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'pay-as-you-go' Road Charge Plan


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i wonder if it'd be better to emigrate to europe. lots of advantages and they just ignore the laws passed by brussels unless they improve their way of life....less caches though.

One of the things you learn when you do move abroad, is how much it's actually like home.

 

I work in an office 4x4m square (with no air-conditioning; bet I'd have that in the UK). I take 50-60 minutes to drive to work, on a road where the same journey takes only 25 minutes on a Sunday, due to, guess what, congestion. I work about 9-10 hours per day. My kids get up and go to school. My wife goes shopping, does the odd bit of freelance work, and looks after the kids. We have cars to repair and bills to pay.

 

And France applies more or less as many EU directives as the UK does - and also adopts other policies such as (gasp!) the Euro and (shock!) the Schengen open borders agreement. However, on the odd occasion when they don't implement European laws quite as fast as some people would like, the Daily Mail gets on their case. Sticking up for ordinary, decent, hard-working British families. Back off Brussels.

 

Actually, that's the best reason I can think of to leave the UK: the Daily Mail. I am very, very proud not to live in the country that produces such poison. Although of course for many years, during what was arguably the Mail's finest hour (roughly coinciding with Maggie's period of office), the proprietor also lived in France, in Paris to be precise, with a "hand model" (unmarried), half his age, while paying no UK taxes. And the editor had a string of mistresses, and the star columnist, such a good Catholic, had a woman come round once a week to whip him. But at least they were keeping an eye out for family values.

 

Oh dear, I seem to have drifted just a touch off-topic :)

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I work in an office 4x4m square (with no air-conditioning; bet I'd have that in the UK). I take 50-60 minutes to drive to work, on a road where the same journey takes only 25 minutes on a Sunday, due to, guess what, congestion.

 

In the UK it would take 90 minutes on a Sunday due to the bloody IKEA on the route. On the other hand, during the school holidays the journey to work would only take 20 minutes!

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Actually, that's the best reason I can think of to leave the UK: the Daily Mail. I am very, very proud not to live in the country that produces such poison. Although of course for many years, during what was arguably the Mail's finest hour (roughly coinciding with Maggie's period of office)

 

Oh dear, I seem to have drifted just a touch off-topic :D

No, I think you're right.

 

It really is the most right-wing, xenophobic, disgusting piece of newsprint to find it's way onto shop shelves.

 

What sickens me is that it is sold in Ireland, and there actually are some people that buy it and read it, after all of the junk that lot wrote about this place during the 70's and 80's.

 

Off-topic... sure. But as long as Daily Mail readers get lambasted, surely there can't be any harm. :)

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As said above my guess is that it will all be scaled down to 4x4 owners  :)

Wouldn't it be nice if the 'system' immediately quadrupled (at least) the charge for any 4x4 that it detects 'on-road'. Motorbikes should, of course, be exempt from any charges. :D:D:D

 

And whats wrong with 4x4's??????

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As someone who lives in a part of London where the press claim over 50% of new car registrations are Chelsea Tractors - I have to say the owners. I have no problem with any vehicle as long as it is used responsibly - but you have to ask what is going through the mind of some of these people - such a large vehicle is really not practicable for driving the children to school which is what most are used for round here - it is only a matter of time before a child is killed falling out of one as I have seen parents lifitng very small children to above head height to put them in the rear seats on the larger BMW and Mercedes 4x4s.

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And whats wrong with 4x4's??????

Nothing mate... Us 4x4 owners are just getting tarred with the wrong brush. Why can't people remember that there are many many people who have perfectly valid reasons for owning 4x4's. Regularly flooded roads, muddy country tracks, horse boxes, caravans, off-road driving (green lanes).... all perfectly legitimate, legal and valid reaons for 4x4 ownership.

 

Beyond that, if someone wants a 4x4 for no other reason than that they just want one, let them. It's called freedom of choice.

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Nothing mate... Us 4x4 owners are just getting tarred with the wrong brush.
Quite right! I drive a 4x4, living in rural Northumberland on the 1000ft contour it sometimes comes in handy! But... it does do 35 miles / gallon with permanent 4 wheel drive, it isn't enormous and it goes round bends without tipping over. My ideal geocaching vehicle really!

ps Stuey - Ozzy's looking as young as ever!

