Your Comments

All the Goverment is interested in is making more money, it is another stealth tax. the goverment know that they cannot make the congstion any better.
they will never drop the price of fuel and we will still have to pay for road tax.
why are we so spupid and let them suck us in.
and as for public transport... its a disgrace
for me to travel 1.5 miles to my town centre it cost £1.30 on public transport,
however in my car it would only cost 30 pence,and again using public transport you still get cought in congestion.and as for the gps tracking, surely that is evading our privacy

I think that there are a lot of things wrong with the charge,but there is also something wrong with a person that lives in the city with roads that you cannot widen driving a 4x4 (Chelsea Tractor) where as a person that lives out in the country has more of a need for a 4x4 due to the adverse weather that has been known to occur.as for puplic transport, that remains the laughing stock of the world, there are to many people and not enough buses,trains,trams ect.Until issues like the state of so called puplic transport are resolved i am afraid that we as a country will never cure our travel proplems.I could go on as to how,why,who,what,where and when, are to blame/not to blame but you then may feel i am rambling.

I am disabled,for me to get public transport i would have to get a taxi to get me too my bus stop If you could see the colour of some of the public transport where i live you wouldnt bother going out at all The ones that these taxes on travel would suit are the high income earners who would be on less congested roads [because the like of myself and others would be in our houses] Where does all the money from road tax petrol duty fines etc really go? does it go to keep whatever government is in easy funds to pay other things off? when i see the politicians and the like getting on public transport [and not just for a gimmick] then maybe i and others would look at all this in a different light until then i stay with my car whenever i can

It is a pity, as a country we love bashing the motorist, the 4x4 driver and all his despicable friends.

Yet whilst the government whip us up into a lather with more spin and mirrors, they still love getting the tax on petrol,booze and cigarettes and of course the latest craze speed cameras.

Yet with over 2 million, untaxed,uninsured cars on the road, no one seems to have developed whizz bang technology to track down a band of criminals with little care for speed,tax or the environment, it almost seems to be acceptable!

But like the glorified Chip and Pin, that we tried to claim as a new technology for the u.k, to tackle credit card fraud, my French wife and I have been impressed by this technology in France for years! yes France, where you have to show your insurance detaisl on your car windscreen, or in germany on your number plate, how cheap and effective!

Hold on this is England, so a new tax? in a privitised universe of poor public transport? top footsie companies making in excess of £9 billion profit and using every tax loop hole in the book!

I think a new tax, would be great if anyone felt taxation in this country was evenly spread and fair! and when your tax is collected, spent on the areas that provide the benefits to those tax payers!

Sorry, I live in a country, where government, private business and my local council, just want to jump on my back and put their hands deeper into my pockets, to sustain, their ham fisted policies and ugly greed.

Lets stop the rot and say no to the right royal taxing we all get!

I think that road tax should be added to the price of fuel,with tax breaks for commercial use,so as not push up the price of goods delivered by road.

I THINK WE ARE IN THE PROBLEMS OF CONGESTION DUE TO MASSIVE UNDERFUNDING IN ROADS PREVIOUSLY. ROAD TAX COULD HAVE PAID TO KEEP OUR ROADS IN SYNC WITH DEMAND BUT GOVERMENTS HAVE CONTINUALLY DIVERTED ROAD TAX PAYMENTS TO OTHER NEEDS SUCH AS NHS AND EDUCATION ETC. IF THE ROAD TAX HAD BEEN USED FOR ROADS AND TRANSPORT WE WOULD NOT BE IN THIS POSITION NOW . AND AS FOR GLOBAL WARMING WHAT A FARCE. ITS THE NEW CON OF THE 21ST CENTUARY. LOOK AT THE GOVERNMENTS PREVIOUS SCHEMES INVOLVING TECHNOLOGY. THEY COULDNT GET THE CSA RIGHT AND THEN NHS COMPUTERS WERE A JOKE . WHAT CHANCE DO THEY HAVE WITH SATELLITE TRACKING. IT WILL BE CHAOS WITH FALSE BILLING ETC. THEN THERE IS ALSO THE ISSUE OF INVASION OF PRIVACY AND BEING TRACKED EVERY WHERE YOU GO. IM NOT A CRIMINAL OR ANYTHING BUT IT MAKES ME FEEL VERY UNEASY TO THINK I WAS BEING WATCHED 24/7.SO I SAY NO TO THIS SCHEME EVEN THOUGH I WOULD BE FINANCIALLY BETTER OFF. ITS JUST GOING TO BE A COMPLETE FARCE .THERE ARE MORE IMPORTANT PRIORITIES IN THIS COUNTRY TO BE SORTED OUT.

