Porsche fight Ken Livingstones absurd £25 per day congestion tax charge in central London
I’m really pleased that Porsche are going to fight Ken Livingstones ridiculous money-grabbing congestion charge tax of £25 per day for cars that emit over 225 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer. Given that Transport for London has admitted that this charge will only reduce emissions by 0.05 per cent (and thats best case) then its blatantly obvious its just a stealth tax aimed at 4×4 and performance car owners.
Porsche have now launched their Judicial Review website whereby you can sign up to their petition that they will present to Ken. If, like me you firmly believe that Ken Livingstone is out to make money out of his hatred for performance cars and 4×4’s then please sign up today and support Porsche and all petrolheads.
BTW I was in central London last week and its a petrolhead’s dream. Within the space of 1 day I saw loads of Lamborghini’s, Aston Martins (including a white one!), Ferraris, Bentleys, Rolls Royces and of course Porsches. What a shame that the mayor seems determined to kill off these exotics.
What I’m listening to right now: Mariah Carey – Touch My Body
P.S. My posts have been a bit light this week as I went into hospital on Monday. Hopefully I’m out today as you’re reading this and things will get back to normal.
Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 10:56 am and is filed under Cars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
February 28th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
£25 a day to sit in London’s traffic?!
The main problem I have with any kind of vehicle tax is that if it’s not being reinvested back into transport, it’s a stealth tax.
From memory, it’s a very small percentage of what we pay in road tax and fuel duty gets reinvested back into public transport, road infrastructure and the like.
Having said that, I remember watching a program a while ago which said that the London congestion charge is reinvested in the above. Whether this is the truth, who knows.
Unfortunately, the rest of the UK is watching London and if it proves successful (Congestion charging and now Emissions Charging), it will be rolled out quicker than you can say ‘easy money’.
February 28th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
There are definitely some nice cars driving around Central London, check out the car diary I made last year when I was down there:
http://www.activetuning.com/blog/2006/09/london-car-diary.php
February 28th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
london is a petrolhead’s dream, but, have you been to manchester lately?
March 6th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I suppose this “stealth tax” is aimed at the more wealthy since they are the only people who can afford a porche or ferrari. As for 4×4s, why would anyone need one of these to drive around in London anyhow?
On one hand the 4×4 and performance car manufacturers will be encouraged to develop “cleaner” cars as a result. This isn’t a bad thing. Obviously Porche aren’t objecting to this out of principle. They’re objecting because it’s in their interest as it will have an impact on their sales. Some people that may have been able to afford one, no longer will due to the running costs and will buy an alternative. Porche will have to do something about it.
On the other hand the fact emmissions from performance cars only make up 0.05% (and thats best case) would indicate its yet another stealth tax.
Road tax is forever increasing, tax on petrol too. It seems to me a way of trying to price motoring out of the market rather than improving and encouraging the use of public transport which is too expensive and yet keeps rising. It’s also unreliable and I’ve never seen any imrpovements from 10 years ago.
Whilst we’re on the subject of emmissions I think you’ll find public transport to be amongst the worst offenders. Buses pump out tonnes of crap. I’m sure I’m not the only one but getting stuck behind a bus in traffic you can smell the fumes and see the crap coming out the back of them. Surely, something should be done about these? I bet they would account for more than 0.05% of emmissions.
With the technology in automotive engineering I would hazard a guess that a lot of the newer cars are actually super clean and super efficient. Obviously it’ll take a while for these newer cars to filter down into the used car market.
I would quite happily use public transport during the week if it were a) reliable and; b) cost effective but it’s not. We don’t have the infrastructure in place for an efficient public transport system anywhere outside London (or possibly other major cities).
Like everyone I’m not happy about the amount of “stealth taxes” which are appearing all the time and this country appears to be getting more and more expensive to live in.
The debate concerning increased congestion charging also reminds me of that additional tax on flights introduced last year… I remember reading somewhere that carbon emissions from flying make up something like not even 0.5% of total global emmissions and also appears to be yet another form of raising money (although for what?).
I would like to know exactly what the Government spends all this money on.
When you think about it where does the money from speed cameras go? We’re talking millions there too.
Every time the Government come out with some ridiculous scheme… Ok not related to motoring, but still on the subject of the environment, what about council tax and the bright idea of reducing rubbish collections and charging by weight? We already pay for this.
It certainly would appear the Government here is more concerned with the bottom line than anything else. And rather than a Government it seems to me more like a profit-making company; UK plc.
Rant over
April 14th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Livingstone and his transport arm, Transport for London, claim that the congestion charge is a success with 70,000 less vehicles coming into central London every day. But with all these fewer vehicles the traffic jams are as bad as they were in pre-C charge days, which they blame on the Thames Water roadworks.
RUBBISH! I’ll tell you why - 1) 2,000 more traffic lights since he became mayor in 2000, most of them re-phased to keep traffic waiting longer on red; 2) hundreds more buses, most of them 90% empty of passengers, and 3)dozens more bus lanes, both of these taking up acres of road space, squeezing other traffic on to less and less tarmac. All these things deliberately designed to slow down and impede the flow of traffic, because Ken and TfL hate cars so much. So, all the benefits of congestion charging - getting around quicker for motorists paying the charge - have been progressively eroded over the last five years.
TfL say they know the jams are bad again, but they claim if it wasn’t for the C charge London traffic would grind to a halt. THEY’RE DEAD RIGHT IT WOULD, AND THEY THEMSELVES ARE TO BLAME!
Has anyone tried driving down Piccadilly or Regent Street towards Piccadilly Circus lately, or down Shaftesbury Avenue? Piccadilly is permanently gridlocked throughout the working day, with a whole series of traffic lights, all of them long on red, making the half-mile journey from Hyde Park Corner to Piccadilly Circus take as long as 30 minutes. As you approach Piccadilly Circus from Regent Street you are held on a red traffic light for about 15 minutes as you watch convoys of buses pass you on the inside lane. And not a Thames Water roadworks in sight!
Driving around the narrow streets of the City of London at non-rush hour times you get stuck behind lines and lines of buses, most of them virtually empty and jamming up the precious roadspace. And no Thames Water roadworks here either! They finished their water mains repairing programme in this area some months ago.
How do I know all this? I run a food business with two vans driving into the congestion zone every day, trying to deliver to our customers as quickly as possible. It costs us £3,500 a year in congestion charges for our drivers (paid by the hour) to sit in TfL-made traffic jams.