by Dick Puddlecote
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DickPuddlecote/~3/xNN4qRZeW4c/the-never-ending-toll.html
The Never-Ending Toll 
This is one of the occasional transport articles you’ll find here so, if it’s not your bag, look away now.
Since the BBC brought it up …
The government has launched a consultation on a new Dartford crossing, costing up to £3bn. Readers came up with a much simpler solution to tailbacks – replace the toll booths. “It would appear most of the congestion is due to the antiquated manual toll collection system. I was surprised by the absence of electronic toll tags,” said Bernard Murphy from Texas.
I’ve got an even simpler suggestion. Scrap the tolls entirely and remove the toll booths. For why? Because we have already paid for the tunnel many times over …
The idea for a tunnel crossing was first promoted by Kent and Essex county councils in 1929. A pilot tunnel was completed in 1938, although World War II meant the tunnel was not completed to full diameter and opened to traffic until 1963. Tolls had been in place since the opening of the first tunnel, and were enacted to pay for the construction of the scheme.
… and we have also paid for the QEII bridge as well, over ten years ago. And because politicians promised they would stop charging us as soon as that happened.
Motorists have been let down by the government u-turn on the decision to continue charging at the Dartford crossing, it has been claimed.
>From [April 2003] motorists should have been able to cross for free but the government’s change of mind means car drivers still have to pay the £1 charge.
This, of course, has since doubled to £2, and £5 for HGVs and coaches. Having said that, the government have been very generous in allowing you to use the roads – that you have already paid for in an imaginative variety of ways – for free between 10pm and 6am. Aren’t they nice?
So now, as a result of the toll booths which shouldn’t be there, idiot politicians are considering blowing another £3bn of our cash on another crossing to reduce congestion.
Really?
Here is why we have continued to be milked since 2003, in the words of then Labour Transport Minister Stephen Ladyman.
“We had a public consultation in 2000 about what we should do about the tolls and the public came to the conclusion the best thing was to continue the toll as a congestion charge.”
Well that worked like a dream didn’t it, sunshine?
But, hold on, government may have an answer to ‘save’ us money. Bravo!
The Highways Agency is already on to this and expects to replace the booths towards the end of next year. It is looking for suppliers to provide number plate recognition – similar to how money is collected for the London congestion charge. Along with new road layouts, they say the changes are expected to be finished by October 2014.
Cost: Between £68m and £84m
So, to summarise:
1) We finished paying for the Dartford Tunnel and QEII Bridge many many years ago.
2) Promises to abolish tolls were reneged on in order to control congestion.
2) The toll booths themselves are now causing congestion.
3) So we need to be robbed of another £3bn to pay for a crossing to reduce congestion caused by the toll booths.
4) Or there is a cheaper option of £68m instead.
Who would bet against a new £3bn crossing and multi-million pound software to charge us forever for using it?
Has it not crossed the mind of any of these thieving bastards to cut us a break – and cut congestion – by letting us use it for free?
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I’ve been quite happily paying that toll charge for years but I never knew the half of what I’ve just read. Now, how can I feel happy when having to pay it again?
Thieving scoundrels for certain – but suckers everyone of us for sure.
Just when I begin to settle into thinking my confidence in our once great country couldn’t sink lower than it currently is, I find myself wading through another damn bog. For God’s sake, will the UK’s madness never end?
Shouldn’t we be busy securing 18″ lengths of piano wire to two bits of wood and passing them round? If we don’t gentlemen I’m afraid that they will – after all, they don’t pay much respect to us do they?
I’m really, er, rather hoping John that it won’t come to that. The GramscoFabiaNazis, being Englishmen, would I hope understand the terms of surrender, which will be offered by the Principal Secretary of State for War. … They asked for War, and they got it. (That’s what I’d do. I’d give them war, and more war, and when they had had enough war and asked for an “armistice”, I’d continue the war. Fuck them. Socialist bastards.) That’s the scenario I am working from.
But you can never be sure, for the poison is very pernicious. This is the problem about socialism. When it gets them, it really gets them: and when they are English, it gets them to the extent that they really, really, really would try to extinguish us, fully and for ever, just as we now will have to do to them.
The worst and most ferocious GramscoFabiaNazis are from the Anglosphere, and are also the ones born fully into it as our full chldren.
It is a terrible thing to realise, but also true. How did this sad tragedy happen then?
Why was is that our mortal enemies, the ones that really want us really, really dead, are not our enemies such as the CommunNazis or even the Islamists (whatever those might be) or even the KimNazis of North Korea (they just want to fuck the “Moranbong Ladies” and then shoot those poor women afterwards) but are actually the children of our friends, and who might live a few miles away? They might be eating “ciabatta in olive oil” in a ” really cool little place in Islington”. How fucking awful is that then? Are not you offended? I am.
What is going on?
It’s rather terrible really, isn’t it.
That the political/bureaucratic vermin are brazen thieves is obvious. The real problem is the legion of morons out there who don’t –and won’t–see it.
“Has it not crossed the mind of any of these thieving bastards to cut us a break – and cut congestion – by letting us use it for free?”
Why should they? When nobody takes the trouble to find out the real situation except Mr. Puddlecote? Talk about easy money!
Oh sorry! I midread the headline as…
“The never-ending TROLL” …..
I didn’t know what to say.