I don't believe it

The whole reason I got this blog in the first place was because I was fed up of hearing the opinions of reactionist arseholes in the media and so wanted to get my own opinions out and let off some steam.

After all no-one else can be right unless they agree with me.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself agreeing with two opinions on radio 5 about two different topics.

They were the topics of the day: Road pricing and PaedoWatch.

Jeremy Clarkson was talking about the road pricing and said what I've always thought which is scrap road tax and put it all on fuel. That way the more you use your car and the more thirsty it is, the more you pay.
This would also mean that the scroats that don't bother paying their roadtax would have to cough up like the rest of us. AND we'd loose an unneccesary layer of beaurocracy.
A good example of this system in action is a comparison between myself and one of my friends.

I drive a 1.9 TDi Renault Laguna, they drive a 1.3i Ford Ka.
I drive 4 miles each way to work every day, they drive 40 miles each way to work every day.
I pay £185 a year in car tax, they pay £100 a year in car tax.
I get nearly 50mpg, they get about 35mpg.

I don't see how it's fair that I'm paying a larger standing charge for a car that burns less fuel that I use far less. My carbon footprint is much lower due to both the efficiency of the vehicle and the distance I travel so surely I should be rewarded for it?

As for the governments satelite tracking business, as well as the issues normally raised (i.e. vehicles with the equipment removed etc.)I would also like to raise my slight concern that I don't think the goverment has a fucking clue how complicated this system will be!:

I work in a team that develops and maintains software that uses maps and stores static data that relates to them (i.e. a graphical representation of the land a person owns).
We have enough problems doing this so how on earth they plan to run a system that tracks the movements of millions of vehicles 24/7 is beyond me.

What about cars coming from abroad? We can get the money from the pump without any problems but they're hardly going to have a tracking device fitted whilst they're on the ferry/chunnel are they?

As for the business of solving congestion, no-one seems to address the reason why there is congestion in the first place.

It's because we have these outdated working practices where everyone starts at 9 and finishes at 5. You can fix this by offering businesses a lower rate of corporation tax if they stagger their working patterns.
Secondary schools can get a bit smarter with their timetables by putting on earlier and later lessons and putting children into the lessons according to their parents working patterns / childcare arrangements.

Anyway I seem to have gone off on a tangent and not got to PaedoWatch yet.

The bloke they talked to thought the idea was stupid as you would only be aware of people already on the register. People have to do something to get on the register in the first place and you would have no protection from them until after they've done it.
Again I agreed, the only points I would like to add are:

Paedophile attacks are a plane crash - they rarely happen but when they do you'll hear about them.

Attacks by family / carers are a car crash - it happens so often that it doesn't make the news unless there is something extra-ordinary in the detail (e.g. satanic ritual, foster parents etc.)

Cars are a bigger danger to children than paedophiles. Yet children aren't made to fear roads like they were when I was growing up.

So lets hear less from the idiots who think that a video of a man getting killed running from the police is racist because he is black and hear more from the kind of people who try to enforce drug laws (and therefore have experience of them) but think it would be of more benefit if addicts got the drugs for free.