fuel prices

[Mux213]

Ivan,

I think the argument is valid, I just dont think they do it because of the argument.

Thats the problem with politics, they use a sound and good reason to do something bad. Its just like saying: speed traps are to make the roads safer.

That argument is totally sound. In many cases a speed camera besides the road will make that road safer, people driver slower there, less people end up in accidents. So the reason is sound, the effect is sound.

But then it goes wrong, politics suddenly find out that this is a nice cash cow... They have a damn good reason to put speed camera's besides the road and with that good reason they start to do bad things.
- They start to put camera's on places where people drive to fast but where hardly no accidents happen
- They start to give big fines for people who drive 4 km to fast.
- They take away officers who do other very important things like track down car thiefs and such and put them besides the road with a camera
The point is totally missed, speeding tickets right now is the #1 priority in Holland for the police force.

A couple of years ago when speed camera's where introduced the talk in the goverment was: "our goal should be to bring down accidents on our roads by 10% by the end of the year"
Now the talk is: "our goal should be to bring in 10 million euros more in speeding tickets by the end of the year"

A very very very good measure has suddenly been turned into a cash cow with the side effect that it is no longer possible for the goverment to fight the original reason they started setting up speed traps. The goverment is now dependend on the income from speeding tickets to a point where if tomorow everybody stopped speeding, we would get into serious financial trouble.

If tomorow I would go to the goverment and say: "here is a box, for a fraction of the price of all those camera's you buy each year you can install it into our cars and nobody will be able to speed ever again", they would probably lock me up and make sure nobody ever hears about this.

And its the same thing with eco tax. I totally agree with you that fuels should be much more expensive because there are so many hidden sideeffects to us using them. Making fuels much more expensive will make sure people will be much more motivated to find an environmentally friendly alternative.

But the problem is, that when you start using tax for that, and the goverment becomes dependend on the income of that tax, they will fight to the bitter end to keep that income and thus not support any plans to replace that which feeds them.

You just have to look at the energy market to see exactly that. Right now Holland could be using 100% clean electricity if we close all our own power centrals and import our electricity from other europian countries like Norway. And indeed a number of companies started doing so a couple of years ago. They now stopped because importing (clean) electricity is now heavilly taxed because the goverment was loosing to much money on this clean form of energy!

[NoHachi]

We agree for the most part Mux....when the transparancy was lost, the problems started. The problem though is not with the principle, but with the people who implement it. Very true.

Damir

[Who spent his last vacation advocating that the Dutch police force is only good for one thing..producing traffic tickets]

[Mux213]

NoHachi,

Hehe I figured as much Though there was a surprising news articel in the news today where the goverment is actually planning to use the extra money they got from gas prices (they are wrongly coupled to the price of oil for some misterious reason) to fund a number of environmental projects.

What I fear though is that those environmental projects will mean spending millions on research that will just confirm what we already know instead of actually figuring out something new like how to solve the problem in the first place.

That reminds me... how well do you think a Hachi will run on LPG?!?!

[NoHachi]

I have a couple of friends who devellop alternative fuel systems here at the TNO-automotive research centre..
This guy used to drive a renault 5 GT turbo that pushed out around 250bhp on natural gas...eventually they got bored with the horsepower race, so he's concentrating on fuel economy at the moment (believe the 250hp engine was swapped into a Renault 4 of a friend of his). He once told me that any car can be made to run on LPG fairly easily, as long as you use your head. I'll give him a ring whenever gas prices start to escalate seriously...at the moment though, its still cheaper for me to run petroll (low kms/year).

[Mux213]

NoHachi,

Give him a ring anyways, right now I do 20k per year so for me it would make sence.

Its just that I have something against LPG

The only worry I have right now is that LPG is on the goverments blacklist. It wont be long until prices for LPG will start rising, especially now that more people are converting to it, and that tank stations will start to close their LPG because of the new anti-'explosion' rules they want ever since some idiot put a fireworks factory on fire in Enschede....

[SekiguchiUeno]

what a pity that my english skills are to bad. interesing discussion,
i must agree with ivan that is better to rise the fuelprice instead to have an high flat tax for all users, no matter how often they drives,
i prefer to use bicycle, ubahn, train for the daily transportation and i am narky about peoples which sitting alone in their cars among traffic jam and waste the air and fuel reserves.

[MrOverclock]

I don't use my car in the city

In the morning, when I leave to work:
Or I leave house at 10.20 o'clock and I am going on bicycle!
Or I leave house at 10.10 o'clock and I am going in my car!

When I am going by car I lose more than 15 minutes in searching for a place to park
When I am going by bicycle I just arrest my bicycle to a post of a lamp just in front the restaurant

10€ of gas per month