Peter Roberts has created a petition against the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy, and as of writing it has garnered over 275,000 signatures – roughly 75,000 of those being added since I signed it yesterday.
In a nutshell, the proposed scheme would monitor people’s cars and their journeys, and charge them per mile. An in extremis (rush hour, city centre) cost could be as much as £1.34 a mile. Even at £0.30, a round trip to visit my mother would cost me £120, more than 3 times in what I pay in petrol in total (not just tax, which is still a disgusting 75% or so of fuel cost).
The horrendous cost of travelling for pleasure or work aside, the truly insidious nature of the scheme is this: to work out how much you’ll be charged, a “black box” will be installed in your car to monitor where you’ve been (and how fast you were going, I’m sure). Are you happy with the Government, police and third-party monitoring company knowing where you’ve been, how fast, at what hours of the day?
Ah, but I forget: “If you’ve not done anything wrong, you’ve nothing to fear”; bullshit. Whatever happened to guilty until proven innocent? A right to privacy?
And just because we can be tracked by Automatic Number Plate Recognition, and our mobile phones does not imbue the government to foist yet another intrusive surveillance system on us.
So, find out more about road pricing from the Association Of British Drivers, and don’t forget to sign the petition!