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simple solution no one who wants to be polition is allowed to be one.... we all have our names in a very big hat and every year/two years they do a draw and you have to do a stint in parliament.

 

therefore we get a parliament of real people who aren't there long enough to form pacts and feather their own nests. should be good cross section of society if doen randomly. then we'll get laws that are worth having.

 

i love this country and all it's diversity of people and countryside from the socialist worker readers to the dailymail ones we all balance each other. the only poeple who i dislike are lawyers and politicians......and even then not all of them. there's got to be a couple who are ok. (but it makes the prime minister doubly hatefull!!)

 

:P

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I have just sat and read all the messages left on this site.

I see there is a very mixed opinion of what, where and how the Big Brother sytem could/can work!

 

I am not impressed at the goverments suggestions at all. I thought we lived in a FREE country, not one of the communist persuasion. We are suppose to have freedom of speach and choice, yet the Goverment are gradually beginning to eat away at our Rights!

 

Civil Liberties! what are they?

 

We only have to look at the Health and safety issues, also the Law and Order approach we have now, also Health and social wellfare. We are gradually becomming an over ruled NANNY nation with a leaning to communisim. This may work for some, but not for me.

I, for one, do not like to be dictated too!

 

(This is my own personal veiw and opinion, in no way is it meant to offend)

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Just imagine 24 million cars transmitting location data via a cell phone system what effect that will have on atmospheric pollution not to mention interfrance to other radio users.

It will be like living in a Microwave oven

 

The only thing it should prove once and for all is Does a mobile phone system damage your brain ???:o;):huh::cry::o:o:(;):P

 

Mel :cry::huh::huh::huh:

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and you still think that the jury service is done randomly and represents a cross section of society?

I'm inclined to believe that the initial selection is done more or less fairly, but I'm quite sure that most people who can get away with wriggling out of it, do so. As a result your average jury probably resembles a mixture of the studio audience on a daytime TV show and the contents of your local branch of William Hill.

 

(I think that was part of my point about juries.) :huh:

 

Many years ago my dad did jury service. The first case was a drunk driver - this was before breathalysers and mandatory bans in front of a magistrate. The guy had clearly been "drunk as a skunk" (great American phrase) and the judge obviously expected the jury back in 30 seconds so he could put the black cap on. They ended up discussing for three hours. Everybody agreed he was guilty, but he was a salesman and so losing his licence would mean losing his job, and he seemed such a nice chap. In the end my Dad (who was elected foreman, having had the temerity to ask the judge to speak up earlier in the case) used all his army experience (he'd been an RSM) to persuade them that the subsequent punishment wasn't their problem, but from that point on he was convinced that juries were a dreadful idea.

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We only have to look at the Health and safety issues, also the Law and Order approach we have now, also Health and social wellfare. We are gradually becomming an over ruled NANNY nation with a leaning to communisim. This may work for some, but not for me.

I, for one, do not like to be dictated too!

Sounds like you are, indeed, having one of those days. :huh:

 

I'm not a great fan of this plan, but I don't think civil liberties are particularly threatened by it, not least because it clearly won't work. (If I were a UK taxpayer, my main objection would be the amount of money which will be p***ed up the wall trying to get this system to work, resulting in Sir Faceless Executive of Racal-Marconi becoming Lord Faceless for increasing his company's profits - duhhh, guess who paid for that.) And ID cards are probably dead too, with the government "only" having a majority of 60-odd.

 

Don't confuse what the papers tell you might happen, with what is actually remotely likely to happen in the real world. Their job is to keep you scared (they call it "vigilance" but they aren't fooling either of the voices in my head). If you want a laugh, dig out a five- or ten-year-old copy of the Mail or the Telegraph from under your paint cans and look at all the stuff which they were direly predicting, which didn't happen.

 

As for communism... I'm not sure what form of that you can see in rail privatisation, or opting out of the working time directive, or private finance initiatives. I don't think Stalin was very big on those. :huh:

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time to buy a horse and buggy. no road tax no petrol tax, refilling involves stopping at a pub with grass and water outside. yeah top speed quite slow but i'll bet it works out a heck of alot cheaper! and where will they stick the tracker??

 

i still maintain it's just to scare us so that when they drop it in the face of public outrage and then increase road tax/petrol tax instead we'll all be daft enough to breath a sigh of relief and not get worked up about it. it's been done before for other things.

 

jury service good in principle but hopeless in reality. inquistorial system has many advantages...except for the fact that our judges are often out of touch, bumbling dullards.

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jury service good in principle but hopeless in reality. inquistorial system has many advantages...except for the fact that our judges are often out of touch, bumbling dullards.

The French have the inquisitorial system, and juries as well!

 

In France, you have "infractions" - eg parking or speeding, "délits" - somewhere between misdemeanours and felonies - and "crimes", which are really serious crimes such as rape and murder. Guilt or innocence in the latter category is decided by a jury.

 

And get this: the jury is, by definition, infallible (essentially because "Napoleon invented it"). You can't appeal against a jury's verdict. The only grounds for appeal are if there was a procedural error in the trial.

 

They are trying to find ways to change this, as it's one of the reasons that France loses more cases at the European Court of Human Rights than any other country (*), but undoing anything decided by Napoleon is hard.

 

 

(*) In most years; sometimes, Italy comes out higher. And occasionally so does the UK, although that's mainly because, not having a written constitution, the UK never changed its fundamental laws to make then compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. As a result, you used to get a lot of cases where UK judges had to reject appeals (because of the way the UK law in question was written), knowing that Strasbourg would overturn them. The Human Rights Act from a couple of years ago will go some way to reducing the number of these cases, as it will allow most of this discussion to take place within the UK system.

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Hmmm - I have to say, I think cars are overused and relied upon too much by young people in particular. I would like to think that geocaching could be an environmentally friendly activity. I intend to use my bike and shank's pony as much as possible to reach caches, being a tree-hugging eco-friendly type person! I wouldn't mind being charged per road mile for my car if I thought it would help the envirnment. Nor would I mind being tracked, as I am not invovled in illegal activities and do not break the speed limit, being concerned to try and reduce death and injury on the roads.

 

Well, those are my personal views and I don't expect many people to agree with my point of view. The system will probably never be introduced anyway as too many people will complain that it infringes their liberty and is against their human rights. The rights of other creatures on the planet and of people maimed and killed by car drivers are given no consideration except by those who are directly involved with the victims :laughing:

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I am no lawyer but as far as I am aware, under the UK system you can't appeal against the jury's verdict. You can appeal because of new evidence, on proceedural grounds or because the judge misdirected the jury - but I am pretty sure you can't appeal "because the jury were idiots". If they are properly instructed on the law by the judge then that's it as far as that is concerned.

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Hmmm - I have to say, I think cars are overused and relied upon too much by young people in particular. <snip>

 

Well, those are my personal views and I don't expect many people to agree with my point of view.

I am in agreement. The problem with the system is that it is the poor that get priced off the roads.

 

Hardly anyone cares because the disaster that is brewing through global warming will most likely not have really severe consequences until we are all long dead.

 

Walk more and remember that if it is all uphill there, it will be downhill back! If you get wet in the rain you can always dry off once you get home.

 

Dont drive to the cache - walk

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yeah good plan except for people like me who suffer from chronic fatigue and find the walk from the car to the cache hard. cycling/walking to the cache from further afield would end my participation.

 

the first appeal is fairly easy to get. it's only when you get up to the higher levels that you have to really struggle to get approval.

 

back ot. my dad's disabled so i have to drive him about aswell.....what discount are they going to give me? i just can't see it happening.

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Hardly anyone cares because the disaster that is brewing through global warming will most likely not have really severe consequences until we are all long dead.

