Bag's Rants

More grief for the defenceless motorist.

Yet another article out today on the latest government plans to extort more money from the defenceless motorist.

It seems that despite us poor motorists paying significantly more than the cost of the roads for the installation and upkeep of them and us paying exorbitant tax rates on the fuel we use it is recommended that we also pay to use the roads we paid to build and pay to maintain.

It seems that not enough people are using public transport so they need to be subsidised and the motorist is the one going to do that. Although exactly what will happen when people stop being able to afford a car and start moving to public transport or even a life on social security as it will be financially viable and stop subsidising public transport. Boom. The true costs will hit bus and train users as the government won't make up the deficit and then the costs for a car will again become affordable in comparison.

These useless bunch of tossers¹ in power have not yet grasped that if public transport was usable and cost effective people would use it. Those same tossers don't use it themselves. Perhaps if they were forced to then they would fix the problems^2. To subsidise something like this is a short term fix while something is initially set up to overcome initial costs not running costs. The public transport network can hardly be described as new. The issues with it are one of inefficiency and lack of usability. So to charge defenceless people for not using it because it is unusable, which is what this road charging, is all about is a clear abuse of power.

1) Seems to be acceptable political language now.
2) Based on the theory that if our political betters used it then they would make sure it worked right rather than not caring as they don't have to rely on it like we do.

posted by Bag @ 8:56 am