Living just outside Oxford, I am subject to one of the most anti-car county councils currently in operation.
Not only do we have a Zero Emissions Zone, we have a congestion charge which is transforming into a series of traffic filters in September. The train station has been almost cut off by several years of work on the Botley Road.
We have excruciatingly high on street parking and car park fees. And a number of LTNs which are largely hated by residents and local businesses. The number of blue badge parking spaces has also been reduced in the city centre.
I bought an EV 11 months ago as I had the cash at the right time.
So I am not affected by the ZEZ thankfully. The rest do make life difficult.
I only use the bus as part of Park and Ride because £2.50 for parking and riding for 2 adults is the cheapest option. But I only use that on occasions when the destination suits.
When I moved to my current location, we were served by 5 dedicated bus routes - 2, 2a, 2b, 2c and 2d. In the past 7 years that has been cut to 2 routes. The buses were a primary factor in the decision to move to this village (now town)
Buses can work for some but not for all. Oxford has Escooters and 2 lots of bikes but they don't extend this far (and are a menace in the centre)
Oxford would be great with a simple tram network but sadly the transport officers are obsessed with pushing bikes as the solution and their own anti-car dogma.
Pushing cars onto the inadequate ring roads (A34 and A40) is not a viable solution as they aren't investing in any improvements even though the impact of their plans on key junctions is an increase in traffic of 66% on their own estimates.
A balanced approach is necessary. For each stick, there has to be a carrot. At the moment, we are just being beaten.
The congestion charge has generated over £5million in fines since last October. So it is essentially a money raising scheme more than a traffic reduction measure.
Shocked to here this...so out of character for one of he nicest blokes in cricket.
Former Australia batter David Warner has pleaded guilty to drink driving, after being charged following a random breath test in Sydney in April. The plea had been expected after his lawyer, Bobby Hill, said after a court hearing in May that the cricketer accepted responsibility and knew his behaviour had been "foolish" and "reckless".
Sentencing has been set for 18 August, when Warner faces a minimum disqualification from driving of six months, a potential fine of up to A$2,200 ($1,500; £1,150) and a potential prison sentence of up to nine months.
So, a six month disqualification from driving while he's in prison? Convenient.
I find it utterly amazing every time I hear of someone wealthy getting done for drinking and driving. Get a taxi you idiot, or have your sober PA get a taxi to you, to drive you and your car home.
Or have a driver. At least on retainer to come and get you / your car if you don't want to leave your expensive motor somewhere.
I am always amazed how many footballers drive themselves everywhere. The last thing i want to do if I have run to exhaustion is drive my high powered difficult to control car bumping along at 20-30mph. Get a roller or bentley, sit in luxury in the back with my feet up and get driven seems way more preferable.
I’m sure if I were a rich kid, I’d probably want a to show off a Ferrari or McLaren too.
But if you want to drive it to the club, either have it collected and go home yourself in the back of an S-class, or have a driver come and collect both you and the car at the end of the night. Hell, pay the valet parking guy at the club a couple of hundred quid if needs must.
In my 40s, I’d keep the fancy car for Sunday mornings, and absolutely choose the back seat the rest of the time.
I think most buses I have been on recently have had wifi, but like trains, the quality is often very poor. I often just end up using my own 5g data.
Much that lots of people don't like Musk, Starlink is awesome for internet on the move. I would have them fitted to all the trains. Flying Qatar with it is just revolutionary, the speed and relability even when packed on a plane with 100s of other people all hammering the bandwidth was amazing.
The new Starlink constellation is about to offer direct-to-mobile connections pretty much anywhere that’s not a large city.
Total and utter gamechanger, yet again for one of Elon’s companies.
Some interesting statistics on the Ukraine war today. Obviously seizing farmland is different from buying it, but:
The war has cost Russia $37bn over the last year, according to the certainly massively underestimated official numbers.
They have taken about 1000 sq miles so that's about $37 million/square mile.
They've also lost about 3-400,000 men, so that's about 3-400/square mile
For comparison, the cost of Ukrainian farmland is about $4 million/square mile.
So it would have cost Putin a tenth as much, and saved all those lives, just to buy the land rather than invade it, according to the official figures. In reality, of course, the real multiple is probably 20 or 30 times or more, not 10 times.
Such a staggering waste makes our own epic government disasters like HS2 look like models of efficiency and economy.
