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Apparently the new scheme to cut emissions and ease congestion involves charging users per mile they drive. Which entails fitting a device to each car so that it can be tracked by satelite and charged accordingly.
Yes, the government wants to implement a scheme which will allow them to know where you've been, where you're going, and how long you stay there, for every car journey you make.
I am constantly astounded by the cheek of this government.
Now, let's go back to the problems that this scheme is supposed to solve: emissions, and congestion. And contrast our existing system, which is based on taxing fuel heavily:
And then there's privacy. With this and ID cards, the police will know who you are, what you do, where you live, where you came from, and where you are going. They won't need to ask for "your papers, please".
Government admits struggle to sell road pricing scheme — The Grauniad
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy. Over 200,000 signatures so far. Add yours!
Edit: while we're all signing petitions, I notice there's a new ID card petition on the 10 Downing Street site.
Yes, the government wants to implement a scheme which will allow them to know where you've been, where you're going, and how long you stay there, for every car journey you make.
I am constantly astounded by the cheek of this government.
Now, let's go back to the problems that this scheme is supposed to solve: emissions, and congestion. And contrast our existing system, which is based on taxing fuel heavily:
- With fuel taxing, not only are people charged for going on long journeys, they're also charged for using energy-inefficient cars. Woo! Green!
- The more congested a road is, the longer a car stays idling in traffic, using up fuel. So the more congested the road, the more you pay in fuel taxes. Woo! Magic!
And then there's privacy. With this and ID cards, the police will know who you are, what you do, where you live, where you came from, and where you are going. They won't need to ask for "your papers, please".
Government admits struggle to sell road pricing scheme — The Grauniad
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy. Over 200,000 signatures so far. Add yours!
Edit: while we're all signing petitions, I notice there's a new ID card petition on the 10 Downing Street site.
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From:
no subject
Oh bitch, you just didn't. >:O
I swear, this government is THE nastiest in my living memory. No joke.
*adds signature*
From:
no subject
You put it much more eloquently than I did. Well done!
From:
no subject
Really, dont trust these guys, they ain't nice.
A little off topic, but people should remember the proposed Parliament Act, whereby the current government could change any law which didn't involve a criminal sentence of over 2 years without directly consulting parliament (including this law). This was apparently an "error", that particular proposal failed, thank god.
From:
no subject
The Parliament Act is about the House of Lords specifically, no? I hadn't heard of any proposed changes to that one.
From:
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From:
Pro-actively labelled tl;dr for your convenience!
* Fuel duty is invariant with respect to local public transport infrastructure.
* Fuel duty offers no ability (at least not in a robust way) to make special allowances for rural areas and villages -- for example, with road pricing you could offset the cost of the extra congestion caused by a discount for rural roads against the benefits of making rural and village communities more viable in the long term.
* Road pricing allows faster routes (and possibly even lanes) to be available by paying a premium; this allows businesses in particular a greater degree of control over transport times and costs by making them more predictable, which would positively impact on the economy (and not insubstantially, either).
* Road pricing could also be used to fund construction of new roads where sufficient demand is present, offering a fairer basis for charging the costs -- those who get the benefit pay.
With regard to congestion, there's no guarantee that the extra cost in fuel of idling (which is unlikely to be that large) remotely in proportion to the optimal incentive for that road. Also, the costs associated with idling tend to be invisible (or at least seriously obscure) to the driver; itemised bills are rather more obvious, and therefore more likely to have an effect on behaviour. The London congestion charge has actually been rather successful.
With regard to costs, the devices would be fitted by manufacturers to new cars. Transitional arrangements for old cars could be used to allow a suitable period of time for the majority of vehicles to have the devices installed already before cars were required to have them installed. Transitional arrangements could be offered under a different pricing scheme to avoid penalising those with new cars, or a less robust system of discounts could be offered to those with the devices fitted to ensure neutrality (or more likely an incentive for early adopters). This would be more susceptible to fraud, granted, but it could be made sufficiently robust, and sufficiently disincentivised through fines and other legal measures that the level of fraud is acceptable within the time period of the transition. The fact that so many devices need to be fitted means there are cost savings associated with mass production. As a proportion of the cost of a car, the devices will be relatively cheap. Britain is by no means the only country looking at road pricing, and the technology R&D is being led by the private sector on its own, so it's not a pure government IT project.
On government IT projects, London congestion charging was pretty successful -- and bear in mind that government IT debacles are the only sort you're likely to hear about with any frequency; businesses don't like to make too much of a noise about their cock-ups, for obvious reasons; peoples' impressions therefore tend to be based on biased data here. I'm not claiming that government and the private sector are equally good at handling large scale IT projects, just that there are grounds for being wary of the perception that the public sector is particularly bad at it. However, it should be acknowledged that the technical issues are huge, particularly when it comes to preventing fraud; however, I do not believe they are in any way insurmountable.
