Well what a useless budget for the motorist. . .

[Architex_mA8tey]

Rant mode on/

the chanceller has deemed it in his "wisdom" to do the following to motorists in this budget -

• Continue with rises in fuel duty
• Continue with rises in road fund licence
• Go ahead with plans to privatise parts of the road network which includes introducing new roads as toll roads. . .

Oh well, there goes the Country

/Rant mode off

[Adrian E]

and they said labour was anti-car - seems if you can milk it you might as well screw it till its dry

[Amanda]

Hmmmm I am screwed all ways!!!!!!!!!!!

[Singh]

I haven't studied politics, BUT, fuel prices effect everything. Tesco will put up their prices as it will cost them more to transport goods, less people will buy goods - bad for business? I honestly believe if they cut fuel duty then more people would have money to spend on goods that would be cheaper in the first place. The US put hardly any tax on their fuel, a full tank in an RS6 there is £35, here it is £115 - how can there be so much difference? Also, our roads are so crap, I recently drove from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, it took six hours and I did it in one hit, felt like a two hour journey in the UK. In fact, even driving in Holland/Germany/France/Belghuim the roads are so much better. But if it's any consolation, I know people in Holland pay about £1,000 for road tax, and the Italians pay something ridiculous too, a lot more then the Dutch.
I was following the budget online whilst at work, noticed that stamp duty went up by 2% on homes worth more then £2million from tonight, I didn't realise it would go up immediately, I think there should be a notice period, what if someone had just made an offer on a house and were exchanging contracts tomorrow, would be a bit frustrating, no?
Also, why the heck are trains so damn expensive? I need to get down to London next week, so I priced up a return journey on the train in standard class, £121! By comparison, it would cost £50-55 in the RS6, and would take an hour less, had I gone in a 2.0 D it would cost me about £19, and they want us to use public transport?

[tonupkid]

Yep. The increases kick in with immediate effect. Cigarettes up at 6pm this evening!! But the increase in your pre-tax allowance.
It comes in April next year!!!!
With the rest in April 2014. Two whole years away. What will those be worth once inflations had a go

The cheek. That man calling tax avoidance morally reprehensible while he's avoiding telling us the truth.
Some of the worst bits of the budget were not mentioned, just buried in the paperwork.

If he's going to start calling names, he should at least try to set a good example

You can bet your pensions (huh) that they will get road pricing up and running just as soon as they have it figured out, and we'll still be paying road tax to pay for the upkeep of the roads (sure). And fuel duty with 20% vat added on top

grrr

[HPsauce]

Hmmm. Amar, are you just pricing up the petrol for your car vs rail comparison?

I reckon, despite the latest increases, that running my S8 costs as much again per mile as the petrol (and then some).

And if you had a new car it just gets ridiculous once you factor in depreciation. Think about a £100K luxury barge, does 10,000 miles and loses £40K in the first year. That's £4 per mile!

I went to Edinburgh from London (and back) recently by train with SWMBO. First Class. Free food and booze. Extrememly comfortable and a fraction of the petrol price.
(but we didn't need a car when we got there)

[Adrian E]

Amar

There's an answer to all your points, from a politicians point of view anyway!

Many many moons ago the money we spent on using our cars (road fund license/vehicle excise duty, fuel duty) was ring-fenced for road network and infrastructure (incl public transport) - these days most of the money you spend in duty filling your car up gets spent on debt reduction/schools/hospitals etc etc as it's marginally more paletable to a politician than arguing why the basic rate of tax needs to be higher to cover the direct costs of running a country inefficiently (and it doesn't seem to matter which colour govt you have, none of them are successful historically at making things cost less to do!)

The road network is largely the responsibility of your local authority to repair, but their budgets aren't protected for maintenance so it gets spent elsewhere too.

The talk about 'private' new roads had me in stitches the other day - talk about recycling an old policy on road pricing and trying to make it more appealing to joe public! The QE2 bridge was supposed to be free to use once it was paid for and they're still campaigning for that now, years after it was!

Last point from me on public transport - as with anything there's supply and demand. At the moment we have excess demand in the south east, so prices go up. This pushes people to look at alternatives, until such time as the tax paid on those alternatives is so high that public transport looks appealing again. If everyone stopped driving and tried to use public transport it'd be hilarious for a day or two before everyone gave up and got back in their cars. Investment in new infrastructure for rail costs billions and because of the way 'privatisation' was done the tax payer more or less picks up the tab for that too, although to be fair the current lot are weaning the rail industry off its mega-handouts for running a profitable business.....

In effect nobody wins on transport policy as it's a brave politician that sets in train a policy that won't 'pay out' politically within their term in office, unless it's a 'glory' project like HS2 of course.....

Makes me glad I'm not currently involved lol

[PsYcHe]

And although the personal allowance goes up.. the 40% bracket goes down, so worse off there.. Then I'll lose out on child benefit, that's another £1,400 quid a year.. Reckon I'm going to be about 3k a year worse off!!

[Singh]

Thanks for explaining that to me Adrian, cleared things up a bit, what does the 40% bracket go down to, Richard?

[PsYcHe]

41 and a bit from 42 and a bit (assuming you have no tax code reductions)