Author Topic: Fuel duty freeze  (Read 16481 times)

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #25 on: 30 October, 2018, 12:19:20 pm »
People make choices based on what they can personally afford, not what their community or the environment can afford.

For this reason fuel duty should not be reduced.
It is simpler than it looks.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #26 on: 30 October, 2018, 12:20:04 pm »
Well, ride a bicycle then.

Not everyone works close to home ruling out travel by bike.  And given how busy the motorways are every morning there are many other people do not have that option either.

Cheaper fuel would make motorways busier.
It is simpler than it looks.

Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #27 on: 30 October, 2018, 12:30:24 pm »
Thats BS.

Putting taxes up serves one purpose - to increase revenue for the IR.

If I save money on my weekly commute I can spend that money elsewhere; a car is still a necessity for the vast majority.

And it's not just about commuting... am sure we'd all love to go around the UK on weekend breaks and explore the British Isles whenever we wanted and see what our own country has to offer - but the cost to do so is prohibitive. So instead people have to highly-selective on were they go.  So I hear you say "take the train"... prohibitive also.. the cost of train travel is ridiculous as is public transport as a whole.

I looked into taking the train into work every day - it's around the same price - that is not right. So much wrong with transport in this country.
Frequent Audax and bike ride videos:

https://www.youtube.com/user/djrikki2008/videos

ian

Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #28 on: 30 October, 2018, 12:33:18 pm »
That's fine, but you should pay for that. The costs you for the privilege of driving are nowhere close to being covered by the direct taxes and duty you pay.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #29 on: 30 October, 2018, 12:37:37 pm »
Thats BS.

Putting taxes up serves one purpose - to increase revenue for the IR.

If I save money on my weekly commute I can spend that money elsewhere; a car is still a necessity for the vast majority.

And it's not just about commuting... am sure we'd all love to go around the UK on weekend breaks and explore the British Isles whenever we wanted and see what our own country has to offer - but the cost to do so is prohibitive. So instead people have to highly-selective on were they go.  So I hear you say "take the train"... prohibitive also.. the cost of train travel is ridiculous as is public transport as a whole.

I looked into taking the train into work every day - it's around the same price - that is not right. So much wrong with transport in this country.

I’m afraid it isn’t bs.

Have you been somewhere where everyone gets to do what they want when they want? It isn’t possible. You cannot get 65m people in one place at one time in this country.

Personal choice comes with a cost. Suck it up.
It is simpler than it looks.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #30 on: 30 October, 2018, 01:06:46 pm »
Well, ride a bicycle then.

Not everyone works close to home ruling out travel by bike.  And given how busy the motorways are every morning there are many other people do not have that option either.

This is about job security and cost of housing.  The cars are a symptom.

Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #31 on: 30 October, 2018, 01:09:11 pm »
Thats BS.

Putting taxes up serves one purpose - to increase revenue for the IR.

If I save money on my weekly commute I can spend that money elsewhere; a car is still a necessity for the vast majority.

And it's not just about commuting... am sure we'd all love to go around the UK on weekend breaks and explore the British Isles whenever we wanted and see what our own country has to offer - but the cost to do so is prohibitive. So instead people have to highly-selective on were they go.  So I hear you say "take the train"... prohibitive also.. the cost of train travel is ridiculous as is public transport as a whole.

I looked into taking the train into work every day - it's around the same price - that is not right. So much wrong with transport in this country.

Also, taxes serve two purposes, as they also are intended to influence personal choice, for example tax on booze and fags, penalising the most inefficient vehicles while promoting more efficient ones etc

Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #32 on: 30 October, 2018, 02:04:51 pm »
I looked into taking the train into work every day - it's around the same price - that is not right. So much wrong with transport in this country.
So you have a choice and pick the one that suites you, maybe an increase in fuel costs and a decrease in train costs might cause you to pick the other option.  There is something seriously wrong when the two cost the same.
Quote
And it's not just about commuting... am sure we'd all love to go around the UK on weekend breaks and explore the British Isles whenever we wanted and see what our own country has to offer - but the cost to do so is prohibitive. So instead people have to highly-selective on were they go.  So I hear you say "take the train"... prohibitive also.. the cost of train travel is ridiculous as is public transport as a whole.
That's just complete nonsense, I doubt there's much of the UK I haven't seen by bike and train.  Traveling on your own, off peak, is nearly always cheaper than driving, more could be done to even that out when there's more than one.  The train also frees you from the need to return to the start point, which opens up loads of opportunities to explore.