Look, only when there is the guarantee and assurance that public transports are going to be reliable, dependable and efficient that I am going to lock my car up and give public transport a try. Moreover, we pay more tax as it is. Taxing us more is not going to solve the problem but improved public transport will.

I believe this is another money making scheme they tax us so high on feul. Then when we are all told to get efficiant cars that use less fuel they try and make more money. It is a no win situation if the government continues to change its pollicies whenever the public are driven by cost to do what the policy was set out to do. (for example feul prices become too high so we use efficiant cars so then they try and charge us another way) If this happens then people will not be as bothered about redducing their carbon footprint as reducing their bills.

i believe that something needs to be done about the environment, but until the so called government sorts out public transport why should the hard taxed car user foot the bill for their small minded ideas?
If i could get around my daily work by a public transport easier and and cheap than present i would, but at the present time i think the system is a shamables.

This comment has been removed as it was found to be in breach of our Blog Policies.

Why bring in this travel tax ?As already said,surely it would be better to drop the road fund licence,forget about travel tax ,then,increase fuel tax (compromise ).Sureley this will increase what this government would be collecting.After all . ALL , road users would then be paying .Road fund doggers , insurance ,m.o.t. foreign drivers etc ,.

No need for the spy in the vehicle, as where ever you go by by road you pay.

Of more interest to me is how long it takes for the brighter members of the community to realise that if they leave a powerful magnet or a Lead overcoat on the sensor they can get free motoring, this will be the first modification on the net. I mean they now do not bother with tax or insurance, I cannot see a little thing like a road charge worrying them.

If the idea of a new tax is to reduce traffic congestion how about the following solution? With the exception of emergency vehicles and business users why not restrict vehicles to odd or even dates. I.e. final numbers on the registration plate would determine whether the vehicle could be used on the public highway on an odd or even day.Of course the Treasury would lose a substantial amount of revenue, but this loss could be recompensed by fining very heavily the drivers who would decide to flout this new law.

Firstly taxation is what Labour seem to do best and there seems to be no end to the taxation brain waves that they seem to be coming up with to cripple honest Joe Public.

I cant help but feel that the taxation described in the above article impacts our freedom to drive where we like when we like. They talk of congestion getting worse. A contributing factor must be high numbers of Eastern Europeans flooding into the country, which they do nothing about. How long before we are taxed for the air we breathe.

It is all very well paying a tax every time you get in the car but as a resident of rural Suffolk where there is less public transport we would end up paying more because most of the time we HAVE to use our cars. I am self employed and do home visits with equipment which I could not easily carry on a bus. The train service is unreliable to this area too.

It would possibly be OK if we "paid as we go" providing the Government got rid of the present Road Tax but I think they would not.

The road pricing measure is draconian, certainly unfair on those without access to decent public transport and probably unworkable technically. In any event it would penalise the law-abiding and the poorly-off at the expense of those who don't care for the law. In other words, another looming own goal for our current Administration.
A cheaper and more effective draconian measure to get motor vehicles off the road would be to introduce legislation to impound immediately the huge number that come under the classification of either un-MOTd, uninsured or unlicenced. The vehicles would be forfeited immediately on the spot including those driven by drivers who do not have a proper driving licence.
That would imply an expansion of the Police Force to apply effective road-side spot checks, the costs of which could be funded by selling off the impounds at car auctions. It would not cost individual, law-abiding motorists anything.
It would also make our roads safer....

