Of All The Half Baked Daft Ideas..

[x-in-man]

What numpty thought this this up then!!

 

Prats, twats and deadheads the lot of 'em.

 

Small is not allways best - I drive a 1600 and a 2000 - the 1600 is more juicy than the 2000 due to its weight. Why dont we just call our selves the slaves to the UK Tax brain dead thinkers, walk around with Union Flags painted on our arses and follow - blindly - everything they do in the name of 'green taxation'.

 

Bet the Gov. wont be seen driving around in a NIssan Micra any day soon .. if he is ever seen at all.

[Slim]

What numpty thought this this up then!!

Small is not allways best - I drive a 1600 and a 2000 - the 1600 is more juicy than the 2000 due to its weight. Why dont we just call our selves the slaves to the UK Tax brain dead thinkers, walk around with Union Flags painted on our arses and follow - blindly - everything they do in the name of 'green taxation'.

 

I think it's a good idea. There are exceptions, but in general a smaller engine is going to use less fuel than a larger one. It's easy to critisise but what would you suggest as an alternative?

 

Bet the Gov. wont be seen driving around in a NIssan Micra any day soon .. if he is ever seen at all.

 

So?

[sarahc]

Sounds ok to me.

[Slim]

Its a good start but they should go higher.

Any vehicle over 3,500cc should automatically be charged at a flat £500 (farm, classic or working vehicles excluded).

There is no reason to drive a car over 3,500cc and if you can afford to put petrol or diesel in it then you can afford to pay £500 a year to tax it. They rip up the road, and pollute more than any other vehicle and they should be made to pay.

 

Agreed, although there are exceptions for commercial vehicles of course.

[RC-Drift.com]

Why should classic cars be exempt? - they're leisure vehicles too

[x-in-man]

Its a good start but they should go higher.

 

Any vehicle over 3,500cc should automatically be charged at a flat £500 (farm, classic or working vehicles excluded).

 

There is no reason to drive a car over 3,500cc and if you can afford to put petrol or diesel in it then you can afford to pay £500 a year to tax it. They rip up the road, and pollute more than any other vehicle and they should be made to pay.

 

Basic Physics here!

How do they rip up the road?

Ive never seen tyres for sale with road cutting inserts in them. Bigger cars have wider tyres, to spread the load. Thats why some wagons have more than two axles.

 

If you need to transport 4+ people around, a larger, bigger engined car will be cheaper to run than a 1.0 to 1.3 engined car. That is a fact.

 

If I had a large family - I would consider a 3.5l or greater engine to pull the weight. That car would still return me 35+mpg. Put them in a 'tree hugging' 1.1 and the fuel consumption would rocket giving me 25-20mpg if not less.

 

Using this system - where is the sense charging the owner of a small less efficient car, less than someone using an engine and car built and designed to do the job?

 

Its just a ploy to get more money out of the motorist under the pretext of 'being green' The average engine size is 1.6l, you can bet that the slidding scale would be such as to increase that paid by a 1.6 at present.

[Alias]

How large is your family??

[Amadeus]

Its just a ploy to get more money out of the motorist under the pretext of 'being green'

Seconded

 

Bruce Hannay Director of Highways said: ‘The proposals will provide an overall inflationary increase of 4%, but by targeting cars with larger engines, this should encourage car owners to consider using smaller vehicles.’

 

Great - whatever happened to free choice? I just so happen to still own (although not drive at the moment..) a car that has a 5.3l engine but it doesn't qualify as a classic yet. I only drive for leisure (limited mileage policy, etc) and walk to work - thanks for punishing me and decreasing the value of my car even further - well done...

 

Maybe the DoT in all their wisdom should first of all look at sorting out the way traffic moves around the island and try to improve traffic flow - the increase in signs and silly regulations in the past has definitely hindered that, and badly moving traffic is causing more fuel to be used than a steady stream of cars moving at a good pace (green waves, etc) - just squeezing even more money out of motorists under the pretense of being "green" just doesn't really wash anymore...

[WilDDog]

Its just a ploy to get more money out of the motorist under the pretext of 'being green' The average engine size is 1.6l, you can bet that the slidding scale would be such as to increase that paid by a 1.6 at present.

 

Yep another D.O.T ploy to get more money out of people. If they want to do there bit for the the environment they want to take some of their vehicles of the road.

[Cret]

if you can afford to put petrol or diesel in it then you can afford to pay £500 a year to tax it.

