Bag's Rants

Is this a new tax coming?

Here is an article on how from 2007, only a couple of days now, car owners will be able to have their cars scrapped for free. Read here.

Now, when I was a lad, you used to take cars down to to scrapyard and it would be scavenged and recycled and people could make some money from it. It was clearly a job where people made a living.

Of course, life must go on, new laws need to be made and now it appears that your car must be disposed of in an approved way. So there were changes made. It's not enough to take your car to a scrap yard now there are forms to fill out and bureaucrats to keep fed. The problem however is that the people who tend to scrap cars are the end of the line users. The ones who bought the car for £50 or so and don't want to spend anything when it is finished. Hell, some of them don't even have tax or insurance. So bit of a problem then.

Then, between them, the manufacturers and the government got together and come up with this system for scrapping your cars. Basically I would imagine the government said to the manufacturers 'Look this is your problem. I want some solutions'. So yippee, environmentally friendly disposal free disposal. Everyone is a winner, the cars are scrapped in an approved manner. All forms filled and the manufacturers make some money from recycling.

However, nothing is free. The costs must be picked up somewhere on the chain and where is the only point where the government or the manufacturers make money. At the first buyer. So I'm guessing that a surcharge will go on each car at initial purchase and this will fund the manufacturers disposal at end of life.

Another couple of bonuses, redistribution of wealth from the new car buyers, with money, to the used car buyers at the bottom of the chain. A charge that should be classed as a tax which won't be. Plus they have left the announcement until it is almost 2007 so that the responsible people will still pay to have their cars scrapped as they won't know. An act of marketing genius. Something our government shouldn't really have or is that the manufacturers?

White goods and computers are next. To be followed by what?

posted by Bag @ 2:29 pm