 

But the "disaster that is brewing" is not a definite science. There is no evidence, yet, that humans have directly influenced the warming of the planet. In-fact pollution from cars accounts for a fraction of a percent of Co2 emissions globally. A volcano eruption, which happens daily somewhere on the planet, can cause so much more damage! The public have been brainwashed into thinking that any temperature out of the ordinary is caused by "Global Warming" which frankly is nonsense! Turn the clock back 100 years to Victorian times and the climate in the UK was warm enough that the Southern UK was a successful vine grower and made enormous quantities of wines. Turn the clock back another 100 years and the UK was in the middle of a freeze. Look back even further in time and the Southern coast of the UK was tropical (fossilised remains of tropical plants have been uncovered). The pattern is, hot, cold, hot, cold. As far as we can prove it always has been and probably always will be. There is currently talk among scientists of a possible shutdown of the NAD (this causes the warm waters to reach the UK providing us with our temperate climate). If the NAD shuts down (as it has before) the UK will experience freezing temperatures as it should do for an island at this latitude. Why hasn't Joe Public heard this theory? Because it doesn't fit in with the Governments promotion of taxing "warming".

 

Even as things stand right now the UK is in the grip of a drought. Rainfall since last October is at less than 50% of normal levels with the South East of the UK already on water restrictions and reservoirs nearly dry. The Global Warming "model" and everything about the "science" surrounding Global Warming says that the UKs climate will be wetter than normal with flooding the "norm" - where is the rain if we are already on the slippery slope to doom?

 

I am all for controlling pollution. In fact I actively recycle, spent money making sure the house is as efficient as modern practises allow, conserve water where possible etc etc but I do not agree with the Government using motorists as an easy means of raising taxation (which lets face it won't serve any useful purpose to the UK and will be chucked into Europe, Wars, IT projects that don't work etc). The very way that the UK has grown over the last decades means that for most the car is essential to modern day living. I am young (ish!) but still would not be able to do a weekly shop without a car as there is nowhere near enough that can provide for my needs. I object to being forced to hand over money to the Government to drive my car to the nearest supermarket when the reality is that I have no choice.

 

Also, I don't think many people have worked out yet that the cost of living in the UK will rise again as a direct result of per mile charging. I work in the service sector (telephones) providing a service that we all use day to day. I drive around 30,000 miles per year maintaining the network, as do another 150 engineers in my team! The miles we drive are essential to keep the network running. It won't repair itself! Guess who will end up paying the cost of keeping the engineers on the road? Apply this to Electricity, Gas, Water, Cable etc, all services that many of us depend upon and you can imagine how bills might start to spiral!

 

Sorry it was such a long post, I had a lot to say!

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The reason why the Government is worried about warming is precisely because it is worried about the North Atlantic Drift Current (NAD) - the reason why we might get a massive drop in temperatures in the UK due to the NAD failing is because of global warming - warming means less ice meaning lower salinity in Artic waters, meaning the mechanism that drives the NAD will fail. We know that such faliures caused sudden and massive drops in temperature ice ages, and these are linked to reducing salinity in the North Atlantic. We are not talking a few degrees C over a 100 years or so - we are talking much larger drops in temperature over less than five years if the current that pulls tropical water north across the Atlantic and bathes out shores fails.

 

Regretably, too many people thing global warming means that their grandchildren will spend their spring evenings enjoying the temperate evenings in the pavement cafes of Aberdeen. Unfortunatly, what it actually means is a complete restructuring of the world's climate, and climate, like weather, is a chaotic system.

 

As for volcanoes - that is a red herring - yes they release a lot of greenhouse gases, but they are still far lower in this than the oceans - but these are part of natural systems we can't do anything about. Saying that becasue nature can do worse than us so we might as well do nothing is like saying that voting never changed anything, or that giving to charity will never help poverty in Africa.

Edited by Learned Gerbil
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The reason why the Government is worried about warming is precisely because it is worried about the North Atlantic Drift Current (NAD) - the reason why we might get a massive drop in temperatures in the UK due to the NAD failing is because of global warming - warming means less ice meaning lower salinity in Artic waters, meaning the mechanism that drives the NAD will fail. We know that such faliures caused sudden and massive drops in temperature ice ages, and these are linked to reducing salinity in the North Atlantic. We are not talking a few degrees C over a 100 years or so - we are talking much larger drops in temperature over less than five years if the current that pulls tropical water north across the Atlantic and bathes out shores fails.

