Melodramatic Tax Nonsense

[piggeh]

Like many I'm slightly dismayed to see tax creep up again on VED. No doubt the revenue wont be put back into infrastructure or carbon offsetting but will instead find it's way to Afghanistan somehow.

However, what really 'gets my goat' are some of the OTT news reporting that goes with it. For example Radio 1 this evening with a female driver:

"I use it to take my children to school, to go shopping and just basic running about really.

"I'd be lost without it because you get used to being able to go places without having to reply on public transport.

"When it's raining my kids don't have to get soaked. It's just very important for me to have it."

And she's not happy with the government's plans.

"It's going to be hard when the changes happen. Obviously it's going to be a big jump in price but it's already a struggle as it stands now.

"It'll mean we'll have to miss out on other things. As a family we won't be able to go out and spend more on the children, go out or go away for day trips."

Maybe she should cut down on some of the 'basic running around' really, rather than getting all melodramatic about how it will have a fantastically outrageous effect on their standard of living. To be honest if £80 suddenly means she cant even afford to GO OUT then she's overstretched her finances anyway. As for all the people moaning about how they cant afford new low economy cars - go and get a pre-01 car then. I'm sure there's people a lot worse off then the hundreds of thousands of people driving 04 reg cars.

Maybe it's just me, but I think some of the comments coming out about the rise in tax are just preposterous.

[streetster]

i'd happily pay £300 road tax - and looks like i will come april next year - as long as it was going to make a difference, but not a penny of it will go into anything green-related

[Butcher]

Ah it's nice to have a '99 car at times.

I do think the talk of tax affecting thing is a bit much though, given that rising fuel prices have increased costs by a similar amount per month for many, getting all antsy about £80 a year seems silly.

[schmunk]

Hurrah for being 179g/km and not 181!

(As mentioned above, however, it really doesn't make a significant difference...)

[TiG]

I'll be paying £450 top wack for my octavia at 205g/km, and i'll still be driving away hard from roundabouts etc...

There are a few pleasures in life like driving that i'm willing to pay for....

I'll be voting tory providing they drop this stupid ~7 year retrospective penalty scheme.

TiG

[Howard]

I'll be paying £450 top wack for my octavia at 205g/km, and i'll still be driving away hard from roundabouts etc...

There are a few pleasures in life like driving that i'm willing to pay for....



TiG

Ditto

My pre-2001 203g/km car costs less than half that Good innit

[Zak33]

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring...icle/index.htm

Government's own webpage for Tax disc costs is still down

Autotrader to the rescue
http://www.autotrader.co.uk/EDITORIA...ews/41183.html at the bottom

[Barakka]

I love the spin the media put on it saying "the government said the new rules would ease the burden for most drivers but we have found that 4 out of 10 cars made since 2001 will see an increase next year". OK so 6 out of 10, or MORE than half will see either no change or a reduction, sorry but i'm not seeing a broken promise there

I do think it's not great to go back so far, maybe 5 years to 2003 when manufacturers had started taking a bit of notice of the banded tax scheme in place, but to say that you now won't be able to take the kids on days out any more because of a £1.50/week increase when surely you've seen fuel go up that much in the last few months is more than daft.

[schmunk]

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring...icle/index.htm

Government's own webpage for Tax disc costs is still down

It was up this morning - I was looking at it.

[Howard]

It's not exactly a burden is it. If you can afford to buy a new/newish car you can afford another £100 a year to tax it. Not that I don't think it's ridiculous and unnecessary of course, but it's being blown a little out of proportion, as usual

[TheAnimus]

I love the spin the media put on it saying "the government said the new rules would ease the burden for most drivers but we have found that 4 out of 10 cars made since 2001 will see an increase next year". OK so 6 out of 10, or MORE than half will see either no change or a reduction, sorry but i'm not seeing a broken promise there

I do think it's not great to go back so far, maybe 5 years to 2003 when manufacturers had started taking a bit of notice of the banded tax scheme in place, but to say that you now won't be able to take the kids on days out any more because of a £1.50/week increase when surely you've seen fuel go up that much in the last few months is more than daft.

The complaint came about because it was claimed the majority of drivers would be better off under this scheme.

