Road Pricing?

Idiocy? Thy name is Lib Dem...

Telegraph.

The Liberal Democrats have backed plans to introduce road pricing across Britain, triggering a backlash from council leaders.

Their manifesto commits the party to the new system of charging car travel by billing motorists for every mile they drive. The party says drivers’ extra costs – estimated at up to £2,700 a year – would be offset by reductions in taxes like fuel duty.
The plan has been denounced by the leaders of more than 40 councils, who say the plans would create “two classes of roads”, one for the rich and one for the poor.
Some quiet residential streets would be turned into rat-runs, as commuters tried to avoid the trunk roads where the charges would be levied.
In a letter published in Monday’s Daily Telegraph, they also raise civil liberties questions about thousands of new CCTV cameras on A-roads and motorways.
The Liberal Democrats have not said how much the policy will cost.
But, using existing average mileage and vehicle excise duty figures, the council leaders estimate the scheme would cost up to £28 billion to set up and as much as another £23 billion to run annually.
They say that to break even, motorists would be charged between 10.7p per mile and 30.1p a mile to drive on trunk roads and motorways.
Estimates suggest the average driver covers around 9,000 miles a year, suggesting the cost of the scheme would be between £963 and £2,709. In the letter, the councillors say: “Replacing road tax and some fuel duty with national road pricing for trunk roads will cost billions to implement and bring gridlock to minor roads.
“It will force drivers off safe motorways on to congested city streets and country lanes, making those more dangerous.”
The councillors, who all run Conservative boroughs, say that the plans will turn the motorway network “into the world’s biggest speed camera, allowing the Government unprecedented powers to monitor people”.

People are already sick and tired of government intervention in our lives, we don't like being spied upon by the state and we don't like databases especially government ones as when they aren't selling the details off or using them for electoral scaremongering they lose them on trains. This sadly is all part of the beardie-weirdy environmental (with emphasis on the mental) tendency in Lib Dem activists who see motorists and private transport as a curse rather than a liberator of the working class. They no doubt feel it will force people onto public transport or do car sharing (neither of which is an option in my job) You can also bet there will be a surge in false plates and unregistered, uninsured (and unsafe) cars onto the road as people do their best to keep the governments hands out of their pockets. This scheme will (naturally) hit the poorest in society, those who have a job but have to travel in a car to get to it and are just keeping their heads above water hoping that things will pick up a bit when the economy recovers. So unemployment will leap. It will also hit them when their food bills rise as supermarkets have to pay the transport firms more in transport costs. Their kids will no longer be safe on the streets as they become rat runs for those trying to save a bit of cash and avoid the cameras on the main roads.

Just another reason not to vote for a mainstream party, they just want our money to pay for their pet idiot projects like global warming climate change (you'll always notice that somehow politicians are exempt from these schemes too)