this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
30 points (94.1% liked)

United Kingdom

4109 readers
334 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in [email protected] or [email protected]
More serious politics should go in [email protected].

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

As discussed in this article, the government is busily ignoring its own reports and its own advisers. Instead, they're trying to make it harder to implement life-saving policies like ULEZ, LTNs and 20mph zones, and even trying to make it harder for councils to fine motorists who break the law (more great stuff from 'the party of law and order'!).

There's no such thing as road tax, but full duty, which motorists do pay, has not risen. It's been frozen for, I think, 14 years. Hunt froze it again the Budget just the other day! There may be other car-specific taxes I'm not aware of and you're sort of right that the overall tax burden has increased, but I don't know how much that applies to motorists specifically.

EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to add: there's one important sense in which clean air policies benefit motorists more than anybody, because the people most exposed to air pollution are people in cars. So, proven effective clean air policies like ULEZ certainly benefit motorists' health, which is why I described the government's new strategy as 'supposedly' pro-motorist. Not sure you can describe a policy to make people breathe poisonous air as 'pro' that group!