 

Regretably, too many people thing global warming means that their grandchildren will spend their spring evenings enjoying the temperate evenings in the pavement cafes of Aberdeen. Unfortunatly, what it actually means is a complete restructuring of the world's climate, and climate, like weather, is a chaotic system.

The point is though that the NAD shutdown is likely to happen anyway, as it has before, whether or not we are driving cars in the UK! We make so little difference in the grand scheme of things, yet are being made to believe that the planet is about to be destroyed because we drive instead of catching buses or don't use low energy light bulbs etc. It is nothing more than a convenient reason to tax the population as far as the government of the UK are concerned. I know we DO make a difference, but if the NAD is going to stop it will stop whether we are here or not. I think other countries need to play an active roll in saving the planet too. The UK isn't going to achieve anything on it's own and in the grand scheme of things we are insignificant. Anyone who has been to America will understand why!

 

I guess the bottom line is that the UK Government could come up with much more efficient means of taxing the population and could even come clean and stop giving us political bull all the time, but they are not known for their efficiency or honesty, are they?

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an honest government. surely an oxymoron?

 

to clarify another point, th fossilised tropic trees on the south coast....grew when th uk was much closer to the equator....

 

but global warming....just as many believe as disbelieve...records haven't been kept for enough thousandss of years to be able to accurately know. should we bury our heads and ignore...no but then running around saying the sky is falling isn't a sensible option either.

 

a horrid thought occurred to me....it's a way that'll pay for the whole scheme for them. if they know when you're driving for how far and how long. it's not a huge step to set the system to spot any speed infraction.......those speeding tickets are just going to fly out with no way to dispute or appeal.

 

no where did i see that horse for sale advert?

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I want to know what maps they will use to track your movements - they can't expect to get away with charging people to use private roads - off road driving etc - so they will need accurate maps of the public road system, and these will need to be accuratly updated. That is a huge job and liable for major problems and grounds for dispute - especially if it is contracted out to someone like the company that produce the maps for most Sat Nav products - Junction 8 of the M25 is still 10 years out of date in the latest TomTom 5 amps for example.

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No doubt the mileage charge which is said to replace the huge fuel taxation will be welcomed by the type of people who have two Jaguars and the type who drive a Chelsea tractor two miles down the road to take Tarquin and Henrietta to prep school, but I think it will rapidly beome a voluntary tax which is easily avoided by people who discover the location of the fusebox in their cars/lorries and find out which fuse powers down the GPSr.

 

Expect a massive surge in the sale of GPS jammers too. They will become a "must have" item for all the same people who currently evade the speed tax (sorry "fines") with gadgetry such as laser/radar detectors. The satellites transmit only 50 watts of power on the L1 frequency which our retail level GPSr receive and are very easily jammed by a small transmitter close to the receiver. Just think how easily a 60 watt lightbulb from 15,000 miles away can be outshone by a tiny torchbulb which is a few inches away.

 

Also expect people to learn the signal blocking effects of aluminised paint on the antenna!

 

Also expect a massive increase in the number of lorries which are taken off the British register and re-registered in flag of convenience states to avoid having to have a tax-collecting GPSr fitted.

 

It's all so predictable. Even the absurdly high rate of £1.34/mile which the government is "floating" is obviously a ruse to make us all feel relieved when the actual rate being charged will be more like 10p than that much. They did exactly the same thing with another 'voluntary' tax when they initially "floated" a rate of £20/tonne landfill tax and then introduced an actual rate of 'only' £7/tonne. Then too, it was so easily predictable that some people would avoid the tax simply by dumping their rubbish in the countryside. We were right: there has been a huge increase in the prevalence of flly-tipping which gets even worse every time they jack up the landfill taxrate. Just last week a neighbour of mine had about 30 tonnes of unidentifiable rubble dumped on his land at night.

