Thursday, February 01, 2007
They never learn
Sorry for the lack of posting, but I've had more computer problems. It's been a shame because you can never catch up.
Anyway, from The Times we have the latest "goody" for the motorist. The plan is that you will have to have insurance all the time, so it can never lapse. If you don't have insurance for your vehicle and fail to declare it "off-road" you'll get an automatic fine and the police will be able to come into your driveway and seize your vehicle.
Now I've said before, I have no sympathy with people who drive without insurance, but what's wrong with storing a car off road for two weeks and not renewing your insurance during that time? If your not using your car - you might be abroad, or anything, why shouldn't you save the two weeks of insurance money?
How will this be enforced? Good question well ... "“This will also only catch those people who are already known to the DVLA. The problem with the motoring underclass is that those who pose the greatest risk to others do not appear on databases.”"
Yes it's our old friend and star of many adverts the: DVLA computer. All this will do is encourage more and more people not to bother telling the DVLA anything. Of course it will make it easy to fine the law-abiding citizen, who not using his/her vehicle merely wishes to save some money. Of course that's what it's probably all about, you're not allowed any money, you must spend it all, if not on taxes or insurance then on fines, bourgeoisieism will be defeated, all will be equally wallowing in nothing.
Anyway, from The Times we have the latest "goody" for the motorist. The plan is that you will have to have insurance all the time, so it can never lapse. If you don't have insurance for your vehicle and fail to declare it "off-road" you'll get an automatic fine and the police will be able to come into your driveway and seize your vehicle.
Now I've said before, I have no sympathy with people who drive without insurance, but what's wrong with storing a car off road for two weeks and not renewing your insurance during that time? If your not using your car - you might be abroad, or anything, why shouldn't you save the two weeks of insurance money?
How will this be enforced? Good question well ... "“This will also only catch those people who are already known to the DVLA. The problem with the motoring underclass is that those who pose the greatest risk to others do not appear on databases.”"
Yes it's our old friend and star of many adverts the: DVLA computer. All this will do is encourage more and more people not to bother telling the DVLA anything. Of course it will make it easy to fine the law-abiding citizen, who not using his/her vehicle merely wishes to save some money. Of course that's what it's probably all about, you're not allowed any money, you must spend it all, if not on taxes or insurance then on fines, bourgeoisieism will be defeated, all will be equally wallowing in nothing.
Tags: tax, DVLA, law and order, socialism
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
Labels: DVLA, law and order, socialism, tax
Friday, January 26, 2007
You can escape the DVLA computer
We've all heard the adverts on the radio, the machine type voice pretending to be the DVLA computer, informing us of the inevitability of detection if you evade your road tax.
Of course the advert itself is evidence against infallibility, after all if the system was so good, you wouldn't need to advertise it. Everyone who wasn't taxed would be caught and fined, rendering the adverts a waste of money.
The Times tells a different story: The number of people not paying their road tax has almost doubled in the past two years creating a “motoring underclass” of two million drivers who can escape speeding fines, parking penalties and driving convictions.
Some of the report contains statements of the obvious: "Cars and vans that are more than ten years old are five times more likely to be untaxed than those less than ten years old..." Yes well, if you've just spent a small fortune on a vehicle, chances are you can afford the road tax and insurance. If you have little money the temptation is going to be far greater. Anyway with the sky high cost of road tax, it might cost more to tax the vehicle that it cost to buy.
Now I don't condone this activity, because of course it has consequences, which will impact on innocent victims. If you don't tax your vehicle, you won't MOT it, certainly not with the computerised MOT system, because then you can be traced to a garage or an area, and you probably won't have insurance either, and these contribute to making the roads less safe and increasing insurance premiums for law abiding road users. Of course by ironic logic, the increasing insurance premiums will tempt more people to evade road tax: “As motoring becomes more expensive, the groups least able to afford it who need a car are finding it more difficult to make ends meet.”
How does it happen? Simple, when people are purchasing vehicles, they're not filling out the ownership details, or they're providing false ones. The much-vaunted DVLA computer is as much use as a chocolate teapot in cases like this.
