The Motorist, The Pedestrian, Roads and Council Tax

 General, Politics  No Responses »
May 262007
 

A bit of an odd mixture, but this all occurred to me when I was waiting 2 minutes at a pedestrian crossing for a chance to cross the road in 10 seconds; at which point I would have to do this all over again.

It occurred to me that most of the cars whizzing past my nose were being driven by people who didn’t pay the local council tax which funds the local roads whereas I do. Seemed a little unfair that they get more time to get across the crossing than I do, when it is my money paying for everything. Don’t get me wrong … whilst I might like the roads to be a bit cheaper, and we should spend more money on public transport, I still think the roads are worth having.

Of course it is not a simple matter where every pedestrian is a tax payer and every motorist is an outside who doesn’t pay the council tax. And motorists will say that their road tax is being used to pay for the roads … which is true for motorways (which I’m not commenting on here), but not the case for local roads.

I just think we need to redress the balance between the pedestrian and the motorist a little more.

Historically we have gone to an enormous amount of effort to keep traffic moving, and it is time to accept that it just isn’t possible with the levels of traffic we can have in today’s cities. And giving pedestrians a bit more priority on the roads is the polite thing to do given that we are helping pay for the roads. We need equal time to cross the roads that motorists have to cross the pedestrian crossings, and we need more pedestrian crossings.

If it takes a motorist 20 minutes to traverse my city rather than 15 minutes, so what? The motorist will still be well ahead of the pedestrian who will take an hour or more for the same journey so they will still be well ahead.

Educating People About Taxes

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Jan 182007
 

Everyone hates paying taxes. To be honest nothing is going to change that at all, but there are a few things that could be done to improve the situation. At present people want to pay as little tax as possible, whilst having well funded public services. Which is kind of foolish and impossible to achieve; of course there are ways in which to make public services more efficient but that is a whole other rant.

I should point out at this point, that I’m somewhat partial here as my own salary comes indirectly from taxation (and pretty stingy the tax-payers are too), but that is also a whole other rant.

The funny thing is that when you start working, you get a nasty shock when you get your first payslip about how much disappears in the direction of the government and nobody is there to explain what you get for your money. Why not include classes in school about what taxation gets us ?

All that taxation does provide us with useful services which include :-

  • A public health service that anyone can use at no cost or vastly reduced cost.
  • A police service intended to protect us from criminals.
  • Armed forced to defend us from external threats.
  • A social security system to provide us with a safety net in case we cannot earn an income.
  • An education system that educates everyone.

And I dare say I’ve left loads out … I nearly forgot education where I work! But we don’t get told about what we get for our money, we are expected to “just know”. Of course it some ways it is obvious, but why not make it clearer ?

In fact why not make the yearly pay slip (the P60) larger and include rough figures for how much we paid for each service ? If you get something that says you paid £10,000 in tax, of which £1,500 went to pay for Health, etc., we are more likely to be less critical of taxation.

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