 

This GPS-based road use tax will be trivially simple to evade. The same teenage hackers who devise ways around mobile phone and satellite tv fees will have great fun outwitting the sluggardly government contractors who will so predictably botch the tax-collecting system.

 

An easily evadable tax is a bad tax. I think that those of us who are against this one ought to write to our MPs and say so. This is, in theory at least, a democracy. Our government can only govern us with our consent.

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What makes everyone think this will be done via GPS and downloads ?

Number plate recognition is well developed and present on many roads allready

The Securicor roadside tracking devices cover 90% plus of the UK's roads and use RF.

Every car in the country has a speedometer and mileometer as well.

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What makes everyone think this will be done via GPS and downloads?

Not so much "what", but "who".

 

Alistair Darling has said that he hasn't yet decided to go ahead with his scheme and that we are "extremely foolish" to turn our backs on his idea.

see: the Beeb report for details.

 

"Extremely foolish" sums up the government's idea quite well, I think. We should learn from Germany's disastrous experience with trying to implement a similar GPS scheme to charge lorries by the kilometre on the autobahns. The scheme is actually costing more to implement than it is raising in net revenue and has reportedly cost several billion Euros already. See another Beeb report on the German experience with trying to use GPS in this way. If the normally efficient Germans can't make this thing work then what chance have the bumbling incompetents in the British goverment got? Think of just about every major computer project, from the Department of Health to the Inland Revenue, and try to come up with one which was delivered on time and on budget. The portents are not good.

 

One of Darling's selling points when he touted this loony plan on telly the other day was that nowadays many cars already have GPS fitted as either standard or as an optional extra. What he overlooked was that such units have an OFF switch!

 

Another problem is that it is illegal under EU law for a member country to demand that the Onboard Unit (OBU in the jargon) be fitted to vehicles which are registered in another country. Such vehicles would have to pre-pay their road use fee in advance -- hardly a flexible scheme for modern travel!

 

GPS is a wonderful boon in so many ways, but this particular application is just plain daft.

 

I think they will quietly drop the ill-considered scheme just like they quietly walked away from their idiotic "cones hotline".

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As a result your average jury probably resembles a mixture of the studio audience on a daytime TV show and the contents of your local branch of William Hill.

Big Taf has done jury service on two occasions ,while in full time employment for a blue chip company .

He was neither a daytime t.v. audience type and has never been inside any bookies office .

Sat on three cases ,and the jury gave guilty verdicts for two of them.

 

Little taf wriggled out of jury service in the days when looking after a baby was considered reason enough not to attend .

The Day time T.V.watching was not interupted, except by baby cries. !

.

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I intend to use my bike and shank's pony as much as possible to reach caches,

Seems to us to be only a short term option .

Our nearest unfound caches are now at least one hours drive each way!

Makes caching not a very green hobby now we are averaging 70 -85 (or more )miles round trip to find 5 or so caches on a day out .

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Running a car needn't necesssarily be 'ungreen'.

 

The CO2 thing could be addressed by making more use of carbon neutral fuels such as diesel engines fuelled by vegetable oils and 4 stroke "petrol" engines fuelled by alcohol. Even North of 55°N our fields and forests are mostly untapped source of energy if we modify our ways of cropping them and if we view biomass differently.

 

New technologies such as fuel cells, which produce nothing more polluting than pure water as a byproduct of combustion show much promise and hydrogen can be produced from very green prime fuel sources such as willow chips.

 

Although I'm no oil companies basher, I do think that they have an undue influence upon governments and industry and are unnecessarilly prolonging the use of 'old' technologies and are deliberately being tardy in bringing on new motor technologies.

 

For example, these new electric and petrol/electric hybrid cars all tend to be totty wee things . I think that is bad marketing. I think they should be putting those innovative power plants into the hulking great big Chelsea tractors. That would have two advantages. Firstly, it would get around the formidable problems of having to lug huge batteries and bulky hydrogen tanks. Secondly, it would be a great marketing tool to remould people's perceptions of these technologies being for frugal tree-hugger types.