Any road pricing system put forward by civil servants will involve a computer system that will end up costing a huge multiple of the original estimate. Most of the money raised will be spent on collection of the tax itself and not on improving transport. There would just be more money to pay for the process of travelling on roads that we have paid for long ago. Simply, the quality of our government is such that politicians and civil servants cannot be trusted to work out a road pricing scheme and run it properly - the only people who would benefit from one would be Capita or whatever other company won the lucrative contract for administering the system.

It is amazing how evertime something like this comes along how all the ecoterrorist come out of the wood work and start looking for ways to force thier lifestyle down other peoples throats and who cares about thier rights.
Want to cut congestion and reduce CO2 emissions. First cut the amount of cars on the road. To achieve this you will first have to increase the amount of police on the roads. When a person is caught driving without a license, suspended license, no tax, no insurance, or under the influence then the car is impounded. They have 7 day to pay a rediculously high fine to get the car back or it is auctioned off. Use the money from this to go towards public transportation.
Second is that luxury cars get a higher tax. When I purchased my car I purposly picked a car that has good mileage and low emissions. There are two cars in our house. If one was gone either my wife or me would lose our job. My wife is a Social Worker and part of her contract states that she must have a newer car and a valid license or she looses her job. I am a Technical Support Consultant/Engineer (title changes everyweek) and if I lost either my car or license I would be out of work. So I guess it would be better that we used public transportation, did not work, and sponged off the government.

We have to solve the problems of congestion in this country and we can't debate this kind of policy in a yes/no petition.
If we do nothing we'll all be spending half our lives stuck in jams bleating "they should do something about this".
Charging for using the roads is the best solution I can think of. The problem for politicians is that this always has to be 10 years away, so they can don't get voted out. Labour are in an even worse spot, because of their history of stealth taxes.
I heard Lord Whitty (Transport) talk at least 5 years ago about his conviction that we'd have "an air traffic control system for motorways in future"... guess what? He said it would be "within 10 years"!
So thanks to the millions who voted for congestion. Well done.

i think to charge people by when they drive and which road you travel on is disgusting as it will be more than likely that the cost of travelling in peak hour will be more expensive, then why do the goverment not restrict the size of the cars that people use for company cars as more often than not there is only one person driving a large car with a large engine and that cant be good for the enviroment and yet they do not have to pay extra for it,if they want to charge road taxin a different way then in my opinion they should but it on petrol so the more you use the more you should have to pay.

I think Gordon Brown is but a common thief, there can't be much left to tax us on, is there ???

I live in a rural area, 6miles from Spalding and 6miles from Mkt. Deeping. No shops in the village. I rely on my car for everything. Travel Tax should not be applied.

WE ALL PAY TAX EVERY TIME WE START OUR CARS, ITS CALLED FUEL DUTY.
WE PAY ALMOST THE HIGHEST FUEL TAX IN THE WORLD WHEN WE BUY OUR FUEL, ADD TO THIS THE TAX BURDEN OF THE SO CALLED SAFETY CAMERA PARTENERSHIPS ETC AND I THINK WE PAY TO MUCH AS IT IS.

I would love to use public transport but all we have is an hourly bus which comes when it feels like it! It stops at 6 pm and doesn't run at all on a Sunday. North Nottingham has trams, trains and buses. Keyworth - 2 miles away has buses every 15 minutes which run til 3 am at the weekend - why is it so unfair. The price of the bus is also very expensive - it is provided by Leicester Council - so Nottingham does nothing for us. Yet, because of where we live we get high rates too.

Whenever I have to travel distances I try to go by train. Manchester is great and so is Birmingham but you try to get to Leeds.

Lets have a decent, organise public transport system before penalising people who have no choice.

I would also love to ride my bike but there are no speed limits on these country lanes - and no cycle paths. We have lost 5 cats.

This idea has not been thought through properly. It will cost a fortune to introduce and drive costs up across the board. Transport costs and tradesmen travel costs ie self employed plumbers will pass on travel costs to their customers.

