Another year

[Adrian E]

I did love the way they renamed the 'road fund licence' to 'vehicle excise duty' to get around all those who argued money collected from vehicle owners should be spent on improving the infrastructure! It is now a tax on owning (not driving, apart from the other taxes on fuel) rather than using a car.

Without the income from VED you could add a fair bit to income tax to make up the shortfall, which is the political dilemma govt always faces over which is deemed more 'acceptable' to taxpayers/less ammunition to the opposition of the day come election time.

Most roads have now been declassified so they are no longer the responsibility of the Highways Agency and instead must be 'maintained' by local authorities, but guess what - their budgets have been slashed massively overall so while central govt can claim they've not changed the money they're paying to local govt to pay for road repairs, they conveniently ignore the fact the money isn't ring fenced and most people would rather any number of other services got the money than having it spent on patching potholes.....it's a circular argument as there's not enough money in the economy to pay for everything without a significant increase in tax, which nobody wants. Whether we get value for money for what does go in is entirely a different matter of course!