It is however a good example of unintended consequences, the DVLA used to have a fairly accurate record of what was what, people would send in the registration documents, etc. As a result, some civil servants/politicians no doubt thought look we can use camera and computer enforcement for many things such as speeding and road tax offences and we'll even tighten up the loophole where people might take their car off the road for a small period of time and gain a month in the road tax stakes, so we'll take even more money off them as well as save on the police.
The result, well nothing is saved on the police, but instead of doing traffic duty: "You can do a journey of 100 miles and you are lucky if you see one police car..." they'll be doing racism class or some other politically correct office activity. What of the people, well it's clear, rather than fill out a form and help the government, they take the risk of not bothering, saving themselves a small fortune each year, but costing the rest of us in increased premiums and decreased road safety.
Road tax should be kept to a fairly small figure say about £30.00 per annum, whenever you purchase road tax, you need to show a valid MOT and insurance. Any revenue from road tax simply isn't worth the high cost of having uninsured untraceable drivers driving cars with no MOTs. The MOT needs to be reduced as well so it only covers safety issues not politically correct pollution concepts or whatever is going through the minister's head. Of course it must be coupled with an increase in traffic police and a decrease in all these cameras everywhere. Simply reducing the tax won't be enough to force those who've gotten away with it, back to the straight and narrow.
Of course the advert itself is evidence against infallibility, after all if the system was so good, you wouldn't need to advertise it. Everyone who wasn't taxed would be caught and fined, rendering the adverts a waste of money.
The Times tells a different story: The number of people not paying their road tax has almost doubled in the past two years creating a “motoring underclass” of two million drivers who can escape speeding fines, parking penalties and driving convictions.
Some of the report contains statements of the obvious: "Cars and vans that are more than ten years old are five times more likely to be untaxed than those less than ten years old..." Yes well, if you've just spent a small fortune on a vehicle, chances are you can afford the road tax and insurance. If you have little money the temptation is going to be far greater. Anyway with the sky high cost of road tax, it might cost more to tax the vehicle that it cost to buy.
Now I don't condone this activity, because of course it has consequences, which will impact on innocent victims. If you don't tax your vehicle, you won't MOT it, certainly not with the computerised MOT system, because then you can be traced to a garage or an area, and you probably won't have insurance either, and these contribute to making the roads less safe and increasing insurance premiums for law abiding road users. Of course by ironic logic, the increasing insurance premiums will tempt more people to evade road tax: “As motoring becomes more expensive, the groups least able to afford it who need a car are finding it more difficult to make ends meet.”
How does it happen? Simple, when people are purchasing vehicles, they're not filling out the ownership details, or they're providing false ones. The much-vaunted DVLA computer is as much use as a chocolate teapot in cases like this.
It is however a good example of unintended consequences, the DVLA used to have a fairly accurate record of what was what, people would send in the registration documents, etc. As a result, some civil servants/politicians no doubt thought look we can use camera and computer enforcement for many things such as speeding and road tax offences and we'll even tighten up the loophole where people might take their car off the road for a small period of time and gain a month in the road tax stakes, so we'll take even more money off them as well as save on the police.
The result, well nothing is saved on the police, but instead of doing traffic duty: "You can do a journey of 100 miles and you are lucky if you see one police car..." they'll be doing racism class or some other politically correct office activity. What of the people, well it's clear, rather than fill out a form and help the government, they take the risk of not bothering, saving themselves a small fortune each year, but costing the rest of us in increased premiums and decreased road safety.
Road tax should be kept to a fairly small figure say about £30.00 per annum, whenever you purchase road tax, you need to show a valid MOT and insurance. Any revenue from road tax simply isn't worth the high cost of having uninsured untraceable drivers driving cars with no MOTs. The MOT needs to be reduced as well so it only covers safety issues not politically correct pollution concepts or whatever is going through the minister's head. Of course it must be coupled with an increase in traffic police and a decrease in all these cameras everywhere. Simply reducing the tax won't be enough to force those who've gotten away with it, back to the straight and narrow.
Tags: tax, DVLA, law and order
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
Labels: DVLA, law and order, tax