Not worse off or the same (which the majority are).

The thing is for some people at the bottom rung, public transport isn't available for their schedule because their working the hours on piss poor pay that no one with better skills would. These are the people who are going to be hardest hit.

[kalniel]

The thing is for some people at the bottom rung, public transport isn't available for their schedule because their working the hours on piss poor pay that no one with better skills would. These are the people who are going to be hardest hit.

Why would the poorest people be driving the most polluting cars?

This change completely bypasses the poorest - I'm not exactly poor but I can't afford a car newer than 01, so I'm unaffected. If I could afford a newer car it is likely to be some small thing that has reduced tax. So I completely don't buy your arguement that the bottom rung people will be hardest affected - they'll be the least affected.

In my opinion the people most affected will be the group of people who change cars every 3 years whether they need to or not, who incidentally were the group that benefitted from the cutting of income tax to 20p.

[99Flake]

Ah it's nice to have a '99 car at times.

1996 car, 4.0l V8 produces 290g/km CO2 and I pay half of an equivalent post 2001 car.

Makes me a very happy boy!

[schmunk]

Why would the poorest people be driving the most polluting cars?

This change completely bypasses the poorest - I'm not exactly poor but I can't afford a car newer than 01, so I'm unaffected. If I could afford a newer car it is likely to be some small thing that has reduced tax. So I completely don't buy your arguement that the bottom rung people will be hardest affected - they'll be the least affected.

In my opinion the people most affected will be the group of people who change cars every 3 years whether they need to or not, who incidentally were the group that benefitted from the cutting of income tax to 20p.

A very sensible analysis.

[Saracen]

I love the spin the media put on it saying "the government said the new rules would ease the burden for most drivers but we have found that 4 out of 10 cars made since 2001 will see an increase next year". OK so 6 out of 10, or MORE than half will see either no change or a reduction, sorry but i'm not seeing a broken promise there

What the government, in the form of Gordon Brown personally, said .... at the despatch box on the House of Commons, to David Cameron, was that if he looked at the vehicle tax plans, ...

he will see that the majority of drivers will benefit from it.

I watched him as he said it, and it's been repeated numerous times since. On OTHER occasions, he has added a rider to the effect that the majority will benefit .... 'or be no worse off', or some similar phrase. But on that occasion, in a formal statement to the house, he said no such thing.

Yet, it turns out, far from the majority benefiting, as he claimed, 18% will. And 43% will be worse off.

In what sense does 18% being better off and 43% being worse off constitute a "majority" benefiting?

Is it a "broken promise"? No, because it wasn't a promise.

Is it Gordon Brown either, depending on your perception, either lying or "misspeaking"? Hell, yes.

Is it a huge story? On it's own merot, probably not. But Brown has a track record on this. Remember the 10% tax band farce? He spend months pretending that all was fine and that nobody would be worse off.

The thing is, as an ex-Chancellor for 10 years, and one that's spent ten year crowing about his self-proclaimed economic competence (which, of course, was a con it it's own right), he hoists himself with his own petard when he makes statements like that in the House. He was so keen to try to portray Cameron in a bad light that he got his numbers wrong, and made a statement, either through incompetence or deliberately, that misled the house.

Again.

Oh, and by the way, his "mistake" nets the treasury over £1 billion in extra tax revenue, from motorists that are already paying £50 billion a year in motoring taxes, right at a time when people are suffering from rapidly rising costs, like fuel, heating and food.

So, more or less at the same time, Brown is telling us :-

- Britain is better equipped to handle the worldwide problems than anyone else
- we can't go for pay rises to compensate for rises costs because inflation needs to be controlled
- he's going to clobber motorists AGAIN
- the rise in fuel prices has already netted the treasury some £5 billion a year in increased VAT revenues
- we should cut our food costs by reusing scraps and not waste so much food
- he goes and eats a slap-up 8-course luxury banquet in Japan


That's why it's a story. It's the hypocrisy, the contradictions and the sheer balls of the spin. Majority" better off indeed.




Oh, and there's a generic lesson to be learned from this, too, and it's a lesson in understanding a relatively new language I'll call politicianese.