That's just plain bollocks. A few years back I bought a range rover for £30 to use solely to tow my boat about 300 yards maybe 8 times a year. Purely because it was the cheapest expendable 4x4 I could find. Yet I paid about £180 tax for the privilege.

 

They rip up the road, and pollute more than any other vehicle

That's bollocks too. I'd love to see a demonstration of a normal 4x4 'ripping up the road'. You do realise tarmac is really hard solid stuff compared with rubber don't you?

 

A lot of old cars are worse on emissions than modern ones with large engines. They don't even have catalytic convertors, and probably have dodgy old carbs that are way out of adjustment with no emissions testing here adding to the problem. Including classics - you seem to think they shouldn't apply because they'd get scrapped and that would be a shame. That's ok then.

It's nonsense to say that most have been converted to unleaded as the extra additives in post-leaded fuels mean that's generally not necessary and so most people haven't bothered with the considerable expense.

 

I think a much better solution would be to add a tax to the purchase cost of 'gas guzzling' vehicles, as a lot of the time they'll be bought new as company cars anyway, or by people who actually can afford the high initial price tag if they want the car new (after all, why else would you pay 30-60grand for a car when there are cheaper alternatives?). That way people who buy an old one to use once in a while don't get penalised simply for trying to make do with whatever they happen to get hold of at a cheap enough price.

 

I'm all for sensible vehicle usage, and it's annoying to see the trend of people who have a lot of cash just buying a massive car that purely gets used for taking little Jade-Trixiebell to school, but a simpleton plan of slapping huge annual road tax on a large engine car is very unfair.

 

And as for bikes - I'm a biker myself and am not sure of the levels of tax/engine size on them as I don't have one at the moment, but if you apply the same logic then someone with an 1100cc or 1300cc bike would be the equivalent of someone driving an 11 or 13 litre engine car, so surely should be taxed according.

After all, it's not like they're taking a family of 5 round on it (unless it's in India maybe!), so by the same rationale it's just as unecessary surely? Yet it's only owners of 4x4s and 'fast cars' that get the abuse and spasticated small penis comments from the usual people. Funny how it was recently admitted that the likes of the 'super-green' cars like the Toyota Prius (sp?) are actually no better than a normal car anyway.

[jim]

If you have more than one vehicle and you keep the ones you are not using off the highway I think you should only have to pay one lot of road tax, yet to see any one drive two cars at once.

 

much fairer way to work out car tax rates woud be by linking charging to miles travelled per year.

 

you might have a 5.3l car like Amadeus and leave it sitting around for 99% of the time yet be paying twice as much tax as joe bolgs in 850 mini who is driving around all day every day.

[The Old Git]

Yay, £50 next year for my car, which my wife drives all of the time

[Nitro]

They don't even check to see if a car has ever had a new catalytic converter fitted!

 

Some of the old engines chuck out tons more than newer cars, Stupid idea.

[WilDDog]

They don't even check to see if a car has ever had a new catalytic converter fitted!

 

Some of the old engines chuck out tons more than newer cars, Stupid idea.

 

In the IOM no MOT means no emissions test which means piss all really if your that environmentally concerned.

 

Which means you can have a straight through pipe if you really wanted.

[Cret]

So your all for people paying more tax for gas guzzlers; just not you who would like the "prestige" of owning one but wouldn't be buying it new so thats ok. Just let the yuppies pay the tax. What total bullsh*t.

 

You really do love to talk cobblers don't you. Aside from the small penis comments/ripping up the road/environmental lies/playing football in your car (edited) etc comments that you completely ignored, you also ignored the bit where I mentioned that I (as one example of many of the same kind of situation) only had one as I'd bought a £30 Range rover to tow my boat a few hundred yards a few times a year.

 

If you really believe a £30 21 year vehicle used once in a blue moon as a means to an end is me liking the "prestige" of owning one I'm amazed you have the brains to type your posts at all.

In addition, you also have missed the point that if the initial tax is higher and it puts people off buying them new, there will be fewer around in future.

 

Now I'll ask you again - what's wrong with all the other points I made, and where's the "prestige" you're talking about? Exactly how is that bullshit?

 

Tell me, what size is the diesel engine in your focus exactly? I'll bet that on cc to weight, it's a lot worse than the diesel discovery I now have for towing the boat even though it's a 2.5 litre engine.