LONDON congestion charges start 17 FEB 03

[Chiefy_Brown]

from 17 FEB drivers of vehicles entering LONDON will be charged

[Oink]

What a stupid idea.

Wow, If you stay in London you can 'congest' all you want and save money!!!!

Maybe there's a discount for small (less congesting) vehicles.

Seems like the government wanting more money, it's ludicrous - to pay a toll to enter a city??? It's a public area!

[nickg]

robitussin with codeine is a good "decongestant"

[dc298]

Oink...Dont laugh..Mayor Mel and his morons have ben studying this for years..If London does it, guess who is next......He will have the choice doing his collections...

[Bill R]

From the article:

quote:

---

Who is exempt?

Motorbikes, disabled drivers, taxis, buses and coaches and emergency service vehicles. Residents living within the charging zone will receive a 90% discount and there will be 100% discounts for disabled blue badge holders, black cabs, licensed minicabs, firefighters travelling between stations for operational reasons and NHS staff using their cars as part of their work.

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More reason for people to BS their way into handicapped tags. Resident get a 90% discount???? Even paying 10% for the privilege of getting to your home is ridiculous.

[SB]

Please don't start me on this, I work at one of the few police stations in the zone, meaning I will have to pay. Why do I use my car on certain shifts to get into and out of work? Because my first train gets me into London at 06.18. Twelve minute before our early turn parade. It takes me 15 minutes to get to the nick from the train station. Do the maths. My last train home leaves London at 23.23hrs. The latest scheduled shift I may have to work has an 02.00hrs finish.
If there was a public transport infrastructure I wouldn't moan but it's a shambles.
We also have to pay for our unmarked vehicles. The company that is running this said that if we gave them the registration numbers of the cars, they would show them as belonging to the Met Police. I really think so, giving a private company a list of every unmarked police vehicles registration.
If you enter 3 times and don't pay, apparently thet have the power to come and sieze your car and crush it. Charming.

[Oregon Mike]

Why are disabled people exempt? If anything they'd take up more space, not less.

Mike

[Kingseye]

My sister visited London a few years back (stayed 6 months actually), and came back with some wacky tales of weird taxes in place there. If I recall correctly, she was under the impression that there were taxes levied against the number of screens on windows in a house, and the number of tv's in the house. She said there were alot of windows without screens......

(not sure how true the story was...we thought that someone over there might have been having fun at her expense)

[SB]

Eh?

[Sig220Man]

Kingseye,

I think when the Brits were referring to the number "screens" to your sister, they were talking about television screens, not window screens.

The tax is specifically to pay for the BBC, which has no advertising.

[Kingseye]

In that context, the story would make more sense......

[ZalmanEmmes]

There USED to be tax years ago under King George (dont remember which one) where homes in were taxed by the windows you have in the home. The concept was the more windows the bigger the house and the richer the owner.

Thats why on many Georgian homes you find windows cemented up and part of the facade. It became a fashion. Soho Bandit look at the homes in the Outer Circle in Regents Parks, especially the Nash homes and you see it there....something I learnt in school!

And as far as the taxes for the TV's maybe that was for the licence system which I NEVER understood...I was always scared of those vans coming around with the detectors and the four hundred pound fine!

[ZalmanEmmes]

Oh and by the way, this charge system is ridiculous. I know in Italy they issue license plates for cars and you can only enter the city on certain days if you license plate color is for that day. So monday would be blue and if you had a red plate (for example) you couldnt drive into the city. So what did most people do......they bought a second car!!

London is getting too overpriced. Friends have told me they've been dreading this tax for a long time.

[SB]

Ok, screens - tv, get ya.
Yes, we do have to pay a for a TV licence every year to fund the BBC which as Sig correctly states has no advertising. However, you still have to pay even if you pay to have cable or satelite TV, which a lot of people thing is wrong (including me)
The detector van thing has always been bull, there is no way a detector van can tell how many tellys you have in your house. All they do is look to see if you have a dish or ariel then check back against their records.
I did know about the window tax, Mayfair has some great examples of thin buildings with tall, thin windows.
Yes, London is expensive. Very expensive. We already pay some of the highest council tax bills in the UK (tax to pay for the county council srvices, police service, borough council services, town council services, ie, refuse collection, street lighting etc). We pay

[Sig220Man]

Soho, check your PM's