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Rant: RAC Foundation

Never mind the soddin' AA! Listen to the RAC!

Aren't these guys supposed to be looking after the interests of motorists, not dreaming up ways to help the Govt screw us even harder?

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"The Chancellor should reduce the cost of the tax disc for the cleanest cars and increase it for those which produce most CO2, according to the RAC Foundation in a pre-budget letter to the Chancellor. The Foundation has suggested a new top band (band G) for the least fuel-efficient vehicles, balanced by reduced tax for the least polluting, so as to increase the differential from top to bottom. The RAC Foundation believes that there should be greater variation in rates of Vehicle Excise Duty in order to promote low emission vehicles. Further tax changes will give private motorists more of an incentive to opt for cleaner, greener vehicles."

I do believe they are suggesting a band of £200 for the largest vehicles.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but if my car does 20mpg, and my wife's does

40mpg, am I not already paying twice the fuel duty? In other words, don't the most polluting vehicles already pay more? Does Gordon Brown really need the extra encouragement? What is it with this Uncle Tom attitude the RAC seem to have these days?

I'm thinking of ripping up my RAC membership in protest. Anyone suggest a good alternative (and NOT the AA, thanks very much)?

Reply to
Richard Brookman
Loading thread data ...

Richard Brookman uttered summat worrerz funny about:

read this article...

Lee

Reply to
Lee_D

I have to say that I do agree with this. To be honest, if I could afford to buy a new car, the fact that the difference between the lowest tax band and the highest being £95 a year (£8/month?) wouldn't make any difference to me deciding which engine to choose. Within any model range the difference between the best and worst engines is unlikely to be at the extremes, so more likely to be £20-50 difference per year - who's going to bother about that?

The only time it is going to make any difference to anyone is when the cars are 5+ years old at which point buyers are fussier about overall running costs - and by that time - the engine that is in the car is already in it, so it is not going to make so much of a difference to the environment as it has already been running around for years!

However, if the worst performing engines (in terms of CO2 emissions) were heavily taxed, then it might start to make a difference.

Sorry! Shoot me down in flames now!

Matt.

Reply to
Matthew Maddock

"Matthew Maddock" wrote in message news:dv4tcm$2j5$ snipped-for-privacy@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...

Then of course there is the point to be made that producing a car in the first place produces vast CO2 emissions Approx 1 ton per car and 27 tons of waste to despose of I assumed by incineration more so even more CO2. So if you change cars every say 5 years you cannot use said cars for half that time as the production emissions produced far exceed the running emissions of a 10 year old Range Rover Overfinch- thats statistics for you like lies but more believeable

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One more set of statistics UK 4th largest economy in the world production of CO2 ?

2% of world production about the same as a large US state - I reckon we could get it down to 1.5% if we drowned a few politicians. If we do everything in the UK to save energy it will make the same difference as pouring a bucket of water in the Titanic so long as a certain president is in the pocket of the oil industry of the world. Lets do sod all and see who blinks first when Lousiana and Florida are underwater.- and remember when he goes he has a brother and the bugger is a politician too and he knows how statistics lie! Derek
Reply to
Derek

The trouble is that both the AA and RAC are companies now, rather than "clubs", so all the senior executives and PR people are far more interested in their next career move rather than their customers (why do they still try and pretend we are members?), so no rocking the boat as being seen to tow the line looks much better on the CV.

Richard

Reply to
beamendsltd

I'm affraid my experiences of local call-outs is dire - on every occasion they have failed to fix or diagnose the problem and they carry very limted tools (if any) and no spares. The bloke who recovered out 7.5 tonner (he completely missed a broken wire on the alternator harness and deliberately broke the lift pump) quite happiliy admitted that it "was more fun and better paid" to get the recovery truck out.

Richard

Reply to
beamendsltd

...and Lee_D spake unto the tribes of Usenet, saying...

Thanks Lee - never seen that site before.

Reply to
Richard Brookman

On or around Tue, 14 Mar 2006 09:05:42 +0000 (UTC), beamendsltd enlightened us thusly:

... f*ck'em...

not sure about alternatives. Green flag get spoken of in a good light sometimes.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

On or around Mon, 13 Mar 2006 22:47:35 -0000, "Lee_D" enlightened us thusly:

Lee, your newsreader seems to be breaking threading. dunno if it's fixable...

Reply to
Austin Shackles

I bought a SIIA 109" about 4 years ago, with a Harvey Frost on the back, so now i do my own recoveries.

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Alex

Reply to
Alex

Austin Shackles uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Dunno either .. QE 6 with quotefix.... For some reason it chopped the RANT: bit... life is just too short to worry!

:-D

Lee

Reply to
Lee_D

On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 17:54:09 -0000, "Lee_D" scribbled the following nonsense:

I used to use OE, now a convert to agent, much better!

Reply to
Simon Isaacs

Simon Isaacs uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Yeah used it for the free trial period.... then I got all tight.. I didn't particularly like the layout and it's habbit of putting For sale postings all in one thread, fo instance some one posts FS: IIa , then every other IIa that gets advertised with the same title ends up in that thread... helpful with all the Test posts though. Other than that it worked but got a bit on me nipples

;-)

Besides I get nice smileys with quotefix :-D ;-) ;-p and all that malarky.

Lee

Reply to
Lee_D

On or around Tue, 14 Mar 2006 16:07:06 +0000, Alex enlightened us thusly:

nice. what happens when that one breaks down though?

Reply to
Austin Shackles

In article , Richard Brookman writes

I'm fairly sure that the RAC foundation is a totally different organisation to the one that comes out to fix (or not) your vehicle. I think the "man in the van" bit is now an offshoot of Norwich Union.

Adrian

Reply to
Adrian Simpson

On or around Tue, 14 Mar 2006 22:58:43 +0000, Adrian Simpson enlightened us thusly:

I think the RAC still exists as a Gentlemens' club in London, too, now independent of the man-in-van bit.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

There is a free version of agent too! (doesnt the full version become this after the trial is up?) It gets on my nerves too how it groups things with the same titles together even if there is 3 year between the threads - but its less annoying than OE!

Reply to
Tom Woods

On or around Wed, 15 Mar 2006 21:57:06 +0000, Tom Woods enlightened us thusly:

there are other options. Thunderbird, Microplanet Gravity...

Reply to
Austin Shackles

Tom,

You should e able to sort the way Agents sorts messages by going to "View" and then "Sort Messages by" and select how you want the messages sorted.

I prefer sorted by date and oldest tthread first.

regards

nemo2

Reply to
nemo2

It sticks threads with the same title together.

for example, there is an old thread called "101 wheel update" (from

19/03/2003) which is still present in my agent database.

If I, or anybody else was to now post a new thread with that same title it will get stuck onto the existing "101 wheel update" rather than showing up as a new thread. This means that I will probably miss it

Reply to
Tom Woods

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