The BBc reports: Oil price hits $60 for second day
June 2005 Archives
Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Transport seems to be re-launching his controversial satellite tracking based national road toll scheme.
This is not just a few more toll stations on motorways, but is intended to cover the entire country, with an intrusive mass surveillance system (for which the technology has not yet been developed on the scale proposed), which is unlikely to be just GPS satellite based, given the huge number of technical , security and privacy problems that would entail. No doubt there will be hundreds of thousands of roadside radio beacons as well, another health risk for people to worry about when sited near schools etc.
The vague spin from transport pundits, but not actually a hard and fast promise from the NuLabour Government, at this stage, is that the scheme will somehow be "revenue neutral" i.e. the per mile or per kilometre road tolls, will somehow be offset against reduced Vehicle Excise Duty and / or reduced Fuel Taxes.
We will believe this when we see it. There is a threat of a "poilot scheme" in the Greater Manchester area starting allegedly in 2008.
A comment on the Spy Blog article is worth noting:
"Another issue with the media reporting is that "a successful trial" is reported as a sign that a technology, be it ID cards or GPS-controlled speed limits, is ready for prime time. In "a trial", a group of self-selected people who have no need to subvert the system are demonstrated as not having subverted the technology. That is not a success. A success would be if people who had a financial incentive to subvert the tech to avoid payment, speeding tickets (ubiquitous speed traps would be a side effect of this, wouldnt they: your car would report you), or actual identification. Look at all the attacks on the london fee zone as an example: copied car plates, foreign cars, etc."
The talk of "2p a mile" in rural areas and "£1.34 a mile" at peak times on congested roads does not, on the face of it, appear to be "revenue neutral".
"£1.34 a mile" equates to over £93 an hour if you are travelling at just under 70 miles per hour during peak times. Any "saving" in vehicle duty or fuel tax during that hour would only be two or three pounds for a family car.
Any peak hour zone location based toll scheme would also charge you at £93 an hour when you are stuck in a traffic jam on the still congested M25, or when you are delayed behind a road accident etc. which means that you are still in the high toll zone, through no fault or intention of your own, when the peak tariff kicks in.
Will vehicle insurance premiums have to go up, as people sue the insurance companies of any vehicles involved in any road accident which causes a traffic jam, thereby causing people to pay extra road tolls as a result ?
Surely it must price a lot of people out of commuting or long distance journeys, especially as there is no guarantee that fuel and vehicle taxes will actually ever be reduced.
Wouldn't a lorry style tachograph or a tamper resistant odometer be an easier and fairer method of collecting any milage based tax ? Of course this would also be a "spy in the cab" and would also be used to enforce speeding fines.
How will the multi-billion pound surveillance infrastructure be funded ?
An interesting comment from Chris Hunter, from Fuel Tax Protest, who organised a low turnout Fuel Protest recently, It appears that some people are being dissuaded from turning out, for fear of being arrested and having their vehicles impounded.
"I organised a fuel demo over a few days last month, and to be honest, although it was thrown together at the last minute, because we heard other protests were going off, we had a piss poor turn out. People are worried about blockading now because Tony (f*ing) Blair has introduced the Police Reform Act to stop "illegal and willful disruption to a business". We could not physically blockade a refinery without fear of imprisonment or impounding of our trucks/tractors etc."
Presumably he means the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, especially "PART 4 PUBLIC ORDER AND CONDUCT IN PUBLIC PLACES ETC" 125 Harassment intended to deter lawful activities, which was brought in response to so called animal rights extremists picketing pharmaceutical companies and research labs etc.
Whether this really applies to a fuel protest outside a refinery or not is unclear, but obviously the fear that it might is already having a chilling effect on potential protestors.
The suppression of peaceful democratic protests cannot be tolerated in this country.
Will there be any Fuel Protests at the G8 summit in July ? Surely Bob Geldorf's supporters should not have exclusive access to the world leaders and the media ?
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