Living just outside Oxford, I am subject to one of the most anti-car county councils currently in operation.
Not only do we have a Zero Emissions Zone, we have a congestion charge which is transforming into a series of traffic filters in September. The train station has been almost cut off by several years of work on the Botley Road.
We have excruciatingly high on street parking and car park fees. And a number of LTNs which are largely hated by residents and local businesses. The number of blue badge parking spaces has also been reduced in the city centre.
I bought an EV 11 months ago as I had the cash at the right time.
So I am not affected by the ZEZ thankfully. The rest do make life difficult.
I only use the bus as part of Park and Ride because £2.50 for parking and riding for 2 adults is the cheapest option. But I only use that on occasions when the destination suits.
When I moved to my current location, we were served by 5 dedicated bus routes - 2, 2a, 2b, 2c and 2d. In the past 7 years that has been cut to 2 routes. The buses were a primary factor in the decision to move to this village (now town)
Buses can work for some but not for all. Oxford has Escooters and 2 lots of bikes but they don't extend this far (and are a menace in the centre)
Oxford would be great with a simple tram network but sadly the transport officers are obsessed with pushing bikes as the solution and their own anti-car dogma.
Pushing cars onto the inadequate ring roads (A34 and A40) is not a viable solution as they aren't investing in any improvements even though the impact of their plans on key junctions is an increase in traffic of 66% on their own estimates.
A balanced approach is necessary. For each stick, there has to be a carrot. At the moment, we are just being beaten.
The congestion charge has generated over £5million in fines since last October. So it is essentially a money raising scheme more than a traffic reduction measure.
Bath hates cars too. Over the years our match day parking for rugby has been pushed further and further out of the city. They have a LEZ.
Shocked to here this...so out of character for one of he nicest blokes in cricket.
Former Australia batter David Warner has pleaded guilty to drink driving, after being charged following a random breath test in Sydney in April. The plea had been expected after his lawyer, Bobby Hill, said after a court hearing in May that the cricketer accepted responsibility and knew his behaviour had been "foolish" and "reckless".
Sentencing has been set for 18 August, when Warner faces a minimum disqualification from driving of six months, a potential fine of up to A$2,200 ($1,500; £1,150) and a potential prison sentence of up to nine months.
So, a six month disqualification from driving while he's in prison? Convenient.
I find it utterly amazing every time I hear of someone wealthy getting done for drinking and driving. Get a taxi you idiot, or have your sober PA get a taxi to you, to drive you and your car home.
Or have a driver. At least on retainer to come and get you / your car if you don't want to leave your expensive motor somewhere.
I am always amazed how many footballers drive themselves everywhere. The last thing i want to do if I have run to exhaustion is drive my high powered difficult to control car bumping along at 20-30mph. Get a roller or bentley, sit in luxury in the back with my feet up and get driven seems way more preferable.
I’m sure if I were a rich kid, I’d probably want a to show off a Ferrari or McLaren too.
But if you want to drive it to the club, either have it collected and go home yourself in the back of an S-class, or have a driver come and collect both you and the car at the end of the night. Hell, pay the valet parking guy at the club a couple of hundred quid if needs must.
In my 40s, I’d keep the fancy car for Sunday mornings, and absolutely choose the back seat the rest of the time.
Apparently, for the hyper rich, the car(s) following isn’t just security.
If you suddenly want to get wasted, while out in the Veyron or whatever, you have spare transport.
Some interesting statistics on the Ukraine war today. Obviously seizing farmland is different from buying it, but:
The war has cost Russia $37bn over the last year, according to the certainly massively underestimated official numbers.
They have taken about 1000 sq miles so that's about $37 million/square mile.
They've also lost about 3-400,000 men, so that's about 3-400/square mile
For comparison, the cost of Ukrainian farmland is about $4 million/square mile.
So it would have cost Putin a tenth as much, and saved all those lives, just to buy the land rather than invade it, according to the official figures. In reality, of course, the real multiple is probably 20 or 30 times or more, not 10 times.
Such a staggering waste makes our own epic government disasters like HS2 look like models of efficiency and economy.
In reality it’s a lot worse than that.
The ‘farmland’ is mostly covered in mines, and is going to be useless as farmland until extensive cleanup has been done.
The numbers don’t take into account the damage that the Ukranians are doing to the Russian economy, including destruction of O&G facilities, ports, vehicles, and logistics choke points.
