Question for Europeans

Brimstone > wrote on Tue, 10 May 2005 14:20:21 GMT:
> Depresion wrote:
>> "Brimstone" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>> Depresion wrote:
>>>> "Larry Bud" > wrote in message
>>>> ups.com...
>>>>>
>>>>> Magnulus wrote:
>>>>>> I wonder how the European economy stayed afloat with all the taxes
>>>>>> on petrol and diesel that they levy over there.
>>>>>
>>>>> Their infrastructure isn't as spread out as ours is. How many
>>>>> Europeans commute an hour to work every day? In the US, it's
>>>>> commonplace because there's so much land.
>>>>
>>>> It's not that uncommon in the UK but that's down to deliberate
>>>> attempts to make commuting harder.
>>>
>>> Which is why many people choose to live increasing distances from
>>> their workplaces, because commuting is more difficult than it used
>>> to be.
>>>
>>> Contrary to popular mythology roads have been improved to allow
>>> faster
>>> speeds and railways are now carrying more people than ever before,
>>> despite significant reductions in track mileage.
>>>
>>
>> 3/4 or UK's local roads are deteriorating year on year. We are ?8.3
>> billon behind in road maintenance. By last year the plan was to have
>> halted the deterioration but it hasn't happened and by 2010 we were
>> to have caught up and removed the backlog unfortunately the first
>> part was no where near achieved as about 50% of the money allocated
>> for maintenance is being spent elsewhere on things like speed
>> cushions, bus lanes, and what's laughably called our education system
>> by local authorities. It's about time that money allocated by the
>> national government for road maintenance is reserved only for use in
>> actually maintaining roads.
>
> I wasn't talking about maintenance,

So? He wasn't talking about improvements to the road system, but that
didn't stop you.

> but then you were aware of that before your petulant little rant
> weren't you?.

So you actually have no argument against the fact that British roads
are horrible unmaintained?

--
David Taylor

>

Brimstone > wrote on Tue, 10 May 2005 15:11:41 GMT:
> Mark Hewitt wrote:
>>
>> Which is entirely the point. They know that everyone thinking of
>> 'tax' as being income tax, so they dare not touch that. Instead they
>> make us pay tax in other ways. Mostly grossly unfair ways like fuel
>> tax.
>
> Surely the time to object was when the tax was first introduced.

Why not now? It may have been appropriate temporarily. It may
have seemed appropriate at the time, but no longer.

> What was the justification for it and what was the level of objection,
> other than from the party in opposition at the time?

Who cares? If there's a good justification for replacing it with
something better _NOW_, then it's irrelevant if it was a good idea
X decades ago.

--
David Taylor

David Taylor wrote:
> Brimstone > wrote on Tue, 10 May 2005 15:11:41
> GMT:
>> Mark Hewitt wrote:
>>>
>>> Which is entirely the point. They know that everyone thinking of
>>> 'tax' as being income tax, so they dare not touch that. Instead they
>>> make us pay tax in other ways. Mostly grossly unfair ways like fuel
>>> tax.
>>
>> Surely the time to object was when the tax was first introduced.
>
> Why not now? It may have been appropriate temporarily. It may
> have seemed appropriate at the time, but no longer.

On what grounds is it no longer appropriate?


>> What was the justification for it and what was the level of
>> objection, other than from the party in opposition at the time?
>
> Who cares?

To understand the present and the future you need to understand what
happened in the past and why.

> If there's a good justification for replacing it with
> something better _NOW_, then it's irrelevant if it was a good idea
> X decades ago.

Ah, the magic word "if". I've not yet seen any justification, is there any,
excluding the usual bleats of the supposedly poor hard done by motorist?

