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I received this information yesterday from a very reliable source, who is involved with the Labour party (in the Manchester area)  and thought I'd pass it on. I mailed him back to check if it was spam, you know the usual "email this to everybody you know" type of thing, but he assures me that it isn't. I have heard something about this in the past, but never knew it's details. If it's true, then we're in for some taxing times ahead.

The government's proposal to introduce road pricing will mean you having to purchase a tracking device for your car and paying a monthly bill to use it. The tracking device will cost about ?200 and in a recent study by the BBC, the lowest monthly bill was ?28 for a rural florist and ?194 for a delivery driver. A non working Mum who used the car to take the kids to school paid ?86 in one month. On top of this massive increase in tax, you will be tracked. Somebody will know where you are at all times. They will also know how fast you have been going, so even if you accidentally creep over a speed limit, you can expect and additional fine with your monthly bill.

If you care about our freedoms and stopping the constant bashing of the driver, please sign the petition on No 10's new website at: petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/

Please pass this on to everyone who owns a car/motorcycle. It affects them and its not limited to speeding! They also know where parking restrictions etc. are located ? and you! It is a total invasion of privacy.

(Additional - I have just been on the No10 site and there are LESS than 700k signed up to it.  There are over 30 million vehicles and drivers in this country. Just to register 3% of those against this proposal there needs to be 900k signed up and the closing date is 20/02/07!  Did you know about this!


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This smells of a typical Government tactic to me.

Here's how it works - leak out news that you will introduce lots of measures to piss people off so that when the legislation finally goes through, it will actually comprise LESS measures, thus giving the public the impression that they've "reached a compromise" and forced the Government to back down, when in fact the Government have achieved their initial objective all along.

They did the same with the recently-announced Stansted Airport expansion - they originally proposed two or three new runways.  Naturally, the locals were up in arms and went crazy.  Then the Government announced they were only going to build one - which was their intention all along. 

Supercasinos - The Daily Mail made a huge fuss about the POSSIBILITY of dozens of them.  What do we have now?  One.  In Manchester.  And that was their intention, all along.  They were NEVER going to build dozens - they knew it would be hugely unpopular.

And now this - something else guaranteed to whip up public ire and make us all sign petitions.  At this stage, this information is merely from a "reliable source" in the Labour party.  Is this person an MP or just a member of the party doing his bit for Daily Mail-type scaremongering?  I think I can guess which it is.

And this has been appearing in the Mail for weeks now - this is hardly groundbreaking news, is it?  Oooh, they're going to charge us for driving our cars (because they don't anyway).  They'll be able to track us (they can do that now with the existing cameras).  They'll know when we're speeding.  Everyone speeds, so get over it.

Bear in mind that if these new measures are to be made law, they are going to have to go through the Commons and the Lords several times and undergo a lot of changes in the process.  I think you'll find that if these measures ever make it to the statute book, they will be nowhere near as bad as the information you've just outlined above.

I would advise everyone to be very cynical about this until it actually starts going through parliament.

Until then, it's just another bit of carefully-leaked rubbish.

I agree with you Neil, it's what I call the reach for the stars but accept you will only get the moon tactic. It's not only governments who use this ploy but thats another story. Yes we are getting a lot of press at the moment about a Manchester congestion charge but it probably won't be as bad as the media & the like would have us believe.

Without going into too much detail Larry, the guy who sent me this information is a Labour councillor, who I have known for the past 3-4 years. I met him through my union activity, and once you know him, you get to see he's a kind of Labour rebel, quite against many of the things labour are trying to do. He has made his feelings known, but as he's not an MP, he doesn't have a great deal of power, so to speak. I'll leave that one there.

Maybe this whole thing is scaremongering, and as you point out usually, the government gives us the worse case scenario, then reaches a "deal" that is no-where near as bad. I have read this in the press before(Not tabloids before you say) and also on TV, possibly Trevor McDonalds programmes. It may or may not come into force, but it is on trial at the moment. That is what the petition is about.

It'll be very interesting to see what the final outcome of this all is in years to come

Daz you say it's on trial at the moment but where? I'm sure they couldn't keep a trial like this secret. Also your friend talks about a petition but again I have heard nothing. Don't get me wrong mate I'm not doubting what you have been told , it's just that I would have thought I would have heard something by now.