On Fri, 20 May 2005 17:19:46 +0100, "Matt B"
Try "sensible". I know a lot of people do choose to live so far from the shops that they can't get there without a car, but what happens if the car breaks down? Much smarter to live somewhere there are shops.
Any other excuses you want to parade there?
I get around on roads which are regularly solid with traffic, sometimes fast-moving traffic, but most local roads are cyclable.
No, sensible. Actually it's not at all unusual, I used to have a 15 mile round trip commute. Cycling to work was reliably at least ten minutes quicker than driving.
Not familiar with the meaning of the word median, then?
Ah, so your problem is based on a false buttumption. No wonder you're having such trouble! Let me enlighten you: you have not paid - not by any stretch of the imagination - for the exclusive use of a chunk of scarce road space in an area where there is considerable compebreastion for that resource. Council pay-and-display car parks do not, cover their costs to the council, according to our tame councillor.
It is widely believed that subsidising private motoring is less desirable than subsidising activities which promote fitness.
I can't think of anything other than parking which comes close to that definition. Local authority roads are not self-financing, and they represent the bulk of what most councils spend in support of motoring.
You really don't get it, do you? The point is, and it's well documented (not least in Hillman & Whitelegg's excellent One False Move), that a major part of the apparent "improvement" in UK road safety is down to the vulnerable having been scared off the streets. This is not about bypbuttes, it's about communities transected by dangerous roads. Well, actually, perfectly safe roads full of dangerous drivers.
Because you accused someone of being wrong when he said it is not a road tax, even though he was right.
The tax applies to certain clbuttes of vehicle - it is a vehicle duty. You could call it a car tax if you want (and a lorry tax, motorbike tax and so on). But the official term is vehicle excise duty, and one reason it is not called road tax is that, as Churchill rightly pointed out when the road fund was introduced, that it would be but a small step from there to the drivers claiming ownership over the roads for which their contributions had *in part* paid. The bulk of the road network was laid down in the years up to the 1960s, during which time road related taxes never came close to paying for the costs of road building. Even the hypothecated road fund never paid more than half the cost of any road, the balance coming out of general taxation.
Roads are, by and large, rights of way, commons whose construction was paid for out of the public purse. That is why those who pose little or no threat to others are allowed to use them free of charge.
Guy --
"To every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken
