Edited:



The reason the Government (or any UK Government) will take no notice of the “No 10 referendum” on road pricing is that the policy on road pricing is in the hands of the EU (see EC directive 2004/52/EC 29th April 04, amongst others) and not the UK; future provision will be governed by EU law.

Secondly, the EU scheme is to be based on the expensive, mostly French  (the UK motorists will help pay for it) EU Galileo satellite  (launched, courtesy of a Russian Soyuz rocket), and not the (free) US Navstar.

Road pricing, just like waste management, is now governed by the EU bureaucracy and is out of the hands of any democratic UK control.  The UK central and local government are reduced to mere implementors of EU legislation.

Surely the important issue in this topic is that the count for the e-petition concerning 0870 etc. has now reached 16643 signatures?

The discussion here seems to have drifted wildly off-topic and now to a different e-petition for the last few postings, namely that concerning road pricing, and the Global Moderator is now participating in the off-topic discussion, whereas usually if anyone else goes off-topic he is quick to move the off-topic material to another topic or delete it?

I agree it is desirable to stay on topic, but I was responding to a previous point.

It is nice to see the 0870 “No 10 referendum”  gaining support, it is nevertheless important to understand the influence of EU law.  Telecommunications is not at present governed by the EU to the same extent as Road Charging or Waste Management, but the influence of the EU is growing.  The last UK Telecommunications Act was a direct result of the implementation of EU Law. 

And to answer another point: EU Law takes precedence over UK Law.  About 70% of current legislation is in fact EU legislation. MP and other often comment about laws they are powerless to change, in fact they often don’t realise they are powerless.

Hi bbb_uk,

I was not referring to your post. Your post still included part of the nominal topic, and so was not wildly off topic. I was referring to subsequent posts to yours.

loddon wrote on Feb 23^rd, 2007 at 4:43pm:


Sorry but I don't think you are living in the real world if you think this petition will get 1 million signatures.  It might perhaps get 50,000 before it closes with a bit of publicity.  But the BBC never gives it any accurate publicity.

People not being able to use their cars to travel or charged a £50 fee for a journey to work in London every day is going to get journalists and the public a lot more stirred up than the 084/7 scam, which although very infuriating is not on the same level of mass infringement of civil liberties as the proposed road toll scheme.

loddon wrote on Feb 23^rd, 2007 at 5:46pm:


I am shocked to hear you say you think road pricing is basically justified.  I don't feel that you are likely to be supported in this view by the majority of users of this site who are basically against all hidden government ripoffs and attempts to infringe our civil liberties.

The truth of the matter is that most people choose to travel by car and that trend will almost certainly continue until there is around one car per person in the end.  However there is a potential to encourage people to make some routine journeys to city centres to work at busy times and also very long distance journeys by rail more than road but this should be done by the carrot and not by the stick with car park charges for genuine rail users made illegal and huge reduction in the cost of peak commuter hour rail fares.  Also journeys by rail should be made quicker than road by building more lines and having more fast express trains.

The truth of the matter is that this Labour government opposes the use of private transport for old fashioned socialist reasons of associating it with personal freedom and the liberty of the individual.  The Labour government cancelled vast numbers of major road junction improvement schemes in London that would have reduced carbon footprint by stopping people sitting in traffic jams in queues for hours each week.  Many people do jobs like being a school teacher or shop worker where they have little control over their hours.  Most of those people are not well paid.  Also the tracking aspect of this system is truly like George Orwell's Big Brother 1984 vision as also is the speed control element that will inevitably follow.

Some of us have not been slow to encourage programs like Panorama or Channel 4's Dispatches to cover this issue but they would rather cover inner city decay or bacterial infection in hospitals.  Many of the organisations which could expose the 084/7 scam still extensively use these numbers.  Hardly a coincidence surely.

I am totally opposed to this scam both due to its dire effect on competition in UK phone call prices and because it is a scam where people are repeatedly lied to over the cost of phone calls.  But most people including members of my own family still see it as just carping about paying a few quid per month extra for phone calls.

You clearly totally misjudge the public's mood if you think this is a more serious issue to most of them than nationwide road tolls.

loddon wrote on Feb 23^rd, 2007 at 6:48pm:


The main problem is that the Labour government have tipped billions down the drain in Iraq and on UK schools and hospitals to very little effect when they could have been using it to eliminate pinch points in the UK road network by widening the whole M1 to five lanes and the M4 to four lanes and turning the A1(M) into a proper motorway.  Any congestion charge will only stop things getting any more congested it won't stop the mass gridlock that is already there due to numerous silly bottlenecks in the network that could have been built out.

You can't have an expanding economy and no one going anywhere - the only solution lies in a better road system and much more efficient vehicles.  Whatever we do in the UK the Chinese and Indians are going to be piling millions more vehicles on to the roads and lighting  millions more homes in their countries.  So while acting like King Canute may make the UK and New Labour and Bicycling Cameron feel more virtuous it is also going to make us extremely poor to little practical effect.

Quote:


Posting a link in every web discussion forum that might have people interested in signing the petition would seem to be the main way.  Also getting coverage for its existence on a program like BBC Radio 4 You and Yours.

Dave wrote on Feb 23^rd, 2007 at 7:01pm:


Yes it is because more and more money making civil liberty infrining Big Brother speed cameras enforcing speed limits that aren't sensibly set don't stop accidents from happening and contrary to the New Labour lies peddled most accidents have very little to do with absolute speed.  Most of it is down to poor road design and reckless and careless driving.

The other main thing that stops accidents is marked Police patrol cars which New Labour has slashed since they came to office.  That is why the fatality rate on the UK roads has stopped falling and even risen since they took office after falling significantly for year after year until they came to power.  Also the increasing over congestion of UK roads due to New Labour's policy of not building any more roads is no doubt responsible for many fatalities that could have otherwise been avoided.

I was amongst the first to sign the Scrap Speed Cameras petition on the 10 Downing Street website.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/scrapcam/

See also www.safespeed.org.uk and www.abd.org.uk for more info on this topic.