 

The UK government's idea that the way to deal with heavy traffic pollution is to tax the motorist until the pips squeak is old thinking and is pretty much worn out. I can see no reason why the UK should have some of the highest road fuel prices in Europe. We have the most efficient oil refineries in the world; we are self-sufficient in most forms of petroleum; and our refineries mostly enjoy the economic luxury of having most of their feedstock piped directly from the wellheads. Our petrol/diesel prices should be among the lowest in Europe, not the highest.

 

UK government policy seems to be to levy swingeing tax burdens on road fuels in a fruitless attempt to persuade us that we don't really want to have the freedom that private motoring provides. Looking around at the increasing numbers of those huge 4x4s in our cities I think it is clear that the policy has failed.

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Here's a reasonably up to date listing of petrol prices in Europe:Forester-PetrolPrices.jpg

 

Note that we have the cheapest fuel in Europe, but we pay some of the the highest prices.

 

It's even more pronounced when you look at the cost/price of dieselForester-DieselPrices.jpg

 

Motorists who get stuck in traffic jams are already being hit with what amounts to congestion charges because the fuel efficiency in terms of miles per litre goes through the floor when you are doing the urban stop-go cycle in first or second gear.

 

I presume that most people suffer those trafffic jams because they have limited choice and just have to accept the inconvenience and costs. This calls into question the efficacy of congestion charging as a way of reducing congestion, doesn't it?

 

We already have a "pay as you go" taxation scheme through our exorbitant fuel taxation. I don't think it's working and I don't think that hitting the victims of traffic jams with heavier bills is going to do anything to alleviate the problem.

 

The way to persuade commuters to take public transport instead of using cars is simply to make such a choice attractive by offering clean efficient and frequent trains and buses.

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Here's a reasonably up to date listing of petrol prices in Europe:Forester-PetrolPrices.jpg

 

Note that we have the cheapest fuel in Europe, but we pay some of the the highest prices.

 

It's even more pronounced when you look at the cost/price of dieselForester-DieselPrices.jpg

 

Motorists who get stuck in traffic jams are already being hit with what amounts to congestion charges because the fuel efficiency in terms of miles per litre goes through the floor when you are doing the urban stop-go cycle in first or second gear.

 

I presume that most people suffer those trafffic jams because they have limited choice and just have to accept the inconvenience and costs. This calls into question the efficacy of congestion charging as a way of reducing congestion, doesn't it?

 

We already have a "pay as you go" taxation scheme through our exorbitant fuel taxation. I don't think it's working and I don't think that hitting the victims of traffic jams with heavier bills is going to do anything to alleviate the problem.

 

The way to persuade commuters to take public transport instead of using cars is simply to make such a choice attractive by offering clean efficient and frequent trains and buses.

I was quite surprised to see that there's only a 3-5% difference between Belgium/France and the UK in the pump price. That's less than the quarterly fluctuation(*) in the Euro/GBP exchange rate. So we're down to details, I think. (Had you asked me, I would have guessed the UK was 10%-15% more than France.)

 

Diesel is another matter, of course, but as a fanatical opponent of oil-burners I don't care. :lol:

 

(*) Gotta share this one:

 

A Japanese guy goes into a bank in San Francisco and changes 10,000 Yen, for which he gets $84. Two days later he goes back, same 10,000 Yen, this time he only gets $82.

 

"Hey", he says, "How come I got $2 less today ?"

 

The bored-looking teller barely looks up and says "Fluctuations".

 

"Yeah", says the Japanese guy, "Fluc you Americans too!".

 

:lol:

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I have a friend who owns a transport bussiness, if he has a vehicle down near Dover, and the Driver has spare driving hours, he sends the unit over to France using the Chunnell to fill up with Diesel. As he has extended tanks on both sides of each unit, even taking into acount the cost of the return Chunnel journey it still works out cheeper for him. He's already stated that if Road Charging comes in, all his vehicle will be registered abraod to avoid it!

 

Dave

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Diesel is another matter, of course, but as a fanatical opponent of oil-burners I don't care.

 

Another luddite I see

 

Diesel is the future, the petrol engine is virtually maxed out in terms of power and efficiency, and whilst the diesel is reletively undeveloped, its already outstripping petrol in terms of efficiency, its power delivery is constantly rising (without loss of efficiency), noise is being reduced and with improved refining its emissions are falling.