It's a shame so many motoring costs are fixed, it does make the use too cheap, why else are nearly 70% of car journeys under 5 miles?

ian

Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #33 on: 30 October, 2018, 02:40:48 pm »
Driving is massively subsidized. Think of the costs of the road and infrastructure required to make journeys possible (and having to drive everywhere doesn't benefit the people who drive – it benefits businesses, who pass the cost onto everyone else). This often pointless sprawl has a cost. It's picked up by all taxpayers. Then there are the costs of pollution, of accidents (around 180,000 thousand people will be killed or injured in some way each year), damage to the roads, road furniture, and then harder to quantify effects being forced into a driving lifestyle that makes it difficult for people to walk, cycle, or take public transport. Oh, and don't forget are the direct subsidies and bailouts governments make to car manufacturers.

Of course, the government will say that train passengers should pay more of their cost (which actually I agree with in principle, there's no reason we should travel for cheap, it just adds to that sprawl) while providing a huge subsidy to keep people driving.

Samuel D

Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #34 on: 30 October, 2018, 04:39:57 pm »
I’m confident the £30bn for new roads over five years will at last solve the UK’s congestion problems once and for all. Road tax should be spent on roads as anyone who can read the label would tell you.

This fuel duty freeze is a heartening interlude on the war on motorists. Don’t forget that faceless ‘motorists’ are usually nurses or electricians who commute across two counties to work every day, sometimes twice a day to two jobs to afford last year’s iPhone for their kids. Driving may soon be cheap and attractive enough to enshrine this unprecedented mobility in British custom if not human rights law. Such mobility enables, nay, practically guarantees economic growth and personal fulfilment. I am very clear that that is what the last half century has taught us.

These improvements probably explain why Hammond didn’t find it necessary to mention electric cars in his new budget.

rogerzilla

  • When n+1 gets out of hand
Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #35 on: 30 October, 2018, 04:42:45 pm »
What the country needs is a massive fuel cut - not a meaningless freeze. Commuting by car is so expensive.
We don't have particularly expensive fuel compared to the rest of Europe but we do have some stupidly long commutes, probably due to the hire-'em-and-fire-'em job market these days.  I have some sympathy for people who are made redundant and can only find an equivalent job 50 miles away.  It costs many years' worth of petrol to move house and the other half may still have a job near the current home, kids at school etc.
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #36 on: 30 October, 2018, 04:50:08 pm »
Thatcher. She facilitated a house-owning / insecure employment / massive cost of moving environment with the obvious result we see playing out before us.
Rust never sleeps

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #37 on: 30 October, 2018, 04:56:27 pm »
Driving is massively subsidized. Think of the costs of the road and infrastructure required to make journeys possible (and having to drive everywhere doesn't benefit the people who drive – it benefits businesses, who pass the cost onto everyone else). This often pointless sprawl has a cost. It's picked up by all taxpayers. Then there are the costs of pollution, of accidents (around 180,000 thousand people will be killed or injured in some way each year), damage to the roads, road furniture, and then harder to quantify effects being forced into a driving lifestyle that makes it difficult for people to walk, cycle, or take public transport. Oh, and don't forget are the direct subsidies and bailouts governments make to car manufacturers.

You forgot the fossil fuel industry subsidies.  Big tax breaks for north sea oil and gas in the latest budget.  Weirdly, this is seen as a Scottish issue, rather than a climate or transport one.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #38 on: 30 October, 2018, 04:58:32 pm »
What the country needs is a massive fuel cut - not a meaningless freeze. Commuting by car is so expensive.
We don't have particularly expensive fuel compared to the rest of Europe but we do have some stupidly long commutes, probably due to the hire-'em-and-fire-'em job market these days.  I have some sympathy for people who are made redundant and can only find an equivalent job 50 miles away.  It costs many years' worth of petrol to move house and the other half may still have a job near the current home, kids at school etc.

