinary statement. Whilst most of us live in fear of being burgled or drug related violence we can rest assured that valuable police resources are out there being used to victimise motorists.
So why are we being urged out of our cars? The Greens will tell you it's because of the environmental damage. The government leap on the back of this and use to hike up taxes. The truth is that modern cars are relatively clean. Also LPG fuelled cars used to enjoy healthy tax breaks. As soon as people started switching to LPG cars, the government realised it was loosing revenue, and has started to increase the tax on LPG.
The last petrol crisis should have taught us a valuable lesson. After one week of picketing the supply of petrol the country ground to a halt. We rely on petrol way too much. All it needs is for one of the oil rich Arab states to with hold output and the Western world will be in crisis.
Why aren't we investigating alternative, cleaner fuels? The earths oil resources are finite and one day they will run out. Until then we are held to ransom by a few oil rich states. Simple fact is if we do develop alternative sources of energy petrol companies will loose money and the government will loose tax. This explains the lack of interest in funding studies into other sources of energy. Now oil has hit $50 a barrel we are all in trouble again.