 

Will we see a Diesel F1 engine in the near future, possibly not, but, then again, Im not going to put any money against it, since we are already seeing GTi's with diesel engines

 

Also, with the diesel engine we can burn biofuels, if we cut all this crap about agricultural subsidies, and encouraged efficient, ecconomical use of agricultural land then there is a lot of fuel growing potential out there

 

The only real downside of the stuff is when it gets spilt, and thats mostly due to poor maintainence.

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since we are already seeing GTi's with diesel engines

I'm not certain what that means... GTi was only ever a marketing term, and I think only VW has used it (and then only the Golf, where it's kind of iconic) since about 1985. If you mean that there are now hot(ish) hatches with turbo diesels, well, yes there are. And the new Golf GTi is... a turbo petrol engine. You will always get more power per cc of engine capacity out of similarly aspirated petrol engines versus diesel, mainly due to chemistry - the same reason that it's a lot more dangerous to smoke near petrol than diesel !

 

There is also a question of hom much of each the refineries can churn out. You need to produce both diesel and gasoline to get the full works out of every barrel of crude. Right now I believe the US exports diesel and imports petrol (someone who works for Shell told me this, but he's not a close friend, so for all I know he works in the canteen. :lol:)

 

I agree with you about the biofuel, though. Let's get the trucks running on that, and find clean sources of biogas for LPG conversions on our petrol engines. (I ran a Nissan Bluebird for 3 years on LPG in Holland, where it's about 25p a litre, marvellous, barely any loss of performance.)

 

About 70% of cars sold in France are diesel, but the price is creeping up, firstly because a bigger percentage of the price of a litre is the oil price, and secondly because although French fuel duty is variable with the crude oil price, the government has been subtly not applying as much flexibility to diesel as it has with petrol (purely because there are so many diesel cars, of course!).

 

Back to road pricing: I don't believe the Grand Design where every road is priced and fuel duty disappears. It would totally uneconomic to collect a toll for every journey in the back roads of Scotland, for example, especially if a photographic technology were adopted. But given the relative success of the London congestion charge (it hasn't raised as much money as expected, but it's almost exactly met its stated traffic reduction goals), I can see a demand for similar schemes in other cities and maybe some stretches of motorway.

 

Perhaps if the off-peak pricing is done right, we will see main roads - and other infrastructure that sits unused half the time - being put to more efficient use, especially combined with telecommuting. I'm no fan of the latter, but if people who currently spend the first two hours of their work day doing their e-mail could do that before going to the office, that might be a start.

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You will always get more power per cc of engine capacity out of similarly aspirated petrol engines versus diesel, mainly due to chemistry - the same reason that it's a lot more dangerous to smoke near petrol than diesel !

 

A wildly innacurate statement

 

Firstly, four years ago a standard 2.0HDi engine delivered 90Bhp, (45BHP/L)last year I bought the same car with a 1.6HDi engine that now produces 110Bhp, (68.75Bhp/l) thats a 50% increase AND with a 20% increase in fuel efficiency... in the same time the standard petrol engines have produced only negligable improvements because the design is virtually maxed out... it doesnt take a genius to realise where these curves are going.

 

Secondly it doesnt matter where you smoke, your dangers of dying of cancer are exactly the same!! besides its just as safe to stub your lit cigarettes out in Diesel as Petrol which proves absolutely nothing.

 

Thirdly the chemistry that you refer to is the combustion of Hydrogen and Carbon with oxygen, which produces a rapid expansion of gasses, now, diesel has only a slightly lower calorific value (97% of petrol), whilst natural gas is 85% and biogas 80% of petrol, however the conversion efficiency of a diesel engine is about 30%, whilst the best petrol engines are about 20%, so, combining the energy going into the system with the efficiency of the system puts Diesel at 145% of petrol in the power developement stakes (and rising).

 

And finally since we British no longer have a car manufacturing industry, whist France have no less than three leading brands, who are we to tell them they have it wrong?

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