£210

Well they ain't going to upset the wealthy suburban middle class are they? Thats where they get their money from.

They promote wind as a primary source of alternative energy. They seem to ignore the fact that wind farms only produce 1/3 of their rated capacity, at best, on average and that the wind doesn't blow all the time.

Judith uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Don't worry your car is not affected because it's pre 2001 so your looking at £175

Lee

Not *quite*.

The place I used to live had a set of speed humps about 9" tall and 16' long

- I could actually park my car on top of one of them. Problem was I couldn't get it on top of them going forwards - the ground clearance at the front wasn't enough to climb them without damaging the airdam. It was an XJ-S, but even so, normal cars with low frontends are hardly unknown.

They were eventually replaced with center-humps when the local bus company told the town council to take a running jump when they were asked to run services there due to completely hedgehogging the suspension of any bus that used the route.

P.

My disco (on LPG) is a 2000, so no probs there, really. My old 110 (1983, again on LPG) only does around 2000 miles a year tops however, so any increase is a pain and unfair as I see it due to the lower mileages done.

Ahem. The type of pollutants (well, the main one of current concern anyway!) that disiesels emit (carcinogenic particulates) are considerably worse at local level than any other fuel types, we need to look at the bigger picture than simply global warming. That is only one small sector of the whole pollution "thing". As I see it, the only way of dealing with these particulates would be to retrospectively fit particulate traps to ALL diesel engined vehicles, especially buses, taxis and lorrys. Just look at what your average bus kicks out as it pulls away from a bus stop!! Other than that, it's down to the hospitals to pick up the pieces. What fuels would you advocate burning in a diesel that aren't hydrocarbon based and therefore emit particulates? The ONLY current widely commercially available and viable alternative fuel currently marketed in this country that has been proven to give lower emissions is LPG, and the wankers have started to increase the duty on that now! And can you get your vehicle "down-banded" if you have it converted? No chance, FFS! The tax ought to be either scrapped and put directly onto the fuel, where consumption and mileage travelled = tax paid, or be rebanded in such a way that you are taxed according to the emissions printout from your last MOT test, thereby being taxed exactly according to your pollution levels as tested, this would then compensate for alternative, cleaner fuels.

Just my take on it. Badger.

I blame the f8ck1n9 ar53holes that voted both these tw4ts into power! Badger.

Well, you can see by the amount of debate here already that when push comes to shove a potential car buyer is going to be too confused by all the grades to actually bother to calculate it all out and will end up doing what he usually does: buys the one he wants and what suits his social need. What annoys me is the steady thrust towards portraying the large car owner as some kind of pariah. This does no good at all for social harmony which is a bit pushed at times as it is.

Nick North Norfolk

Note: Vehicles registered from tommorow. So *all* currently registered vehicles with CO2 emmisions above 186g/km will stay in Band F and pay: Diesel £195, Petrol £190, Alternative £180. So it isn't quite as bad as the news could have you believe.

Bit of a pain if you are getting a new car registered tommorow and it's above 226g/km. Registered today and you'd be in band F at £195, tommorow band G and £215 (diesel).

Yeah, I work from home so a mileage based tax would be ace for me! Do it based on mileage recorded on MOT certs. A small proportion of people would cheat however, so it's much more acceptable to RFID tag everyone, put cameras on every road, recognise their numberplates and put cameras in our homes, we'll all end up as brains in glass tanks I tell you.

Those damned smokey diesels eh.

Hmm, what, universal pollution? Not sure diesel/petrol are much of a problem on a solar system scale.

Or ban traffic from cities, who the f*ck wants to drive in a city anyway! It's in the cities that the diesel pollution is a real problem. I saw some article on the beeb website a few moons ago talking about a study done that revealed that children living near bus stations were 30x more likely to get whatever cancer than kids living in the country. A petrol engine in the country causes almost as much harm as one in a city, but a diesel engine in the country causes less harm than one in a city because the pollution is more localised.

Note *more* localised, not entirely localised.. IIRC diesels don't put petrol in the shade when it comes to the other pollutants, it's a bit less but we're not talking 50% or anywhere near that. Can't be arsed to look it up, still digesting my food.

Sod yer particulates! Put a hanky on the exhaust pipe. They're only a problem in the cities and like I said before, they can be dealt with on a local basis. Particulate pollution in Reading can be tackled with action by the local government, but non-particulate pollution that affects the atmosphere as a whole can't be dealt with locally. Biofuels can help there, and diesels are currently most suited to taking advantage of those. Those blasted hybrid cars are packed full of electronics and dodgy battery chemicals, which doesn't help at all.

Any fuel that's cheaper soley down to reduced tax was going to end up like this, I'm surprised anyone bothered with LPG as the vehicle has to undergo an invasive conversion and then you have to hope the government of the day doesn't whack the tax up on a whim.. Never seemed worth it to me, especially when a diesel can run on camel piss.

I know, I've got a (non-running) old car that has major problems with the ramps in multi-storey car parks having both a very low slung body and somewhere between 1.5 and 2 feet of overhang at the front, however speed bumps that it couldn't handle were very rare indeed, I don't recall any.

