General: older volvo's

[Rob76]

This may be of interest to the older Volvo owners.
This is to reduce road tax on 20 +year old cars

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/654884

[Existential Crisis]

Originally Posted by Rob76

This may be of interest to the older Volvo owners.
This is to reduce road tax on 20 +year old cars

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/654884

Devil's advocate but why should these vehicles get cheaper tax? They will pollute more and take up just as much space as newer cars? I get it if the car is only used for limited miles, which as gar as I know was the reason for the free 'classic' tax, and I'm all for keeping old cars on the road and keeping cars longer to opt out of the incessant consumer cycle we are in...but any car used regularly as a daily, particularly high polluters, should be taxed? Shoot me now.

[baggy798]

These petitions don't do anything at all, it's just a thing for people to feel like they 'have a voice' and are 'involved'. If petitions worked it would be easy to fix all the UK's problems. To tell the government to stop the boat enthusiasts, or to stop the spread of a certain lovely religion, or a compulsory year in prison for knife crime, or to build more prisons as that's usually the sentencing excuse for why people aren't locked up.

Ain't it weird how there's always enough money for some of the government's favourite pastimes, wars and surveillance, but never enough money to fix the f**king potholes??

A car last night had it's wheel/suspension ripped off, because I guess a manhole cover was lifted up and away by the flood water. Possibly due to the distract council not being arsed to maintain the drainage system? It wasn't even raining that hard!

Oh well, I'm sure the council will do its best to put things right, by weaselling it's way out of paying for the damage.

[Pidgeonpost]

The roads where I live are atrocious and getting worse. Potholes filled a month ago are beginning to open up again, and roads where whole stretches were resurfaced 5 years ago are showing potholes and other signs of deterioration. This seems like an incentive for the maintenance companies not to do too good a job. Nice regular earner to have to keep repeating poor work on a regular basis.

[Sotosound]

Originally Posted by Pidgeonpost

The roads where I live are atrocious and getting worse. Potholes filled a month ago are beginning to open up again, and roads where whole stretches were resurfaced 5 years ago are showing potholes and other signs of deterioration. This seems like an incentive for the maintenance companies not to do too good a job. Nice regular earner to have to keep repeating poor work on a regular basis.

I'll second that.

Having someone from the council inspecting the contractors' work and instructing them to do a proper job in order to get paid might help.

If repairs actually lasted then the consequence need not be less work for those contractors. Instead, it could be that they go and repair other potholes properly as well, as I'm sure that there'd still be enough road repairs required to keep every contractor busy for eternity anyway.

[Kev0607]

Originally Posted by Pidgeonpost

The roads where I live are atrocious and getting worse. Potholes filled a month ago are beginning to open up again, and roads where whole stretches were resurfaced 5 years ago are showing potholes and other signs of deterioration. This seems like an incentive for the maintenance companies not to do too good a job. Nice regular earner to have to keep repeating poor work on a regular basis.

The problem is potholes aren't repaired properly. I've actually seen the council fill in potholes with read mixed tarmac that you can buy in most DIY stores. They turn up, pour the ready mix into the pothole and level it off with a tarmac rake. They don't compact it either. That's just a poor job, hence why potholes reappear in as little as a couple of months (sometimes even less!).

What should be done with potholes is cut a hole around them with a saw, approximately 1 metre square, fill with stone to approximately a few inches below the surface of the tarmac, compact it with a wacker and then lay the tarmac. There's a big difference doing it that way than the DIY bagged tarmac route, but it takes more time and therefore more money.

[Andymharrison]

Originally Posted by Sotosound

I'll second that.

Having someone from the council inspecting the contractors' work and instructing them to do a proper job in order to get paid might help.

All councils used to have that, a Clerk of Works, if he wasn't happy nothing was paid until fixed. But he would have been a civil engineer or similar and that kind of salary is one of the first cuts when councils are strapped for cash. Now they have approved contractors, who are only interested in doing the quickest job with best profit margin, and of course they are the approved contractor who will be "fixing" it again, and again...

It's in their interest to do a bad job, when the road is in such a state the whole thing needs doing its them that get to quote a massively inflated price, then do a shoddy job and the cycle starts again.

