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Yes you're right, building new cars is indeed more damaging than running old ones. However, cars will be built whether or not the government is running a scrappage scheme, so the environmental damage will be done regardless.
My comment was also written from the viewpoint of a motorist who has been conned into buying into a fuel technology by a short-sighted government. Yeah ok, diesel is now considered the fuel of Satan but if they're going to demonise it at least give us some kind of benefit into ditching what they told us to buy and replacing it with a feasible alternative.
I for one, if I was going to be charged £20.00 a day for driving my diesel, especially as I buy in my cars in the older end of the market, would rather invest that into an alternative replacement, a bit of help from the government in the form of a scrappage scheme would be well received.
So yes, from the viewpoint of Mr Motorist, a scrappage scheme would be better than taxation. After all, it's not like the government is mulling over penalising new car drivers £20.00 a day because building their brand new shiny car is far more polluting than keeping their ten-year-old derv on the road.
There is no 'H' in Aych, you know that don't you? ~ Wife
Turns out there is an H in Haych! ~ Sporky
Bit of trading feedback here.
Lots of focus on how there are "so many" diesel cars in cities, yet their mileage/useage is often 1/5th of the average multi-drop delivery driver... and there are 10,000s of them in London alone. Plus these boys and girls are on the road each and every day, ALL day. The majority of folks who will get slapped with with tax are those that only go into cities on an irregular basis - they are more likely to avoid city centres as a result. The delivery drivers aren't. So how exactly is this going to solve a polution problem - especially based on the mileage/useage of an irregular visitor compared to the army of multi-drop drivers?
A lot of buses belch fumes far more than any car I've ever seen - you aren't allowed visible smoke so how do the ratty old school buses get away with the stench they emit? And when was the last time you heard of one being pulled by the rozzers for a spot check...?
Fact is - they won't do anything about it. We are all too reliant on the services of diesel powered deliveries in towns and cities - couriers, Amazon, Thieving-bastards-in-red-vans etc. Plus there's all the food deliveries, raw materials for manufacturing (although there ain't much of that these days) etc. Those costs would then be passed onto us... so we'd pay anyway.
Its fucked up - and this is just another revenue stream for the government. They won't be investing it in solutions, just paying off the interest on the money we apprently owe someone...
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
What would work very well with minimum pain would be to change the fleet rules and taxes. If you can get the company cars over to petrol then you start filling the used market with petrols, and you encourage the manufacturers to develop them. Targetting privately owned cars is always going to be cruder, more punitive and less successful.
Are you suggesting there don't need to be "real world" (a nicely vague term given that different people drive very differently) tests for petrols? Or are you just moving the goalposts for the sake of it?
PARTICULATE POWER!
The problem can't be solved overnight anyway given that the average car lasts something like 14 years on the road. I wouldn't object to more heavy-handed 'persuasion' for corporate fleet buyers either - maybe not to ban diesels outright, but to make them punitively expensive. They will always go where the money leads so it would be very effective, and in two to three years that would produce a lot more choice on the second hand market.
They do clearly need to do something about the Motability rules too. Disclaimer: I drive an ex-Motability car and it will probably need replacing in about three years...
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Nottingham will better that probably £15 and will cite raising fund for the next phase of the tram system as justification. They won't be able to introduce it so quickly though as there's not ANPR system installed unlike London
I assume about half of normal working people have diesels. Overnight they will all be charged £440 per month extra (or is it £600 if you live in the town?) just to get to work or take the kids to school? I don't think so
Or the parties who have made parking so restricted and prohibitively expensive in Edinburgh that it amounts to the same thing?
It's going to happen. It has to happen, for the good of everyone who lives and works in cities. For what it's worth, I'm resigned to not being able to work in Edinburgh during the daytime for this reason, because I can't transport amps without using my car.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Give us back our guns. 1689.
The thing is, in London you can see why they can justify such a charge;
- London is a city with a vast public transport infrastructure. For most people living and working around the congestion charge zone, there are oyster cards, big busses, an underground network, futuristic space-tubes that suck bodies through the sky - even Star Trek transporters for the very rich. In this environment, there are real alternatives to driving your personal car - and if you drive it'll likely take you longer anyway since traffic is so bad.
- The people who make these policy decisions live in this environment where pollution is very bad and there are real public transport alternatives to cars. Also, an environment where most people around them are commuting from homes within the greater London conurbation, so a moral judgement can be made against them if they CHOOSE to drive by car rather than get a bus.
- Everyone in London has deliberately chosen to live a terrible life of constant hell. Even if they are more inconvenienced by having to use the vast public transport infrastructure, they'll just nod and deal with it as they shuffle through their terrible, overcrowded, expensive lives.
So, for London, fair enough. You can justify such a policy because there are alternatives to coerce people into using.
But for people in the rest of the country, it's more hit and miss. Last year, Birmingham spent over £16.40 on its transport network. For my own personal situation, when I drive into the city I can do it in 20 minutes, the traffic usually flows well and the only stop start is at traffic lights. And do so for a fuel cost of around £0.80 each way.
The two practical alternatives are a bus which you get stabbed to death on and would cost £2.40 each way, taking 45 minutes at best. Or a train which is a 20 minute walk, the trains come typically once an hour and the journey takes a further 20 minutes before another 20 minute walk at the other end.
If those became better options than driving, then we all might as well move to London and accept lives of constant agony because the rest of the country will have been ruined.
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
There's only one point I don't agree with but for some reason I can't remove the rest then quote it:
"I exaggerate slightly, but there are still entire model ranges with no petrol option. The manufacturers have developed and produced what would sell, which is largely driven by what the government has encouraged people (and companies) to buy."
The two 'gamechangers' if you will, the 30d from BMW and the VAG PD engines predate the C02 driven tax by several years. Up to this point diesels were the mighty 90hp 1.9 Peugeots or 115hp 2.5 BMWs rebadged into a plethora of vehicles, both were boat anchors but came from a time when diesels required next to no maintenance, sounded like vans with rubbish NVH. Comparable performance for my 306DT was the 1.4 petrol but with 150% of the economy of the feeble petrol.
The really big tax shake up that massively favoured diesels and punished petrols came in March 2005 and was well after the shift from diesels changing from unusual/niche to mainstream. You are absolutely right that 12 years later there are huge holes in model lines especially in cheaper and larger MPVs/SUVs but the market shift started in 1997/1998.
Many aren't - stuff like Pine is actually dangerous for smoking meat as the burning process effectively forms a type of creosote on the food.
https://speakerimpedance.co.uk/?act=two_parallel&page=calculator