I've heard people argue that they have to have a BMW X5 or similar because they "need" them "due to speed bumps", which is the most pathetic excuse in the world.

They have centre humps around the hospitals in Reading too to stop patient-shaped dents in ambulance roofs appearing.

Ian Rawlings uttered summat worrerz funny about:

But it's still a Diesel and will never be a V8!

Our Disco came LPG fitted so no problems faffing around. Regardless of the raise in duty it's still half the price of petrol. For us works out cheaper than Diesel for the milage, has a much nicer drive and doesn't leave my ears ringing post trip. :-)

It also makes me very smug when I fill up with gas each time we have a knee jerk petrol shortage, yup smug as a smug thing!

I've had Diesel Landrover / Range Rovers and I know where my preference is.

Lee

Nothing newer than 1980 here ;)

i did get slightly annoyed after i LPG'd my car that it still falls into the highest road tax band.. ..however, i'm self employed and claim back a mileage allowance off the taxman - and its the same for my car per mile on lpg as it was on petrol :)

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

You're being too kind. Greenpeace later admitted that the figures were actually a downright lie, but justified it as being true in a green kind of way, or something. Like the animal rights terrorists justify their violence by claiming it's for a greater good. Greenpeace lost it with me from that day on.

How many speedbumps do you drive over each week?

I just worked this out and i can do up to 100 bumps some weeks!

In my cars i get through a lot of exhausts and am now used to welding around suspension mounts! If I was a normal person buying a new car (rather than driving lots of classic old cars and landrovers!) i'd be going for something with some decent groundclearance to avoid the bumps!

I was thinking about that today. Everybody whinges about the budget, yet i didnt vote for them and none of my mates have admitted to it either - but somebody must have done!

...and Ian Rawlings spake unto the tribes of Usenet, saying...

There is a monster speed bump on the road into our local Do It All/Motorworld/MFI place. To be honest, Land Rovers aren't the most comfortable vehicles to tackle it. Both the Disco (and the S2a even more so) make a bit of a meal of it. Slow is like any other vehicle, with the knowledge that you aren't going to ground anything. Fast, and you get a crash that reverberates through the structure, with a nice bounce on the other side (plus, in the S2a, a torque wrench on the back of the head). The car to do speed bumps in is Di's Focus - get the speed right (ie pretty swift) and you hardly notice it's there. Light springs and good damping, I reckon.

Anyone who says they "need" a 4x4 to tackle speed bumps knows nothing about bumps, or speed. Or anything.

Agreed, it was wrankling on me at lunchtime, before the Budget, that they where using the phrase "gas guzzling 4x4s". I did notice that this did seem to change to "gas guzzlers" later. Now did they get some phone calls? Though I doubt they'd be passed down fast enough, so it's more likely the presenters just got fed up saying the longer phrase.

And why the pre-occupation with the private motorist? What about all the trucks, what mpg do they get? Nothing like the 28/gallon my DII averages I bet. Get the trucks of the road an onto more effcient transport, like rail or even the canals.

In message , Ian Rawlings writes [Snip}

Whenever I read of someone advocating LPG conversions for thirsty engines because, even though fuel consumption tends to be heavier than with petrol, the fuel is so much cheaper than petrol, I am struck by the fact that no mention is made that LPG is a finite resource.

I would add that I am stuck with LPG for domestic heating (unless I find a lot of money for switching to oil) and, watching the price of LPG rise almost by the day, I am a bit prickly on the subject :-)

...and Tom Woods spake unto the tribes of Usenet, saying...

Not that many! They claim a mandate from the electorate, but they were only elected by something like a quarter of those eligible to vote. Three-quarters either voted against them, or didn't like them enough to turn out. Some mandate! All that stuff about Bliar being power mad and wanting to run the UK like a dictator seems less crazy than it did a few years ago, after the news of the last couple of weeks.

"Profumo" was a byword for dishonourable conduct when I was a kid. I'm still waiting for any of the Neu Labor crew to put his/her hands up, say "I did wrong" and leave with dignity as he did. All he did was tell a lie to the House. Hardly merits an apology these days.

...and Dave Liquorice spake unto the tribes of Usenet, saying...

Aviation fuel is consumed in massive quantities without any duty being paid - and the pollution is squirted out right there high in the atmosphere where it can disperse and do the most damage. I would like to see 47p/litre duty charged on that (and VAT added on top of the duty) before I would think that any further penalties on the motorist were justified on environmental grounds. We'd just have to get used to paying a realistic price to fly anywhere.

Trouble is, the people who are keenest on their £1 return flights to Majorca are the people who are keeping this bunch of dishonest bastards in power.

Well. I'm OK, but I have an ex-MOD Land Rover and age-related plates, and this looks as if it will mean the MoT regs and the VED regs can have different dates applying to the same vehicle.

If I've figured it right (and I did make a couple of guesses) that G- band is anything less than about 32mpg. And the extra tax is about the same as ten gallons of fuel.