The government will have to set up another department of civil servants to administer the tax, pay them and pension them. When people refuse to pay it will cost the tax payer more money in court costs to recover the owed money. Foreign visitors will probably not have to pay along with some other minority groups and you will be left with the usual suspects paying. The fairest way to deal with this is at source. You can't go anywhere without fuel no matter who you are.

Yes i did sign the travel tax petition as i am strongly against the Government trying to force yet another tax on the driver. in addtion i do not want my movements tracked.

If we are going to have to pay to have a sensor fitted how is that going to be enforced? If we refuse to pay will we have our car confiscated? Will our car be immobilised? Will we become criminals? If no-one co-operates what will the Government do about it?

SAY NO TO THE LITTLE BLACK BOX

I am refering to the very first comment on this, in that david l states any new tax on motorists is good, if they cant be bothered to getout of their cars etc.
Im not totally against his point of view, however it is ok saying that but there are other problems in that. Firstly, lets face it public transport! thats not exactly a solution now is it, i say this because its in a right mess of its own, its way too expensive, its not on time, and as for myself, from wher ei live to work i can not use public transport even if i wanted to, due to my work times. So for me thats out the window, i have to reply on a car for that. I dont agree with the new proposed road tax idea, simply the reaosn being, IT WILL NOT SOLVE THE CONGESTION. And thats a fact!! I dont believe for a second thats why they talk of it, thats rubbish. This country has gone mad, no wonder its called rip off britain!!! because it is, and not just to the motorist, in many other respects. The congestion they predict in the future, this tax system will not change that.

I do not support be charged per mile I believe it to be another rip off by the Government.why not abolish the Tax disc completey and have a small increase in fuel tax that way everyone will have to pay tax the more mileage you do the more you will and should pay.Perhaps the speed freaks may slow down a little so driving more economically and safer and reducing pollution also everyone will be paying road tax not just us law abiding mugs, smaller workload for the DVLA perhaps reducing some civil servants saving us more money.And as for using public transport what a joke pay a fortune for a train ticket and travel in already over crowded trains and as for buse's for where I (and thousands of others) live they do not go any where my place of work.

I have a job which the use of my car is essential to it I would be unable to do my work using public transport.
I feel that the government has not thought this through at all it's just another way of raising money for the present government to squander on non sensicle and fanciful schemes that are hatched up by the cabinet, This present Prime minister is a waste fo time he has too many hidden agenda's as does the rest of the top cabinet ministers.
GET THEM OUT I Say.

I am utterly disgusted to think that once again another method of taxing the already overtaxed British Motorist is being thought about in such a way, no true forthought has been given that if for example an employee has to travel to work on say an average of 25miles round trip per day this would mean he or she would have to pay out in the region of £6000 per annum, the only was this could be accepted is if they could claim a large proportion of this back from their employer, even if this was done as a wage increase then this would not be fully viable as it would be classed as income and both Tax & NI deductions would make them worse off even more so, additional to this their employer would be bound to have to charge this additional costs as an increase overhead reflecting n the companies profits, thus once again spireling higher prices on to the customers who are already paying these hidden costs out of their own pocket. HOW SOON WILL IT BE THAT WE HAVE A PROVEN GOVERNMENT IN POWER, WITH A PROPER ACCOUNTANT/BUSINESS PERSON HEADING THE FINANCES IN A MANNER WHERE THEY CAN SEE LOGICAL REASON AND NOT JUST ONE WAY FINANCIAL GAIN, THE MAIN POLICY SHOULD BE KEEP BRITAIN COMPANIES/EMPLOYEES PROFITABLE AND NOT SEND MORE TO THE WALL BY GIVING OTHER COUNTRIES CHANCE TO TAKE OVER WHERE WE HAVE MADE MISTAKES LIKE THIS.

i work for myself and drive a small van all over devon and cornwall and do about 40,000 miles a year and this TAX will hit me hard and will have to put the cost onto my customers which will have an effect on my bussiness its a competative world as it is without more problems my van is a nessesity not a luxury , i could take my tools on public transprt even if they did improve it so NO i dont need these extra charges i want to live to work not work to live.
and as for my car my partner walks the kids to school and only uses it at night to go to work as public transport is s--t and we only use it sundays to go as a family ,so i could do without my car or my van so stuff the tax and lets stand up to a goverment that in some strange way is trying to ruin this country

I rang the bus company to ask if they could send a bus with a towball round, as I would like to take myself and family on our family caravanning holiday. For some reason they laughed.

