Nanny has found another way to raise revenues to fund her bloated regime. This is a particularly fine wheeze, whereby motorists who are stuck in traffic jams may face a £20 fine if they leave their engines on in the jam.
Nanny will introduce a pilot scheme run, by West Sussex County Council, from January 2009 in Shoreham-by-Sea.
The task of dishing up fines will be allotted to local traffic wardens (aren't these people now called civil enforcement officers?), who will be tasked with looking for motorists idling 'too long' in traffic.
The official rationale for the scheme is to reduce air pollution (I always thought that it was energy inefficient to keep turning your engine on and off?).
The cynic within me thinks that this is just another tax raising idea from our bankrupt state.
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Kerching!!!....There goes Nanny's till again....I expect that those Civil Enforcement Officers, who aren't used to having power, will relish the chance to make even more people's lives a misery.....Come the revolution, those that take such jobs should be put against the wall next to Nanny and shot as co-conspirators.
ReplyDeleteKen, I think the cow pictured is looking a bit too fat!!!
ReplyDeleteTo make it fair the motorists should also get to fine whatever outfit caused the traffic jam in the first place..... that wouldn't be the local council by any chance?
ReplyDeleteI can picture some little nazi in his yellow vest (as I mentioned Nanny has a fetish for yello hi-vis vests) issuing a ticket to some old granny whose Morris Minor has been idling too long, as the poor old dear fumbles with the keys and tries to turn the old motor on and off as she sits in a queue caused by some more roadworks.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe a harassed mum or dad rushing the kids to school so they can get to work to pay more tax.
Yes, that is the spirit of 'Great Britain' now a bunch of little Hitlers who could not get a job anywhere else except with thelocal council for digging into people's bins, fining people for having the temerity to run their car engines on a road paid for by road taxes and with petrol paid for with huge tax at the pump etc etc.
Fight back, if the cretins enact this law challenge every ticket. Tie Nanny up in court and do not just accept the fine and the idiot laws behind it.
Cars emit the most pollution when cold and on choke. Frequent restarting will maximise this.
ReplyDeleteTurning the engine on and off frequently is liable to flatten your battery, requiring you to charge it up from the wall when you finally get home (causing more pollution).
Frequent starting and stopping will reduce engine life, as the oil will not get a chance to warm up and circulate. Consequently, cars will have to be scrapped more often.
They've really thought this one through, haven't they?
I don’t know who makes up the directives on how to reduce carbon emissions but a lot of them are based on little more than an emotive need to sound caring, sharing and PC.
ReplyDeleteThe driving test is to be enhanced to include eco-driving. Presumably testing the Government’s directive that drivers should avoid too much acceleration, too much braking, too much speed and generally too much of anything. Such advice sounds very warm, cuddly and believable, like much of the current eco advice, except that it has been known for years that the most fuel-efficient mode of driving for the average car is based on brief acceleration followed by coasting. Although anyone found using that approach in a driving test would fail.
As for ‘switching off when idle for long periods’ - I do that anyway. There’s a part of me that detests needless waste, whether it’s government advice on braking and accelerating or running idle in persistent traffic jams (or tunnels). What I don’t need is a Gestapo officer with a big stick to enforce it (I hear what you say Big Al, but this type of ‘switch off from persistent idle’ hits me perhaps once a month, not once a day).
A more useful pilot for the Government to operate would be to test what happens when drivers are treated like adults. Replace the punitive, big-stick, big-brother, number-plate-tracking, hedge-hiding, camera-based, easy-money, fines & points approach with adult-to-adult, believable, helpful, advisory road signs and communication.
In the children’s story, the man takes his coat off when the sun shines, not when the wind blows.
You will probably find that by turning the engine off, you are technically, parked. You will therefore then be liable for a parking fine! A bit of a Rock and a Hard Place!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 8:37 AM said...
ReplyDelete" You will probably find that by turning the engine off, you are technically, parked. You will therefore then be liable for a parking fine! A bit of a Rock and a Hard Place!"
Ah, but you will be legal to use your phone I assume!
These concepts would be most effective applied to Trucks and smaller vehicles with refrigeration units. I think the concept of spoiled food and e-coli spread should be investigated as a means of controlling population. As I saw posted elsewhere, Shoreham has a reputation as a retirement area so the combination of noxious foodstuffs and poor health should work wonders.
The other great thing about trucks is that they mostly rely on pneumatic pressure to operate - hence the great wait for pressure to build after an engine switch off. It's a safety thing. Still a few more artics absent brakes ploughing through the retirees should assist the food poisoning approach for maximum effect.
Grant
Money in the bank indeed!
ReplyDeleteGreat Post Ken!
Cheers,
Lois