loddon wrote on Feb 23
rd, 2007 at 5:46pm:
The anti- Road charging campaign has certainly gained a lot of publicity from that petition, although there is some need to look at charging as an option because congestion is fast approaching gridlock and there is an environmental dimension to it.
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.