Looks like I may have to take the car after all, ho hum.

I AGREE CAR USAGE SHOULD BE MINIMIZED AND TAXING IS A GOOD WAY OF ACHIEVING THIS. HOWEVER, THE TAX SHOULD BE IMPOSED SOLELY ON FUEL AND AN ENVIRONMENTAL LEVY ON PURCHASE OF GAS-GUZZLING CARS SO THAT THE POLLUTER PAYS. ALSO THE REVENUE RAISED SHOULD BE RING-FENCED FOR SPENDING EXCLUSIVELY ON IMPROVING PUBLIC TRANSPORT AND ROADWAYS. WE SHOULD NEVER EVER ALLOW A GOVERNMENT TO MONITOR THE MOVEMENT OF INDIVIDUAL MOTORISTS HOWEVER PLAUSIBLE THE JUSTIFICATION IS MADE TO APPEAR.

Whilst I approve in principle regarding paying for using your car when you use it, I am very much against the usage tax being an additional tax burden, as if motorists dont pay enough already. THE USAGE TAX MUST REPLACE THE ROAD FUND TAX NOT BE IN ADDITION TO IT.
Now I must get on my soap box. I am sick to the back teeth of reading self-righteous, smug, little treatises from half baked urbanites, who blithely assume that just because they can walk out of their front door, get onto some form of public transport that takes them any where round their urban sprawl, at any time of the day or night, then everybody can. And it is only laziness that prevents the rest of us from doing so. Look out side your box!
This may be possible in London, which is where most of these pseudo-ecophiles reside. It may be mostly possible in some of the other larger conurbations in the outside London part of our country, but on 90% of the landmass Public transport is given lip service, it notionally exists as an idea, not even a substance. It does not go in the direction you want to go in, at the time you want to go, if it goes that way at all. In many rural areas public transport is one bus into town in the morning and one bus back again in the evening. If you dont want to use the car you walk or cycle, which if you wish to keep up with the pace of modern life you save to enjoy at your leisure.
Cars are neccessary for most of us not a luxury. We are allowed to have lives, even if we dont live within the (ampilfied) sound of Bow Bells and it does not have to regulated by a bus timetable.

The government have encouraged motorists to go for low emissions cars with a reduced road tax. If this tax is removed and yet further tax put on fuel that advantage is lost. If ALL the fuel tax and the road tax was abolished then a road pricing scheme might be more acceptable (though I suspect it would start fairly low and soon creep up again to unacceptable levels!) if the amassed funds were genuinely spent on road improvements and not hived off as they have been.
Being cynical I suspect that the 'green' and congestion arguements are a blind for bleeding the motorist yet again because they are aware that the majority of people that use their cars do so not for joy riding but out of necessity because they have no convenient alternative, and so will have no option but to pay up.

although i agree that eveyone is entitled to their point of view, i find it suprising that people who are so anti car are using this site. do you go round looking for an argument or what? i feel that i pay enough tax already for my motoring with road tax and fuel duty. where does the money go from these, or rather what percentage is put back into transport/ roads? i should also point out that i'm not welded to my car seat and quite often walk or use my push bike, but thats because i want to keep fit and choose to do it. if i want to use my car or motorbike i will ,and thats the point ,we should be able to choose without the big stick of taxation being aimed at us.remember that most motorists have the vote and no politician would risk alienating such a large group.

3236 I'm back from a hard day in the office argueing with Gordon about when I'm leaving. I'm pleased to see my loyal subjects are still argueing. I wonder if I can tax argueing?

Posted by Tony Blair, 1st March 2007 7:17pm

you might be able to tax it mate but you can't spell it. (Arguing)