The hire and fire job market is made possible because cars.

Before mass car ownership companies nurtured, developed and trained staff.
It is simpler than it looks.

ian

Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #39 on: 30 October, 2018, 04:58:50 pm »
What the country needs is a massive fuel cut - not a meaningless freeze. Commuting by car is so expensive.
We don't have particularly expensive fuel compared to the rest of Europe but we do have some stupidly long commutes, probably due to the hire-'em-and-fire-'em job market these days.  I have some sympathy for people who are made redundant and can only find an equivalent job 50 miles away.  It costs many years' worth of petrol to move house and the other half may still have a job near the current home, kids at school etc.

But cars and a willingness to drive them made that possible. And all the benefits accrue to the businesses and car manufacturers and all the costs (in time and money) to the drivers and taxpayers. And yet drivers curiously demand more of the same...

(And yeah, I did skip the entire massive subsidies for fossil fuel industries, the other big beneficiary of making people dependent on cars.)

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #40 on: 30 October, 2018, 05:00:19 pm »
I’m confident the £30bn for new roads over five years will at last solve the UK’s congestion problems once and for all. Road tax should be spent on roads as anyone who can read the label would tell you.

This fuel duty freeze is a heartening interlude on the war on motorists. Don’t forget that faceless ‘motorists’ are usually nurses or electricians who commute across two counties to work every day, sometimes twice a day to two jobs to afford last year’s iPhone for their kids. Driving may soon be cheap and attractive enough to enshrine this unprecedented mobility in British custom if not human rights law. Such mobility enables, nay, practically guarantees economic growth and personal fulfilment. I am very clear that that is what the last half century has taught us.

These improvements probably explain why Hammond didn’t find it necessary to mention electric cars in his new budget.

Road building generally doesn't fix congestion.

Personal fulfilment comes at a cost. We can see that really clearly.
It is simpler than it looks.

rogerzilla

  • When n+1 gets out of hand
Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #41 on: 30 October, 2018, 05:04:51 pm »
I never understood how roads create traffic until they upgraded the A419/A417 from Swindon to Gloucester (ignoring the still-crappy bit at Nettleton...the pub there is excellent if you get stuck, though).  Over the next few years we suddenly had hundreds of people at work that lived in Cheltenham and Gloucester.  That had never happened before.

Apparently people judge whether a commute is worth the aggro purely by time, not distance.
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #42 on: 30 October, 2018, 05:20:40 pm »
Yup.

And cost, which is why the fuel duty is essential.
It is simpler than it looks.

Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #43 on: 30 October, 2018, 05:31:09 pm »
I enjoyed Samuel's post. Nice work.

I've joined the ranks of the horrible long distance drivers a couple of times now and I'm likely to persist, purely on financial grounds. Train tickets between York and Cambridge, when I need to travel, cost me £120. I can hire a new car for £47, put £40 of fuel in the tank and drive, total cost £87. Since that is a journey I do 3-4 times a month, the difference in cost mounts up fast.

It is horrible, I dislike driving and dislike burning fuel (no electric hire cars in Cambridge that I can find).
<i>Marmite slave</i>

Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #44 on: 30 October, 2018, 05:36:07 pm »
Very little about human lifestyles ( x 7 billion) seem sustainable to me.

It's when, not if.

quixoticgeek

  • Mostly Harmless
Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #45 on: 30 October, 2018, 10:34:48 pm »

"But I need a car to get to work!"

Do you? Do you have to travel to your place of work to work? Could you work from home? Do you have the job you have because of false pricing of transport? If your car cost you 3 times what it does now to run, would you have applied for that job in the first place? or chosen to move to the house you're in currently if you moved after you got the job?

We are going to reach a point very soon where we have to ask some very difficult questions as a society about how we work, how we travel, and how we live. Everyone driving round in metal death boxes powered by exploding dinosaurs is not sustainable, and not healthy. This is not a problem that can be solved with simple tweaking of the fuel tax dial on some control panel somewhere. We need to change the way we live, we need to change the way we work, and we need to change the way we design our streets.

