Road Pricing Petition Closed at 1,792,263 signatures

Yes, the road pricing petition has closed, with 1,792,263 signatures, which it appears will not change government policies one jot, but will get us all an email from Tony saying why we are mistaken.

Fantastic. I will look forward to it. Not!

The petition is here, whilst the BBC has this.

For more see here.

London's £8 baby tax!

Various people have been commenting on Ken Livingston's extension of London's congestion charge to cover the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

For example Iain Dale has this article citing issues like a reduction in business for traders and shops in Kensington and Chelsea as well as the fact that a large number of residents of that borough will now be able to congest the city center with out extra cost, thereby spreading congestion.

There have been protests as well including go slows. Local traders will not only be hit by their customers paying the charge but could well have problems traversing the congestion charge borders. Will jobs be lost?

However there is another problem and it is this. Kensington and Chelsea contains a major hospital, The Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, whose catchment area contains Hammershith and Fulham. So if someone in Hammersmith or Fulham needs to drop a baby, and has to be driven in to the hospital, that's £8. If they have not planed in advance and booked, and don't pay on time the charges mount.

In short, this is going to end up look like a regressive tax on the poor, and is going to be full of unintended consequences.

Fortunately for me I don't live in London and no longer drive there.

For more information see this press release.

Road Pricing Petition, we're all stupid Apparently!

I have just read this most excellent Fisking, by Dizzy thinks, of a gibbering fool, Steve Richards, who wrote this article in today's Libdemograph Independent.

The Fisking is very good, I suggest you read it. However what irritates me most is the silly arguments about the road pricing scheme and why the petition should be ignored. Firstly Steve "let them eat cake" Richards isn't bothered about the poor being priced off the roads as he can get where he wants to go quicker. Fantastic. Pratt.

Then there is all the nonsense that the petition only got over a million signatures because of a scare mongering "viral" email. Tosh. I oppose road pricing because it is a regressive tax on the poor. I did not get the email, so my vote was not on the basis of what was in it.

However, unless the plan is to erect toll booths on every road in the land, then data is going to have to be gathered on where people travel, in order to send in a bill. This information will be in the hands of the state. They may not misuse it yet, but that is no guarantee that it won't be misused in the future.

We keep hearing of looking for suspects on the basis of profiling, and indeed looking to "prevent" crimes being committed by people who have no criminal record. What with all your data in officialdom being gathered in a central database and your every car journey being tracked, it won't take long before people have restrictions placed upon them because their "profile" suggests they might commit a criminal offence.

I have also written this on road pricing, whilst I wrote this on ID cards.

Road Pricing Petition, I have signed, have you?

There is much in the news about the anti road pricing petition which has got over a million signatories, and the government is set to ignore.

I have signed, and I urge anyone who has not to do the same.

I have signed it because I have the following objections to the scheme.

• It is a very regressive tax hitting the poorest hardest, particularly in rural areas where having a car is almost mandatory, particularly if you have a young family.
• It is technically complex and will not doubt cost a lot to implement, over run any budgets set for it and not quite work as intended.
• It is far too intrusive into peoples daily lives allowing government to know where people are all the time they are using their cars.
• If it were about green issues then you need to tax people on the fossil carbon people use, and you can do that by increasing the fuel duty on fossil fuels (whilst reducing the tax on bio fuels)

If you want to sign the petition you can sign it here.

The Telegraph has this on ministers ignoring the petition here whilst the Times has this. Let us try and get this up to two million signatures!