David Taylor wrote:
> Brimstone > wrote on Tue, 10 May 2005 14:20:21
> GMT:
>> Depresion wrote:
>>> "Brimstone" > wrote in message
>>> ...
>>>> Depresion wrote:
>>>>> "Larry Bud" > wrote in message
>>>>> ups.com...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Magnulus wrote:
>>>>>>> I wonder how the European economy stayed afloat with all the
>>>>>>> taxes on petrol and diesel that they levy over there.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Their infrastructure isn't as spread out as ours is. How many
>>>>>> Europeans commute an hour to work every day? In the US, it's
>>>>>> commonplace because there's so much land.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's not that uncommon in the UK but that's down to deliberate
>>>>> attempts to make commuting harder.
>>>>
>>>> Which is why many people choose to live increasing distances from
>>>> their workplaces, because commuting is more difficult than it used
>>>> to be.
>>>>
>>>> Contrary to popular mythology roads have been improved to allow
>>>> faster
>>>> speeds and railways are now carrying more people than ever before,
>>>> despite significant reductions in track mileage.
>>>>
>>>
>>> 3/4 or UK's local roads are deteriorating year on year. We are ?8.3
>>> billon behind in road maintenance. By last year the plan was to have
>>> halted the deterioration but it hasn't happened and by 2010 we were
>>> to have caught up and removed the backlog unfortunately the first
>>> part was no where near achieved as about 50% of the money allocated
>>> for maintenance is being spent elsewhere on things like speed
>>> cushions, bus lanes, and what's laughably called our education
>>> system by local authorities. It's about time that money allocated
>>> by the national government for road maintenance is reserved only
>>> for use in actually maintaining roads.
>>
>> I wasn't talking about maintenance,
>
> So? He wasn't talking about improvements to the road system, but that
> didn't stop you.

My comment referred to the fact that commuting has been made easier.

>
>> but then you were aware of that before your petulant little rant
>> weren't you?.
>
> So you actually have no argument against the fact that British roads
> are horrible unmaintained?

On the contrary UK roads are mostly very well maintained. As with any
subject there are always the odd exceptions. Perhaps you can cite some
examples of what you consider to be "horrible unmaintained" roads?

Mark Hewitt wrote:
> "Brimstone" > wrote in message
> ...
>>
>> Surely the time to object was when the tax was first introduced.
>> What was the justification for it and what was the level of
>> objection, other than from the party in opposition at the time?
>
> My personal objection is not particuarly at the fact fuel tax exists,
> but at the current levels it is applied at.
>
> Not sure when fuel tax was introduced, however I believe it was
> before I was born!

Assuming you're less than 86 then yes it was.

What leads you to suppose that is it is any higher now than in the past?
Granted it has gone up with inflation, apart from the Fuel Duty Escalator
period when it rose slightly faster.

In article >, L Sternn wrote:

>>If you want smaller you simply have to buy older properties. There are
>>many good areas with smaller homes.
>
> If they aren't already torn down and replaced with larger homes.

Or somewhere inside them.

In article >, Martin Brown wrote:
> Brent P wrote:

>> Correlation != causation. Every model, everything in global warming is
>> based on the assumption that the correlation seen is a cause and effect
>> relationship and that it works with CO2 causing the warming. All while
>> ignoring the other more powerful greenhouse gas from combustion, water.

> NO IT DOESN'T. Read the primary literature and not some dumbed down
> paranoid rant by right wing think tanks and oil lobby groups. The US oil
> companies and Exxon in particular only care about *their* bottom line -
> they have money to burn and have spent massively to confuse the public
> about GW (just like big tobacco did/do to keep people smoking).

Same old technique. Insult those who question, label them right wingers,
claim they have ties to the oil industry. Yadda Yadda Yadda. Don't any of
you global warming believers on usenet have any capability in science
other than to yammer like this?

> My own position incidentally is summed up by the UK oil company BP.
> http://www.bp.com/subsection.do?cate...tentId=3072030

Same old correlation. Temp up, CO2 up, must be CO2.

> The scientific evidence is clear enough - we are making the planet
> warmer by greenhouse gas emissions. Most sceptics now concede this point.

