(Oh you think so?)
Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary has confirmed to press that the “pay as you drive” scheme has been shelved and that the government will “definitely” not now proceed with the road pricing scheme in the next parliament.
Sounds a bit like a football club chairman giving his manager the vote of confidence to me. Shelved? What does that mean, its not what we want to hear, Junked, dumped, binned are all things we want to hear, not that we will just slip it on the shelf for the moment and when you’re not looking, get it out again!
That said, this isn’t a government issue, the opposition are just as bad, for on a recent visits to Norwich in June 2009, Tory leader David Cameron told the people of Norfolk that the only way that Norfolk could expect to get the roads that we need is by road charging, in other words, by the locals paying for them (you might remember the well publicised Q & A session it was when Mr. Cameron did his impression of a Nazi officer while talking about I.D. cards).
So for me, no I don’t expect road charging has gone, but it’s just not going to be popular as it can be extremely discriminating depending on an individual’s circumstances and its my belief the plans will just sit on the back burner until some party feels confident enough to land us with it and at which time it will be drip fed in, to get us to accept it, then the screw will really be turned……party time, license to print money, yee haa!