Suppose I was running things, and I was going to change vehicle excise duty. Suppose there's 20 million motorists. Suppose I introduce a tax that :-

- doesn't affect 10 million of them at all,
- means ONE person is better off,
- the other 9,999,999 pay £10,000 a year more.

I can STILL say "the majority will be benefit or be no worse off", and it'd be true, because 50.000005% will be in that category.

Never mind that I could also say :-

- 0.000005% will be better off,
- 49.999995% will be worse off,
- the Treasury raises nearly £10 billion in new tax

and that'd be true too.

So from the same set of facts, I can say :-

1) "the majority will be benefit or be no worse off"

2) "almost half of motorists will pay £10,000 more every year"

and BOTH statements are true.

When seasoned politicians make statements, you have to be VERY careful how you interpret them. Blair and Brown said they weren't going to increase the basic or higher rate of income tax, and they didn't. They stuck it on National Insurance instead. The result is still that the tax take from pay packets went up. Do most people care what the name given the the tax that takes money from their pay packet is, or that it takes money? Oh, and that's without the dozens of other tax rises Brown instigated.

And when Brown got his coronation to PM, what did he say he was going to do? Be more open. Dump the spin. Yeah, right.

See, Barakka, the problem is this. Even I will concede that Brown could sell have just missed that "or no worse off" caveat in the heat of the moment. Even I, and I'm about as cynical about politicians as anyone, will concede that could just be a mistake.

What is NOT a mistake, is absolutely NOT, is his choice of phrase.

He KNEW that roughly 18% would be better off, but that 43% would be worse off. And how did he phrase it, even given the extra caveat that he used on other occasions?

.... the majority of drivers will benefit from it or be no worse off.

Yes, it's the strict truth. But it's sure as hell also misleading. It's spin. It's exactly what he said he was going to stop doing. And it's why we are all so distrusting of politicians.

And it's also why, if he's going to play that deceitful kind of verbal gymnastics, that when he screws up, he deserves to be held to account for it.

Do we have a right to expect our politicians to be truthful, in the sense that what they say should actually mean what it appears to mean, or should they be able to say something knowing full well that wjile it may be literally true, it is phrased such as to give a wholly misleading impression. If that isn't lying, it's certainly as close as **** is to swearing.

In other words, it's about integrity. It's about basic honesty. It's about not trying to hoodwink us all the time.

In my view, we (as in society), and the media, and most emphatically politicians, all need to grow up. We need to accept that politicians can make mistakes, and get things wrong. They are, after all, human, and not Gods .... though that newsflash will come as a shock to some of them.

Politicians need to start being honest with us, and not just to not lie, but to not mislead. That applies whether it's a policy shift, whether it's the kind of flagrant spin Brown was using here or whether it's transparency about their expenses.

The media, for their part, need to be able to honestly probe what politicians are up to, and to hold them to account, but they need to stop the Paxmanesque style of loaded question, where you know they phrase questions such that whatever the answer, it'll be thrown back at them in one form or another.

And we, the public, need to accept that politicians WILL get it wrong. That is simply a rule of nature. But when they do, we need to accept that they can apologise for it, explain what happened, learn from it and put it right. A mistake, a misjudgement, is not always a resigning offence. In fact, it usually isn't, providing it was an honest mistake.

But we, the public, aren't getting a look-in. Politicians have forgotten how to be honest, largely because the press are forever trying to catch them out and make them look bad. We need a press that respect effort, integrity and competence when it's used, and even competence allows for mistakes. It also allows for policy to change because the situation has changed. But we also need a press that holds politicians up to the harsh light of publicity and public accountability when they don't exhibit that effort or integrity, or when mistakes are bad enough as to be rank incompetence .....which in all honesty won't happen that often.

But everyone's indulged in this peurile game of linguistic gymnastics, or maybe fencing, and political interviews are nearly always 90% about smug politicians and smart-arse political journalists trying to score points of each other. If it wasn't, maybe people like Brown wouldn't need to employ deceitful terminology like he used, and then, wouldn't have to remember the detail of the caveats so couldn't screw it up.

[hitman67]

My '02 Focus TDCi (145 whatever you measure it in) looks like it'll stay around £125, so am happy The merc may be a little worse though... and the DVLA doesn't have the C02 figure for it...