It's anything but clear. There is data of cooling, data of warming, there
is nothing that is clear. Two people can do the analysis of the same data
and come to different conclusions.

At best one can say there is warming. At best. But it's still
corrolation. For all we know it could be the water vapor and not the CO2.
Or it could be methane from garbage dumps or it could be external to the
earth. The generally accepted assumption is that CO2 from combustion is
the cause. But a lot of wrong things have been generally accepted in history.

>> As if the water we are pumping into the environment has no effect what so
>> ever.

> Water condenses out of the atmosphere relatively easily as rain. The CO2
> concentration is growing since there are insufficient carbon sinks.

Here I go again. Have you heard of HUMIDITY? What is the global humidity
over time? Do you understand the role water plays in climate? How about
ocean level increases? The water has to go somewhere even after it
falls out as rain. And then there is evaporation again, sending it back
into the air. Hell, what about all the heat human activities add to the
planet's system. Just the heat from our homes, buildings, waste heat
from vehicles, etc etc. Just neglected because it's one individual tiny
source, but so is the CO2 from one tailpipe. What about the structures
humans have built? The removal of forests?

Global warming could also lead us into an -ICE AGE- because of the water
additions from the ice caps.

But what it comes down to is that there is a generally accepted belief
that CO2 increases lead to increased temperature based on correlation.

>> From the CO2 theory, it used towards political ends. Things like the kyoto
>> treaty. Treaties that would have us believe making widgets in China is
>> better for the environment than making them in Ohio.

> It might well be at the moment. However, the cost of transporting them
> from China to the US might well outweight the gains.

Why? China is a cess pool of polution. No controls at all. There's no
saving of the environment here. It's politics and social agenda. Nothing
more or less. The environment is the excuse being used, the ruse. Even if
it's real, such concepts don't actually help the environment one bit. The
CO2 is still released, more of it in fact. Plus the environmental damage
in the nations where the manufacturing was displaced to. If the
manufacturing remained in the first world, where environmental
protections are in place we'd all be better off. IF this was about the
environment, rather than the environment being an excuse, a method, to
achieve some other goals.

>>>>Because other planets and satelites (moons) in the solor system are
>>>>warming. I think the scale of the issue of climate change is much bigger.

>>>Although it is true that the sun's output has increased very slightly
>>>the amount is *not* sufficient to explain all the observed global
>>>warming. Satellite monitoring of solar flux since the 1970's is an
>>>important constraint.

>> It's not enough to explain the the observed warming of mars either.

> However, Mars has polar caps of solid CO2. Additional warming from the
> sun there is amplified by emission of gaseous CO2 making the atmosphere
> thicker and keeping in more long wave solar radiation. Positive feedback!

Mars cannot hold an atmosphere at present. It's lost to space.

> It is very sad that in the twenty first century public understanding of
> science is going backwards

More insults. PRESENT SOMETHING of value. This is the usual arguement
technique of the true believers, insult anyone who questions the belief,
the religon.

> US cars makers perpetrate a cruel joke by making crude vastly overweight
> vehicles that do 10-20mpg, can barely accelerate or go round corners,
> with airbags designed to kill women drivers and young children. Henry
> Ford's original car managed about 20mpg 100 years ago and US has had no
> improvement at all in average fuel efficiency. Time to wake up!!!

See my countless posts critical of GM and Ford. Where do you want to
start? The reason there are huge, crude overweight, fuel sucking vehicles
is because of CAFE. CAFE basically prevented the automakers from building
the large cars people wanted, but allowed the trucks.

If fleet fuel economy is the problem CAFE is not the answer. ( CAFE
seemed more designed to control the products people could choose ) To
encourage fuel economy CAFE should be dropped and the US should tax fuel
much more heavily and in return tax income to a lesser degree. Simple as
that. People will have a reason to buy vehicles with better fuel
economy. But so long as the major taxes people pay are income and
property taxes, saving money on fuel is just nickels and dimes.