Feel so lucky having Lothian Buses. Arms-length, profitable, drivers are excellent (always give cyclists loads of space), 120 million journeys a year.
The key thing for me is that I don’t have to check my phone before I leave home because they are so frequent. Bus lanes and bus gates mean they don’t get stuck in private vehicle traffic. It’s insane that this is something special and not the norm.
Absolutely agree. I visited Edinburgh a few years ago for the first time in decades and the buses were a revelation. Modern, tidy, incredibly frequent, polite helpful drivers and nice information screens.
The contrast was staggering. I'm used to bus services that are run purely to maximise short-term profit. The vehicles are mostly old, noisy, and uncomfortable, with no WiFi or power sockets, routes are scheduled to minimise the number of buses needed. Nothing is linked up, changing buses can mean waiting the best part of an hour for a connection. I was also very impressed how good services in Edinburgh are in the evening. Here services tail off significantly after 6pm, which seems to be a deliberate tactic to drive custom to taxi services (guess who owns those...). Even routes serving hospitals mostly just go away after 6.
McGills got public funding to buy some new electric buses a couple of years ago - no chance they'd spend their own money doing that. They asked for extra money to buy more and the Scottish government refused - so McGills is suing them. Which is indicative of the mindset of the owners. They also set the price of single tickets ridiculously high, because the funds they get from the government for OAP concession travel is set at a percentage of the single fare.
Everything is done in the name of making a quick buck. It really shouldn’t be like this.
I expect any number of children in current and recent war zones have seen worse.
No doubt, but the state indoctrinating its primary school kids by showing them public executions as a matter of policy isn't quite the same thing, is it ?
I think most buses I have been on recently have had wifi, but like trains, the quality is often very poor. I often just end up using my own 5g data.
Much that lots of people don't like Musk, Starlink is awesome for internet on the move. I would have them fitted to all the trains. Flying Qatar with it is just revolutionary, the speed and relability even when packed on a plane with 100s of other people all hammering the bandwidth was amazing.
Worst life decision that Musk took was creating a twitter account. Think what he might be doing with Tesla and Spacex if he wasn't wasting his time there.
Burnham has an aspiration to do something, he can't do anything til the Budget anyway.
They need to see what fiscal leeway they have, they would have had a fair dollop had it not been for Iran and Trump, the need about 10bn to do anyting meaningful to allowances but there could well be incremental things they could add in.
A set ladder over 3-4 years of x % to cover inflation plus 1% as an example.
A specific increase for those of pensionable age to link to State Pension standard amount so no one purely on State Pension pasy tax on it
My hunch would be to find a way of balancing the tax allowance for pensioners to the triple lock, so that you start to unlock the triple lock to a median point where you commit to ensuring it by inceasing personal allowances instead initially for pensioners with then an aim of increasing for all!
Putting aside the right wing ad hominem, I vote Labour in GE’s, I don’t see how this article is ‘right wing’ either.
why shouldn’t pensioners pay tax above the threshold ? It’s income after all. Those purely on the state oension do get other passported benefits.
I think Dan Neidle is right. Leave this and target NI, it’s a tax on employment. We need more employment and to make work pay.
We were canvassed by our MP and his aides at the weekend. One thing I told them is work doesn’t pay in this country.
The rational thing is for pensioners to pay tax on their income in the same way as everyone else. But as we saw with the WFA debacle, rationality goes out the window when it comes to pensioners.
I continue to blame Clive Dunn and St Winifred's School Choir.
I blame Reeves for simply not reversing Hunt’s uncosted employee NI cuts that removed all headroom
Which is bullshit.
Hunts freeze on threshold fully funded the Employee NI change.
It was a net tax rise.
If you are going to tax, better to do it through more honest and visible taxation rather than stealth and more stealth?
Indeed, which is why we should be abolishing NI and having a single rate of income tax that is paid by everyone the same, honestly and visibly.
Not taxing employment more than unearned incomes.
That is possible but you'd need to unravel NI from the pension system which will take at least some thought and legislation. On a wider point about differential taxation of earned and unearned income, the government is supposed to be looking at private equity, dividends and capital gains tax.
The need to unravel NI from the pensions system can be a long-term problem if you set employee NI to 1% in the short term, and change the income tax 20% rate to I think 28% renenue-neutral.
