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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7240309.stm

Ken "You drive a car and so deserve to die" Livingston believes the Prius and similar cars should be exempt from paying the congestion charge because of low CO2 and NO emissions hile driving. (Once again completely missing the point and not looking at what the production of those cars does to the environment.) That's fine of course but to heave the congestion charge for "Gas guzzlers" up-to 25£ a pop is surely completely unacceptable?

Combine this with another 2p fuel duty increase that's coming up soon surely everybody who drives a car in the UK should storm up to Whitehall and beat every single politician with a stick untill they are left with nothing but a short bloody stump where their head used to be?

When I was working for IBM a mere 6 or so years ago I remember thinking that fuel in the UK was expensive at 89p a litre..now it's upto 104 and will be upto 106 soon.

Yesterday on BBC Scotland they dragged this Scottish Haulier in front of the camera who showed their invoices for fuel.

1.5 mill£ in total invoices..1 Mill of that was tax! Surely another increase will do great harm to the UK haulage industry and we already know it won't keep those driving out of the car. (as has been proven by all the previous increases in taxation on fuel)

Fuel duty in the UK is now at 50.35p a litre and will go upto 52.35p  in April.. the 50.35 is more than double the average rate in Europe ( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/call-to-scrap-planned-fuel-duty-rise-780795.html?r=RSS and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7021021.stm )

Surely it is time, once again, to bring the UK to a standstill and show Mr Brown and Mr Darling (though it was Brown that implemented these rises) that the govt can't just keep ripping it's people off? I, for one, hope the haulliers do just that..and stick at it for a long long time and stick it right up the govt.


Oh...there are of course also plans in the aking to increase road tax for everyone who drives a car with an engine bigger than 2 litres.

clearly as we are such a large country it is far more important for us to have the highest fuel prices in the world rather than small countries like china and the US. think about the enviroment dude!

yeah...sorry.

London is filthy. Really really dirty. Spend a couple of hours walking about in town and you can feel the dirt in your pores, you'll see it when you blow your nose and it turns the tissue black.

Anything which reduces the number of vehicles coming into London spewing fumes into the air is a good thing.

If fuel prices were too high people would switch to cars which used less of it.

taxi's buses lorries.

modern diesel engines with particulate filters are a zillion times better than crappy old truck engines

Hauliers

yesterday one said, in an interview I heard "any British Haulier at the moment is doing well to break even" and went on to blame tax

I understand the relative taxation of British Hauliers compared to Continental counterparts is high and I don't seek to defend it

but don't they all miss a simple point, and sorry to be too Thatcherite about it..but

aren't there too many hauliers? so the prices they are able to charge cannot rise as someone will always undercut

its simple supply and demand, as much as the burden of taxation surely that makes Haulier's business lives a struggle?

fewer hauliers=less supply=the remaining better haliers can restore economic order to the industry by pricing sensibly to make a margin over and above the tax take?

I've stayed in London for a fair while and I think you're confusing it with the coalmines up in the Newcastle area ;) London is not the cleanest city in the world. In fact..you name me one big city that is clean and I'll be impressed. Amsterdam isn't as clean as the towns around it, Paris is filthy compared to Cannes...that is the way it works when you have a lot of people living and working in a small space. You want to live in a very clean town? Move to a smaller town.

A Toyota prius will cost you 17k'ish where as a Renault Clio will cost you 10k'ish. True the Clio isn't a brilliant car but the Prius is widely regarded as shit. So say you spend a little bit more and buy an Audi A4 for 19k. even a Landrover Freelander 2.0 is in that range..(second hand with 20k miles done you can even get one for 10-11K..still a lot cheaper than a Prius which is a car that most likely will never do 20k)
Why should I switch from a relatively small car like a Clio to a Prius? 7k is rather a lot of dosh. I'd much rather pay 2k more and get myself an Audi A4 than I would get a Prius.
And this is where the real problem is. The really low emission cars are terrible and very expensive. the average person has to keep driving a normal car and pay a fortune in tax...and that's simply not right.

Most cars that are percieved to be gas guzzlers (anything over a 2 litre engine is percieved to be a gas guzzler by this govt) actually don't have very high CO2 emissions compared to "London transport" busses...the old black cab also doesn't do a lot of good...but that's public transport and therefore allowed to be shit.
The prices for the trains keep going up year after year even though the trains provide a shitty service in rush hour in this country. Hell, compare the train service to the average European country and you'll find that it's truly awful and much MUCH more expensive.

That is where the problem lies..and the solution therefore simply can not be to stick more tax on fuel.

Too many haulliers, not really. There is work enough to keep them all going. It is just not economically viable for them all to keep going because the govt prices them out of it. There is a big difference between the competition killing you and your govt doing it for you. I have no problem with a haullier going out of business because he can't compete with a better, more efficient competitor. But that's not what's going on here.

so less hauliers means higher prices. yep that'll work.

less supply to meet demand, means the remaining operators can charge more if the service they provide is more scarce.