> ROW average saloon cars will get something like 40mpg, and some German
> deisel BMWs will do more than 55mpg cruising at a steady 75mph.

I'd love to have the turbo charged I6 from Ford of Austrailia. Ford won't
sell it here. US automakers think it's all marketing and flash. They
don't believe in making good product for the US market for the most part.
They would rather sell crap with marketing copy. Or limit the supply of
any good cars to drive up the price.

And then there is the US buying public at large that doesn't have any
technical knowledge so even the european and japanese makes can get away
with cheapening the cars they sell here. (in addition to the manditory by
law downgrades in things like headlamps)

In article >, Martin Brown wrote:

> Last time I was stuffed with a Pontiac GrandMA ~3.4L allegedly a popular
> choice according to the rental guy. So named because of the way it
> wheezes when going up hills. A basic manual UK Ford Mondeo 1.6 petrol
> would easily have left it standing. The automatic transmission was
> lousy, kick down wasn't properly adjusted - it had done about 3000 miles
> from new. The gas peddle altered the amount of engine noise with a 2s
> delay before anything useful was transmitted to the road wheels.
> Overtaking was best done after switching off the aircon. It had the
> turning circle of a supertanker, terrible understeer and the wheels
> squealed going round corners. The ride was soft and flaccid more like
> being on a ship. When I returned it 2000 miles later it already needed
> an oil change. It guzzled fuel for a saloon car but that didn't matter
> because gas was so cheap and it had a huge tank.

This not only describes the car, but the bulk of drivers on the road in
the USA. Most of the buyers don't even notice what a lumbering beast cars
like this are because, well, they don't even understand how to drive
beyond it's merger limits. Much of the driving mentality and training in
the USA is firmly stuck in the 1930s.

I guess the best way I can put it is this... I find drivers frustratingly
slow at intersections and when turning. The catch is, I'm often not
driving, I am riding my cannondale R600. (A bicycle)

> The bigger US cars and SUVs are even worse. "Quality" is apparently
> measured by the number of cup holders fitted to the vehicle.

Driving is secondary task at best for much of the population in the USA.

Mark Hewitt wrote:
> Current price in UK is around US$6.16 / US gallon
>
> They are going up however have stopped going up quite recently. The general
> thought is that they have stablised now. However the chancellor has hinted
> further tax will be applied to petrol and diesel in the September budget.
>
> Of the $6.16 per gallon, approx $4.26 is tax.

Considering the protests a few years ago when a petrol tax increase was
proposed -- and the French truckers blocking the freeways around the same
time -- I'm surprised any politician has the guts to propose an increase.

Brimstone > wrote on Tue, 10 May 2005 15:54:52 GMT:
> David Taylor wrote:
>> Brimstone > wrote on Tue, 10 May 2005 15:11:41
>> GMT:
>>> Mark Hewitt wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Which is entirely the point. They know that everyone thinking of
>>>> 'tax' as being income tax, so they dare not touch that. Instead they
>>>> make us pay tax in other ways. Mostly grossly unfair ways like fuel
>>>> tax.
>>>
>>> Surely the time to object was when the tax was first introduced.
>>
>> Why not now? It may have been appropriate temporarily. It may
>> have seemed appropriate at the time, but no longer.
>
> On what grounds is it no longer appropriate?

It may still apply or may not.

>>> What was the justification for it and what was the level of
>>> objection, other than from the party in opposition at the time?
>>
>> Who cares?
>
> To understand the present and the future you need to understand what
> happened in the past and why.

Yes, but that doesn't make any objections made after something
is first introduced invalid.

>> If there's a good justification for replacing it with
>> something better _NOW_, then it's irrelevant if it was a good idea
>> X decades ago.
>
> Ah, the magic word "if". I've not yet seen any justification, is there any,
> excluding the usual bleats of the supposedly poor hard done by motorist?

I don't have any. I haven't really looked.

--
David Taylor