Bristol Diesel Vehicles Realities

With the proposed diesel levy proposed for Bristol there has been some interesting debate and quite rightly so, but what are the long term realities for everyone?

Everyone pays Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) and this means everyone has the lawful right to drive on any public road so why do Bristol think they are any different, in point of fact they aren’t but they are merely being used as a prototype model to gauge public reaction to rolling out such schemes nationally. If anyone has paid their VED they cannot be stopped from driving on public roads into Bristol or anywhere else for that matter, and what is happening is called “double dipping” and this is where you are charged twice for something, and this is nothing more than fraud and theft from the motorist. Interestingly 84% of motorists are against it and as only around 40% of new cars are diesel then as many motorists driving petrol engine vehicles oppose this double dipping and this is interesting.
Imagine doing your weekly supermarket shopping and your checkout bill comes to £100 as an example, you pay at the checkout and as you leave the car park they prevent you from leaving unless you pay them another £100, it’s actually no different and the agenda is always money.
Differentiating between fuel types is little more than discrimination and is no different to discriminating against someone because of their race, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs, so should anyone accept this form of discrimination.

This goes much deeper and has a knock on effect on every aspect of life and this will dissuade investment in Bristol, it will see the demise of Bristol jobs, and impact financially, on every part of our lives and people are seeing this, along with the fact that large parts of Bristol residents are on low incomes, so is it fair they should be financially penalised again. Think about it for a minute, if you own a diesel car for its economy then you will be penalised, if your local supermarket has three delivery lorries per day and they are proposing a £100 per vehicle charge then this is another £1800 per week they are going to have to find and guess who will be charged, yes, the customers with price hikes as by their very nature, they are businesses and are in business to make a profit. How about online shopping, and yet again you may shop on Amazon or other similar sites and suddenly your postcode determines you are liable to a delivery charge where it would normally be free delivery, and if you don’t have a car and rely on buses your bus fares will also rise.

What about your property? Yes its value will fall as the amount of potential buyers will also fall and this generally creates a glut of housing meaning house prices fall along with rental incomes from rented properties as they are also suffer from a huge drop in demand. Great, but what if you are elderly and cannot manage to do the things you used to do and you have a gardener to cut your lawns and hedges, or they come and paint your wooden fencing with a preservative annually, yes they will be charged and this will be passed onto the customer. What about that extension you were thinking of, your builder is charged, your roof tiles become damaged or loose and you get a roofer in and they are charged, or your electrician, plumber, drainage contractor, painter and decorator, and every other service provider you use will be charged. Your gas and electricity suppliers get hit and have to pay for their contractors raised rates to repair electric cables, install new cables, or repair mains gas leaks, and then of course there is water and sewage to consider.

Now everyone is hit with price hikes as everyone uses gas, electricity, and water and we all need the toilet and not being a car user doesn’t exempt you.

Many people will be hit through no fault of their own and generally this will be employment which requires a vehicle and many people get a company car or van so they are hit through their employment and nothing else. Many management rely on their company car, this is why they have them, and many service industries, delivery companies, utility companies, and delivery drivers have vehicles they take home and one example among many would be a utilities company who have a number of employees on call out 24/7/365 because they are needed and a necessity.
Your electricity fails in the middle of the night and your alarm doesn’t go off in the morning, or you gas goes off because of a major leak and your gas central heating goes off, or your water goes off or the sewage pipes rupture, what happens; someone is there within an hour to assess the problem and call out the appropriate manpower or contractors to complete a safe repair or replacement. They need to dig the road up so they call out another contractor to install the correct signage and cones or barriers and potentially traffic lights, they call out yet another contractor to bring out, and operate a mini digger to dig the road up, and of course there are also their own teams with the correct specialism to rectify the issue.

You or another family member may have an accident and require a doctor and its outside surgery hours and you get an “on call doctor” who are all private companies and they arrive by car and many have 4X4’s to counter much of the bad weather and who will also be hit. Then there are the fire brigades with their big fire engines, the ambulances with their specially bodied vans, and the Police also with a variety of vehicles who may be called, this culminates in higher general taxes and higher council tax rates. Many managerial positions attract a company car as they are on call and it maybe to a site or works, or simply for an office or factory alarm activation.

Are Bristol guilty of deliberately creating traffic congestion? In point of fact, most councils have been caught out doing this by a number of means, generally this began as installing mini islands where they were not necessary or wanted, rephrasing traffic lights and unnecessarily installing others, and the ubiquitous speed humps which discriminate against the disabled, elderly, and temporarily injured. This is before we add the emergency services who are also unnecessarily impeded, particularly the fire brigade and ambulances, where seconds matter.
Look at this logically, only recently in Derby was there a traffic light failure at a major roundabout and everyone said remove them as they are not needed and the facts spoke for themselves as there were no accidents there in the two full days they were out of action, but the people spoke and wrote about this. Everyone who took to social media and spoke to the local media said the same thing, many were claiming waits of 30-40 minutes just to get to this island said they had been reduced to around 5 minutes and this was from thousands of people and not just a handful, proof if it were needed that deliberate congestion creation is happening. A very simple case of provide the solution and then create the problem so we can offer the solution.

In point of fact there is a simple debate between petrol and diesel engines and the simple facts are that comparing the emissions is akin to comparing apples to a Muck Donalds Happy meal as they emit different emissions, but RDE compliant vehicles clearly show diesel engines emit fewer pollutants than diesels.

It may be obvious to many people that the country has a rising debt crisis and as more people get into debt merely to survive, it can also be seen that a great number of people will have to go further into debt to get replacement cars which are not affected by the proposed legislation, and this is often with people on lower wages who rely upon their car to get to work, meaning they are a necessity of work. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that this could be seen as merely another way of getting more people into debt, and those already in debt, further into debt, so this can be construed as little more than creating a localised humanitarian crises.

Its our own fault ,those who have the power to stop it will as usual just meekly comply.
Its exactly the same with the congestion charge. If groups like the Road Haulage Ass.
were to say " As from midnight our vehicles will no longer enter these areas" It would all be
stopped within a day. Imagine London or Bristol without their daily supplies . Food would be gone
within a day and thats before you even look at the effects of those you have listed above.

Then of course on another note there is the 'buslane' scam . All belonging to and maintained by
every taxpayer ,but there use is only permitted for buses and taxis ,all private corporations.
These do not work as there are always pinch points were there is no longer room for a designated
lane ,result congestion as traffic using these lanes must merge into the other lanes.

We all have the power to stop these deliberate infringements of our rights by collectively just
saying NO. Will it ever happen in this land of the sheeple ? Not a chance.

Totally agree Dave.

as per assassin, too true if most commercial deliveries stopped there would be too much "mary hell" played & it would soon be turned around