juicy

For what its worth, there is an online petition against the VED retrospective re-banding here:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/UNFAIR-VED/

Starlight

Now I would be happy to see VED retrospective back 10 plus years in car age.
How can you claim to use the tax as a green issue , yet leave the older more polluting cars (implied in his speach about how modern cars are so much better now) still driving around with not incentive to reduce their co2 or petrol consumption

I also would like to see VED tweaked and linked to mileage travelled, which would be easy as its recorded at MOT time and you need an MOT to get a tax disc.

That is what I think should be done if any government is truly trying to do it for Green Reasons.

Now I do not say I am happy with the higher costs but its a fact of life. I understood that buying a worse fuel consumption car would increase my fuel bills but I just give up other stuff to have the car I want

Arbitary VED bands based on a single km distance output are nonsense when co2 output comes from the total amount of distance travelled over a year

As far as I can see, the current and new rules will increase the longevity of much older and more polluting and higher fuel consuming cars because those who are struggling financially will not have an incentive to get a modern low emisions car which is surely what the Government wants


Should put them (Government) up against the wall and shoot them. Every Government does only a small amount of what is actually required becasue they know that doing the right thing will lose them the next election, even if it is for the good of the nation in the long term

Anyway now you can all attack me for agreeing to higher / more potential tax in the future

eSeM

Comment from 'The Register'

[QUOTE]Budget Comment Alistair Darling has missed his big chance to show that he's both serious about climate change and that he understands the arguments. He's delayed the previously announced 2p per litre rise in fuel duty and then added that it will rise 0.5 p per litre each year thereafter. This simply isn't acceptable, it's putting us all at risk, for what he should have done is cut fuel duty by 12p per litre.

No, I'm being serious, not some fruticake or swivel eyed loonie (although I can be both of those at times). The outcome of the Stern Review (ie, the advice the Government commissioned to tell them what to do about climate change) was that there is a correct level of taxation upon carbon emissions: the slightly alarming thing being that this correct level is lower than the price we already pay.

Start from the point that Stern, the IPCC, the "scientific consensus", are all correct. No, we're not claiming that it's all sunspots, that climate change isn't happening and we're not to blame. Yes, it is, we're causing it and it's going to impose some pretty big costs in the future. At this point what we really want to know is how big are those costs going to be? So let's throw in the value of Bangladesh before it sinks below the waves, the polar bears, Tuvalu too. The change in weather patterns, the moving northwards of the malaria belt, let's tot it all up and we'll get to some gargantuan number. Let us also look at how many tonnes of carbon dioxide (strictly speaking, carbon dioxide equivalent, CO2-e, to convert methane, NOx and so on to one unit) emitted will lead us to that cost. Divide one by the other and we have the damage that one tonne of CO2 will do.

That's really at the heart of what the Stern Review did (and there are others who have done similar exercises, William Nordhaus amongst them). Stern even went so far as to consider the possibility that we'll all be wiped out by an asteroid strike before Greenland melts in 2500 AD or so. Now there are concerns with the exact numbers, for Stern got to $85 per tonne CO2-e, while Nordhaus has at times said $2.50. But Stern is supposedly the guy the UK government is listening to, so we'll use his numbers. Stern also said that this number leads us to a simple solution, the employment of Pigou (or Pigouvian) taxation and on this point, despite concerns about the $ number, economists from Greg Mankiw through Nordhaus to Richard Tol (that last actually part of the IPCC process) are agreed: damn good idea. Stick $85 per tonne on each and every emission of CO2-e and you've solved the problem.

No, we don't know how many emissions that will stop, no, we don't know what the cumulative effect will be in terms of temperature, Tuvalu, polar bears or Bangladesh. However, we do know that we've got the right balance: for, you see, we don't actually want to stop climate change, we just want the right amount of climate change.

Yes, the likely changes will impose costs. But so will trying to stop those changes impose costs. We could, for example, shoot anyone who uses fossil fuels after 4pm next Tuesday. Millions would die imposing such a regime and billions shortly thereafter if it were successful. We tend to think that this is too high a price to stop Weymouth becoming waterlogged in a few centuries' time. So what is the correct price that we should be willing to spend to reduce the future damages? Well, obviously, the cost of those very damages. We don't want to spend more to solve the problem than the problem will cost, after all: no one pays

nomadicS2k

So there will be lots of post March 2001 cars for sale soon!

"If your car was registered before the 1st March 2001 then car tax is based only on the engine size, with one rate for engine sizes up to and including 1549cc and one for engines over 1549cc." - Parkers.

Dracoro

Done knowing full well that there are LOADS of 1.6 cars that pay the higher rate. 1549 - why? why not 1599?

R2MUL

It's all reaching breaking point.....

If enough people start shouting "protest" it may well just happen.

NeilB

Labour OUT!

Lurking Lawyer

I agree with the sentiment but, alas, David Cameron seems even more taken with these "green" policies than Nu Labia, so I wouldn't assume that a Tory government will act much differently.

simonprelude

Ferrari F40 is the way to go, no additional congestion charge, VED or anything else yet.

Just the fuel and Ferrari maintenance costs

lower

I doubt the tories will be able to do much tax cutting in the short term anyway until they've reduced the overheads from all the bureaucracy that labour has introduced.

i would object less to paying a green tax if it was seen to be fair and i wasn't paying so much elsewhere which just gets pissed up the wall.

The classic was when Blair put