Any changes upwards of tax rates of capital gains will absolutely cost more than they raise. Arthur Laffer is waving from the door of the Treasury.
Any mad idea of taxing CG at income tax levels will drive hundreds of billions in investment vehicles offshore almost immediately. Dubai and Singapore are actively looking to recruit global PE funds.
You already get NIC "contributions" at 0% so no problem with setting a global 0% threshold rate for NICs, merge income tax, and still keep contributions based on income as it currently is.
Massive increase in income tax for pensioners though from 20% to 28%... It's why I would be doing it very slowly...
Merging income tax and NI is one of those 'easy fixes' that people who have only ever been on PAYE suggest.
It would be a massive increase in tax for pensioners and the self employed. Both groups who vote heavily....
That is precisely the point.
Pensioners and the self-employed should be liable for the same taxes as those on PAYE.
Everyone who earns the same amount should be taxed the same.
I would make it net tax revenue so cut the overall rate so those who are working for their income on PAYE get a tax cut, funded by taxing others the same as they would now be paying.
Yes but would it work politically as explained above large voting blocks would be against it.
There are large voting blocs against any change.
Taxes should be simple, low and evenly applied. Complicating it to appeal to voter blocs and dumping the burden on people in paid employment just harms everyone else and harms the economy by overtaxing employment.
But you have to get elected to effect the change.
They've already been elected.
With a manifesto promise that they are committed to not breaking
To not increase taxes on working families, yes.
What I propose would be a tax cut for them.
Its more in line with the manifesto than jacking up NI was.
Not quite what the manifesto actually says is” Labour will not increase taxes on working people. Which is why we will not increase National insurance the basic rate, higher or additional rates of income tax or VAT”. So they did specifically rule out increase in tax and NI.
Additionally in clarification they explained people had worked all there lives were included in their definition of working people.
Precisely.
Merge the two and there is no net increase, indeed it could be a combined cut and sold as such. All while not increasing, indeed reducing, the tax on working people.
Its more justifiable than the sophistry around the National Insurance increase.
No some working people according to the clarification would have their tax raised. It would be a breach of the manifesto
All working people did when NICs were increased, hence the sophistry around "ah but we didn't mean Employers NICs". It was still a very clear and unambiguous rise in tax.
A merger would simplify rates and not be a net increase. There would be winners and losers but there always are.
No a merger would just lead to welfare dependency from cradle to grave on tax funded welfare, with not even any attempt to have a contributory element for that welfare whether for unemployment benefit or the state pension
No it would not.
We already have welfare dependency. A merger would reduce it by lowering the proportion of taxes levied on those who work and would not change benefits one iota. 🤦♂️
You seem to have this delusion that a merger would increase benefits. It will not.
Yes it would. Most OECD nations fund their unemployment benefits via contributions to unemployment insurance and receipt of the full state pension also requiring sufficient social insurance contributions too.
Income tax would rise of course anyway as it would have NI merged into it and those on unemployment benefit or the state pension would not ever need to contribute a penny to claim them in full
They already don't need to contribute a penny to claim in full and you can keep the contribution link (indeed strengthen it) to the new combined rate.
All that would change is that currently those on taxable benefits don't pay NICs on their benefit income while those who work for their income do.
Why do you think those working for their income should be taxed more than those on benefits?
You can scrap NI credits and then ensure the full contribution link is kept for the state pension and JSA. Pensioners of course contributed to NIC throughout their working life anyway
You could keep the contribution link to a combined income tax rate, no need to abolish the contribution thresholds.
Pensioners of course never paid toward their own pensions, which is why we not only have no savings to pay for them but we are paying interest on debt instead.
Why should those on benefits be taxed less than those working for the same income?
Just because pensioners contributed something does not mean that they contributed enough.
What's clear now is that the contributions that current pensioners made over the past 60+ or so years has turned out to be woefully short of what is needed to fund the benefits and services to which they now consider themselves entitled. Yet they just don't seem to get that hard truth. And it shouldn't be down just to the next two or three generations to make up the shortfall alone.
Can you prove that dumb theory. If I had invested my NI payments for 50 years I would get significantly more guaranteed than state pension
Which would be great if NI was savings for a pension that have been set aside.
Its not, its a tax, and one that was spent in full as we have ran a deficit due to overspending almost every year.