Privacy... there could well be technological ways around the need for storing or making available personal data from the system (clever cryptographic protocols, etc), but whatever system is instituted would be unlikely to use such methods, and there would be large technical issues; that's an argument that stands. Although, it's worth observing that biometric ID cards could form a part of the system, and would solve several tricky technical issues.
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From:
no subject
How much do you know about the congestion charging scheme? Does it record information as fine grained as "on 11/01/07, 10:53 am, you were on
Mornington CrescentEdgware Road going East" or as general as "on 11/01/07 you went somewhere in central London"? It's a difference of degree, not type, but at least we can feel that with the second case, data is not being collected merely for the sake of it.There's been talk of extending that scheme over the rest of the country, and my response to that would be: only if it's really unavoidable. If you can show that it really would be beneficial to set up a controlled zone in central Edinburgh, then so be it, but don't do it just because you can.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
There's been talk of extending that scheme over the rest of the country, and my response to that would be: only if it's really unavoidable.
Well, it's obviously not unavoidable, we just live with the congestion and all the costs and problems associated with it, however bad it gets.
If you can show that it really would be beneficial to set up a controlled zone in central Edinburgh, then so be it
But this isn't about avoidable or unavoidable, this is about costs and benefits, and there's therefore an implied (finite) value you place on civil liberties (or at least the ones infringed upon by congestion charging technology). That's not surprising, it's very difficult to maintain a consistent rational position without this happening, but ask yourself this:
How much would you have to offer the average citizen to make them give up some of their civil liberties? I suspect it's depressingly little...
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Scrap Road Tax and Tolls in favour of Tax on Fuel."
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Vehicle-Taxation/
That neatly cuts out the possibility of being accused of insincerity, if your only concerns are on civil liberty grounds.
(PS I got to this post via Lauren - hope you don't mind me commenting anon, but I don't have a livejournal. Will go away now)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Scrapping tolls removes one of the few ways of charging the costs of new roads to those who get the benefit (which is a fairer funding mechanism, at least where business is principally driving the demand).
And a good response to an accusation of insincerity would be to point out that governments employ an army of press officers and spin doctors to be insincere on their behalf, so why should those opposing them on the issue do so with one hand tied behind their back. Rouse that rabble! Throw them every argument you think might work. Sign the petition with the most signatures, it generates worse press and makes it more difficult for the government to manoeuvre. Sure you might not agree with all the arguments on the petition yourself, but if you've come to a careful and considered decision it's better a policy be sunk, the care and consideration have done their job. Sinking it (at least through devices like petitions) is about changing perceptions, and you can often do that better on the scale you need by playing a bit fast and loose than by sticking to the principles of your carefully derived argument. Governments are happy enough doing it, because it works better than the alternative; if you want to fight them effectively, should you be happy to do it too?
On a random side note; supposing for the moment that these petitions are taken seriously by government (they are to an extent, no doubt, but it's not clear to what extent) -- how much of a problem is there here in the obvious biases (age, socio-economic status, etc) of an online signature collection method -- even before things like vote drives from interested parties -- e.g. the Countryside Alliance swamping the annual polls run by the Today programme. Frankly, if I had to make a decision, I'd consider these numbers so suspect as to all but dismiss them. Meanwhile, the fact that they're an easy to use tool for generating negative media coverage (sometimes with little need for factual basis) and very susceptible to manipulation by interested parties would make me consider the online petition facility a noose around my neck. What were they thinking?
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
Really, you want a multiple choice here, on the lines of:
1) allow congestion to get worse, take the hit to the economy and pay the resulting EU pollution fines.
2) Increase fuel tax
3) Go for local congestion charging schemes (unlikely given the result in Edinburgh)
4) Go for road pricing
There are a lot of people trying to turn down 2-4, without accepting the consequence (1), which is very annoying. I think the government is sincerely trying to avoid 1 but doesn't know which of 2-4 to go for, and probably isn't being helped by negative petitions!
My understanding of petitions is the government usually ignores them (or throws in some minor concessions - here it will probably claim "safeguards" for the data). I was always told if you want to be effective, it's more important to write to your MP setting out your reasons (and if possible, saying what you do want instead).
From:
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From:
no subject
That said, the Labour government doesn't strike me as one that listens to people at all. It's possibly more likely that the Tories and/or Lib Dems will pick up on this petition. (Tories because of the cost aspects, LD because of civil liberties.) And then we might finally have some debate on the matter.
8^S
From:
no subject
"Government monitors health of the nation for your safety!"
From:
no subject
8^)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
They can already track where you've been etc. via your mobile phone, as was seen in the Soham trial. Of course if you don't want to be tracked you can always just turn the phone off, so the car monitoring scheme would be a somewhat more reliable source of data.