On Fri, 20 May 2005 13:55:05 +0100, "Matt B"
For some values of "like" and indeed "all". If you want to appreciate one important difference between taxes and excise duties, try not paying your tax bill one year and not paying your VAT the next :-)
And that's to redress the unfair bit of allowing these users to use the road sin the first place, which is that they impose a high toll of rest and serious injuries. As well as the fact that roads built for motor traffic have to be enormously stronger than roads built for foot traffic alone.
False distinction. In the case of alcohol duty, it applies only to those drinks which contain alcohol, and at different rates dependent on type. Non-alcoholic drinks, like walking, horse riding and cycling on the roads, are not subject to duties. And guess what? Fruit juice doesn't give you liver cancer or make you throw up on the Town Hall steps on a Friday night (not usually anyway). Obvious enough.
LOL! Your paranoia is showing! All indirect taxation is "unfair" in some respects, and direct taxation is "unfair" in others. I can't think of a Western democracy that operates significantly differently, though.
Because not all of them have the obvious, immediate and substantial costs to the public purse buttociated with motor transport, alcohol and tobacco use.
You are talking as if VAT does not exist!
Lucky? Hmmm. I live in Reading, I regularly visit London, Oxford and St Albans (where I grew up). Same situation applies in all of them. Seems that luck is easy to come by in this case :-)
Have you never stopped to consider why parking restrictions exist? How do you think completely unrestricted parking would impact on your ability to travel in any urban context of your choice? It would barely affect me, but I would be willing to bet serious money that removing all parking restrictions would rapidly end up in complete gridlock in most towns.
One of the regulars on urc is a councillor; his analysis is that off-street car parks routinely fail to cover their costs.
You are evidently unaware of the extent to which mbutt private motoring, subsidised out of the public purse for decades, has undermined the viability of public transport. Driving is getting cheaper and has been since the 1970s, public transport has become consistently more expensive over the same period.
It is also the case that private motoring is not a public good, while public transport is, as it facilitates independent mobility in those who have no access to private motoring - the old, the young, the infirm, many of the disabled, and a significant proportion of women, for example.
He is technically correct. There isn't, and hasn't been since, IIRC, 1936. Which was the point he was making.
Guy -- May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at CHS, Puget Sound