Just because the government overspends and does not put it aside for correct purpose does not mean it should be reclassified as a tax.
Its not being reclassified as a tax.
It is a tax.
It always has been a tax.
It is defined in law as a tax.
It is defined in international treaties as a tax.
A tax by any other name is still a tax.
my state pension gets taxed at 48% already is that not enough for you
You don't need the money, malc. Government would spend it so much better than you....
Comments
Not only do we have a Zero Emissions Zone, we have a congestion charge which is transforming into a series of traffic filters in September. The train station has been almost cut off by several years of work on the Botley Road.
We have excruciatingly high on street parking and car park fees. And a number of LTNs which are largely hated by residents and local businesses. The number of blue badge parking spaces has also been reduced in the city centre.
I bought an EV 11 months ago as I had the cash at the right time.
So I am not affected by the ZEZ thankfully. The rest do make life difficult.
I only use the bus as part of Park and Ride because £2.50 for parking and riding for 2 adults is the cheapest option. But I only use that on occasions when the destination suits.
When I moved to my current location, we were served by 5 dedicated bus routes - 2, 2a, 2b, 2c and 2d. In the past 7 years that has been cut to 2 routes. The buses were a primary factor in the decision to move to this village (now town)
Buses can work for some but not for all. Oxford has Escooters and 2 lots of bikes but they don't extend this far (and are a menace in the centre)
Oxford would be great with a simple tram network but sadly the transport officers are obsessed with pushing bikes as the solution and their own anti-car dogma.
Pushing cars onto the inadequate ring roads (A34 and A40) is not a viable solution as they aren't investing in any improvements even though the impact of their plans on key junctions is an increase in traffic of 66% on their own estimates.
A balanced approach is necessary. For each stick, there has to be a carrot. At the moment, we are just being beaten.
The congestion charge has generated over £5million in fines since last October. So it is essentially a money raising scheme more than a traffic reduction measure.
But if you want to drive it to the club, either have it collected and go home yourself in the back of an S-class, or have a driver come and collect both you and the car at the end of the night. Hell, pay the valet parking guy at the club a couple of hundred quid if needs must.
In my 40s, I’d keep the fancy car for Sunday mornings, and absolutely choose the back seat the rest of the time.
Total and utter gamechanger, yet again for one of Elon’s companies.
The war has cost Russia $37bn over the last year, according to the certainly massively underestimated official numbers.
They have taken about 1000 sq miles so that's about $37 million/square mile.
They've also lost about 3-400,000 men, so that's about 3-400/square mile
For comparison, the cost of Ukrainian farmland is about $4 million/square mile.
So it would have cost Putin a tenth as much, and saved all those lives, just to buy the land rather than invade it, according to the official figures. In reality, of course, the real multiple is probably 20 or 30 times or more, not 10 times.
Such a staggering waste makes our own epic government disasters like HS2 look like models of efficiency and economy.
The buses are not bad.
NEW THREAD
If you suddenly want to get wasted, while out in the Veyron or whatever, you have spare transport.
So you don’t have to take the bus.
I’ve been bottling beer today. I got eighty four half litre bottles from two brews, and it’s all crystal clear
Just needs a few weeks to condition in the bottles
The ‘farmland’ is mostly covered in mines, and is going to be useless as farmland until extensive cleanup has been done.
The numbers don’t take into account the damage that the Ukranians are doing to the Russian economy, including destruction of O&G facilities, ports, vehicles, and logistics choke points.
The contrast was staggering. I'm used to bus services that are run purely to maximise short-term profit. The vehicles are mostly old, noisy, and uncomfortable, with no WiFi or power sockets, routes are scheduled to minimise the number of buses needed. Nothing is linked up, changing buses can mean waiting the best part of an hour for a connection. I was also very impressed how good services in Edinburgh are in the evening. Here services tail off significantly after 6pm, which seems to be a deliberate tactic to drive custom to taxi services (guess who owns those...). Even routes serving hospitals mostly just go away after 6.
McGills got public funding to buy some new electric buses a couple of years ago - no chance they'd spend their own money doing that. They asked for extra money to buy more and the Scottish government refused - so McGills is suing them. Which is indicative of the mindset of the owners. They also set the price of single tickets ridiculously high, because the funds they get from the government for OAP concession travel is set at a percentage of the single fare.
Everything is done in the name of making a quick buck. It really shouldn’t be like this.
😄