Lets face it, the tax take isn't going to fall..no amount of haulier lobbying is achieving that, so maybe mergers of perators and a lot of cost cutting is the best defensive strategy from a business perspective

Once done, prices can trend higher, economic conditions and quality of service allowing

Hauliers are never going to make a fortune. It's too easy to set up and run a haulage company.

If the tax raises prices so that companies look to use alternatives to road haulage then it is doing what it is designed to do.

It is easy to set up a haulage company,but running it is another matter.Road transport is already subject to more legal issues than most other industries.Some of the more recent legislation includes..drivers hours and working time,use of tachographs,record keeping,health and safety,employment law,environmental law,corporate manslaughter legislation.In 2008 and 2009 more legislation will come into effect...The Driver Certificate of Proffessional Competence and the Low Emissions Certificate.

One of the major problems for UK hauliers is the influx of foreign vehicles.They enter the country with their fuel tanks full of cheap diesel (often as much as 3000 litres) and are able to undercut their UK counterparts(fuel accounts for over a third of a hauliers costs).A high percentage of them ignore driving hour laws and weight legislation,and if you get involved in an accident with them you are very unlikely to get any help from the Constabulary as it "takes too much effort to bring them to court".

Add in the cost of £5000 for EACH illegal immigrant who might decide to stowaway on your lorry(,even though you are unaware you are classed as guilty.)and the taxes and levvys you pay if you leave the country to deliver abroad.

All UK hauliers really want is a level playing field.

I drive a gas guzzler, i don't need to but i choose too, i am happy to pay the price to do so.

Yeah but you're loaded ;)

Booder, you obviously know far more about the specifics of the industry than I do....

a simple question really...despite intense lobbying there is no government will to provide a level playing field, in the absence of one what should hauliers do to run their businesses effectively?

The government is actually unable to level the playing field - EU laws give EU drivers the right to work in this country. Doing anything to aid the UK hauliers to the detriment of non-UK drivers would contravene EU legislation.

105.9 in Sainsbury's over the road from me.

Andrew is right - London is filthy.  I took some pics out of my office window a few weeks ago on a day when there was high pressure and little wind.  The layer of pollution across the city was visible to the eye and quite disturbing.  I'll post them up later.

Yes EU laws give EU drivers the right to work here but they should have to pay the same charges that we have to pay when we work in other EU countries.Obviously aiding EU drivers to the detriment of UK drivers doesnt contravene EU legislation.




A driver buying 1,000 litres of diesel in a Belgian forecourt would pay £695.30, while his British counterpart buying the same amount of fuel in the UK has to pay £921.66.

Fuel duty in Belgium is only 24.7p a litre, compared with 50.35p in Britain.


One in seven of the heaviest lorries on Britain's roads comes from overseas.

There had been hopes that the Government would level the playing field by introducing road pricing for lorries, which would have been paid by all hauliers.

However, this was ditched by the Department for Transport after it decided to press ahead with more ambitious plans to include all road users. These proposals have since been shelved.

The haulage industry believes foreign lorry drivers enjoy a substantial advantage over British ones.

"Foreign lorries working in the UK pay no UK taxes, make no contribution to the road wear which they create, and pay nothing at all for working in the UK," said a spokesman for the association.

"By contrast, the UK international fleet working in Europe obviously buys all of its fuel overseas and pays local road tolls and taxes."

from David Millward, Transport Editor Telegraph

Without the governments help i don't think there is a great deal they can do to run more effectively,i think most avenues have been expored. A few years back ,the weekend ferries from Dover,Harwich were chockablock with units travelling across the sea to fill their tanks with cheap diesel.The government realised that it was missing out on lots of revenue so fines were issued .Sad but true.

I was out walking along the Euston Road a few days ago and there is a light-grey concrete building by the road. Well, the top ten stories are light-grey - as you get closer to the ground the building gets darker and darker till the bit by the ground is black. You can see exactly how far up the building the traffic fumes get to.

I think London should be declared full, and we operate a 'one in, one out' policy, like a busy club on a Saturday night.

As Alan Partridge once said "London...spelt S H I T H O L E"  ;D

Well we could have tax harmonisation across Europe, but that would mean aggreeing to treaties and such which apparently this country doesnt want to do.

Even getting the UK to join the Euro would make a massive difference as people would finally truly realise how much they are getting shafted in this country. You pay over the odds for justabout everything here. But the pound is more precious as an institution over here and so the switch to the Euro isn't going to happen. The fear of change that the British people seem to have astonishes me..and all this in the name of "tradition" what a load of bollox.