[QUOTE="Scraggy"] Alison Hopkins wrote: You askin'?[/QUOTE] I'm askin'.
Coming to a town near you IIRC. I wonder what else they'll dream up as a stealth tax. Proximity to other dwellings perhaps, or windows?
I'm still quite impressed by him. It's kind of nice that after his time in the GLC that he ends up running London again. I also *like* the congestion charge, but mainly 'cos I've never paid it and it freed up the traffic *slightly* on the odd occasions I biked it to Holborn or The Strand. I think it ought to be put up to something like 20 quid a day so it really makes an impact. Just so long as they leave it in London...
eric the brave <""simonb_at_zapik_dot_co_dot_uk\"@foo.com (eric the brave)"> wrote in message Well, I hope I can avoid it. I'll stick with the bikes for a few years yet. One of my neighbours has had to give up bikes recently in his mid-60s 'cos his hips don't allow him to swing a leg over a bike anymore. He's gone from a K100 (which he'd been riding since the late 80s) to a large capacity scooter. Another of my neighbours (sort of) has got a hankering for another K1100. Strange how many old cunts like beemers really.
Except that it's now metamorphosing into an emissions charge, and then bikes won't be exempt any more. Might as well charge cyclists, as well, in view of the amount they fart. All that microbiotic 'healthy' muesli. Make the buggers have compulsory insurance, too - at least that's on the horizon, too.
Colour me surprised. I guess they'll also find that your average bike may kick out more in the way of emissions than a cat'd car so they can bump up the charge for those nasty bikers that dare not filling Ken's coffers.
Response to The Older Gentleman: <boohoo snipped> Well, well, a whingeing troll. And whose problem is that, exactly? :-D
The problem with farting is that it the gasses contain methane, a far more powerful greenhouse gas than mere carbon dioxide. i forget how many tons of methane are farted by cows, but it is a significant amount; perhaps dairy farmers ought to pay an emissions tax too. So to level the playing field, perhaps cyclists should be taxed at a higher rate than vehicles.....;-)
"...an average cow in a barn produce 542 liters of methane a day, and 600 liters when out in a field (Adam, 2000). These estimates were made using a trace gas (sulphur hexofluoride) that was released at known points within a barn containing 90 cattle. Levels of this trace gas and CO2 are then measured 30 metres downwind of the shed and thus they can estimate how much CO2 is released per cow per day. All this methane can add up to a significant amount. Australia's 140 million sheep and cattle are estimated to produce one seventh of the nation's total greenhouse gas emissions" Source: http://rucus.ru.ac.za/~wolfman/Essays/Cow.html
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D'oh! I've never heard of that REGA. I supposet the "ute" should've given a clue as to the origin, but I'd forgotten what it meant!
Errm, I think you will find the low emissions zone will apply to trucks and buses. There's nothing like letting a good moan get in the way of facts is there? http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/low-emission-zone/proposal.asp
Small (1/2-ton?) single-cab high-sided open-top "utility vehicle/truck". I think the Yanks call similar things "pickups". -- Ivan Reid, Electronic & Computer Engineering, ___ CMS Collaboration, Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005 WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon) KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".
How does the Holden SS or Falcon V8 fit into that description...? I'd just go for "front half of a car, back half of a truck, with a fucking great big V8 plonked in it.... Sometimes" Dave