A major road into town near us was closed for 6 weeks a few years ago for a full resurface at huge cost. They did such a bad job the road was worse than before within 12 months and was done again. Last year it was closed for the 3rd time. Isn't it a surprise that the same contractor did all 3 jobs and is still working on major roadworks in and around town.

[Sotosound]

Originally Posted by Kev0607

The problem is potholes aren't repaired properly. I've actually seen the council fill in potholes with read mixed tarmac that you can buy in most DIY stores. They turn up, pour the ready mix into the pothole and level it off with a tarmac rake. They don't compact it either. That's just a poor job, hence why potholes reappear in as little as a couple of months (sometimes even less!).

What should be done with potholes is cut a hole around them with a saw, approximately 1 metre square, fill with stone to approximately a few inches below the surface of the tarmac, compact it with a wacker and then lay the tarmac. There's a big difference doing it that way than the DIY bagged tarmac route, but it takes more time and therefore more money.

This makes councils look lazy and stupid since they're no doubt spending much more now on outsourced shoddy work than they would have done if they'd done a proper job themselves.

It doesn't take a genius to think about the detailed consequences of outsourcing decisions, but it does require the will to do so.

[Offgrid]

Originally Posted by Existential Crisis

Devil's advocate but why should these vehicles get cheaper tax? They will pollute more and take up just as much space as newer cars? I get it if the car is only used for limited miles, which as gar as I know was the reason for the free 'classic' tax, and I'm all for keeping old cars on the road and keeping cars longer to opt out of the incessant consumer cycle we are in...but any car used regularly as a daily, particularly high polluters, should be taxed? Shoot me now.

Oh dear - it's time this misinformation was put to bed. My 2 740s have long since paid their debt to the environment for their birth. The current crop of new cars with 5-10 life spans are unlikely to achieve this.Do my cars polute more? Well we are in a carbon famine at the moment, and we need to create more to boost the green vegetation on our planet. We also need it to maintain animal life. So what about other pollutants? Well heavy EVs increase tyre and brake dust, and need more frequent replacement. The oil, coal and wood chip generated electricity that they waste is hardly helping the planet if you follow the bleating of the proponents of the grey new deal. Then there is the damaged caused by fires with thermal runaway, the pullution caused by decommissioning scrapped EVs that happened to run over a speed bump or surrered other accidents.

I could post several more paragraphs, but suffice it to say that we should be repairing damaged appliances, and encouraging their continued use, rather than junking them and manufacturing more low grade stuff ( probably from plastics).

The sharper amongst you will have realised that I signned the pettition. It's a shame that I can't have one vote for each vehicle.

[Kev0607]

Originally Posted by Existential Crisis

Devil's advocate but why should these vehicles get cheaper tax? They will pollute more and take up just as much space as newer cars? I get it if the car is only used for limited miles, which as gar as I know was the reason for the free 'classic' tax, and I'm all for keeping old cars on the road and keeping cars longer to opt out of the incessant consumer cycle we are in...but any car used regularly as a daily, particularly high polluters, should be taxed? Shoot me now.

I think its a grey area to be honest... these ulez zones need a rethink, but it probably won't happen. It generates too much money.

For example, vehicles over 40 years old are currently exempt from the ULEZ charges in London. If the old classics (over 40 years old) were high polluters, they wouldn't be exempt from emissions charges.

So if the old classics are exempt, why does a car that's 20-25 years newer have to pay the ulez charge because it doesn't meet emissions standards? If the car that's 20-25 years older is exempt, why isn't the newer one?

I personally think vehicles should be taxed based on their weight and mileage per annum. So a person that does massive mileage per year pays more than the person that does little mileage. The person driving a close-to 3 tonne SUV pays more and continues to pay significantly more road tax for as long as they own the car than the little old lady in her non-ulez compliant Nissan Micra.

I think older cars should pay less road tax, not more. They pass MOT's each year and part of that is an emissions test... they're safe to be on the road, if they weren't, they wouldn't have passed. I don't think a V8 Range Rover because its newer should be cheaper to tax than a 20 year old Volvo.