And while we're at it, we could perhaps opt for a public transport system who's purpose is solely to transport the public, not to make a profit. If you didn't have to make a profit, if you gave public transport a blank cheque, it would be a lot easier for people to do away with their car. There is an article in the last week on the BBC about people living in new build developments that are trapped in car owner ship because there is no other option. How on earth did the development get planning permission if it doesn't have any local amenities? if it doesn't at least have a fucking bus stop! If you look at the various garden city plans that do the round occasionally where the government wants to start some new towns/cities. None of them are planned near a railway line. They have car use planned in from the start. This cannot be allowed to continue.

At a conference recently a speaker said:

Quote
"We take a job, that can be done from anywhere on the planet, and we pack it all into 8 square miles of real estate, in an earth quake zone"

This was talking about the tech industry and how it's centred in silicon valley. But it holds true of so much. How many of those who commute into London really need to be in the office to work? How many of those offices need to be in London?

Oh, and this is before we start talking about whether the jobs we all do really need to be done[1].

What we have is not sustainable. Things have to change, and the sooner the better.

The revolution will not be motorised.

J


[1] See Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber...
--
Beer, bikes, and backpacking
http://b.42q.eu/

Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #46 on: 31 October, 2018, 07:05:57 am »
[1] See Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber...

Listened to a few of his talks and they do make you think, his history of debt is good as well. I find him excellent at bringing the human element into economic focus.
Nuns, no sense of humour

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #47 on: 31 October, 2018, 09:26:08 am »
Fuel duty is tax revenue, of course. So the less of it there is, the more taxes have to be raised on something else, like VAT or income tax. Or the more services have to be cut.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #48 on: 31 October, 2018, 09:32:59 am »
There is an article in the last week on the BBC about people living in new build developments that are trapped in car owner ship because there is no other option. How on earth did the development get planning permission if it doesn't have any local amenities?
I read that article.

My sympathy for the people in the developments dropped when I read statements along the lines of "It is a mile to the nearest shop so I have no option but to drive everywhere."

Um, a mile. A whole mile. Wow. It would be great if there was an alternative to a car that was easy for a young person to use to travel a mile when they needed to pick up a pint of milk.
<i>Marmite slave</i>

ian

Re: Fuel duty freeze
« Reply #49 on: 31 October, 2018, 09:41:23 am »
I never understood how roads create traffic until they upgraded the A419/A417 from Swindon to Gloucester (ignoring the still-crappy bit at Nettleton...the pub there is excellent if you get stuck, though).  Over the next few years we suddenly had hundreds of people at work that lived in Cheltenham and Gloucester.  That had never happened before.

Apparently people judge whether a commute is worth the aggro purely by time, not distance.

And we still do this. Surrey wants to build more roads because, erm, they don't actually know. The usual evidence-free blurb about vague 'economic benefits.' They seem to forget they also claim not to have the money to fix their existing roads. No one benefits other than business who can relocate to grim industrial parks and expect their staff to drive an extra half hour each way. Yet, we celebrate this – remind me who pays. Actually remind the people in the cars, because that's the bounds of their new 'freedom.' To sit in a car they probably can't afford (and more often these days, cars are just the literal vehicle of debt-based financial derivatives) – at least if you commute by public transport, it's time you can do something with. Time in a car is dead time. If you walk or cycle, you get exercise and you might enjoy it. You're unlikely to sit in traffic getting anything other than angry. Don't worry, you can repeat the activity at the weekend trying to get to the shops which deserted the high street.

We've built an expectation around owning a car – it's symbolic of other things, hence the urban battle tanks where the main combat role is squeezing into dwindling parking spaces and manoeuvres around supermarket car parks. The power of advertising. Again, it just sucks the money out of things, you don't get to a supermarket any better in a £10k car than a £30k SUV; if anything, given the costs, parking etc. it's a lot worse.

A bit of financial tinkering won't change of this, it needs fresh thinking at all levels. At least there is more willingness to work from home, have things delivered etc.

Still, I was reading yesterday about our super proposed new town centre development. Parking woes again. It's directly across the road from the train station and between two supermarkets and on the high street.