Fellow Junk car collectors,
Will Zehring says;
*This appears to me to be a property tax on
*cars, over and above regular fees for licensing. That is, even if the car
*is a non-driver junker sitting out back you'd pay the same amount as if it
*were in show condition. Is my impression correct? Any comments from our
*list-partners in England?
*Will "dump it in the harbor" Zehring
I have heard this suggestion on the news. As far as I know it is just
under consideration at the moment. The general idea is to reduce the
number of cars on the roads, particularly old cars that blow out
interesting blue and black smoke.
To run a car on British roads you have to have
1. road tax
2. At least third party insurance.
3. An M.O.T certificate if your car is over 3 years old.
MOT stands for Ministry of Transport, to get a certificate you take
the car to a test station and some over enthusiastic cynical engineer
hits your sills with a rubber mallet until he's happy they aren't made
of copies of Hello magazine and chewing gum.
What is being proposed, as far as we can tell in this age of open government,
is an annual payment to even own the car. This might replace the tax disc,
or be in addition to it. Who knows. Whatever they decide it'll cost us more,
as is traditional.
If such a system is introduced a lot of cars that are 'awaiting restoration',
or as the neighbours would have it 'rusting in the garden', will disappear
rapidly in the direction of the scrapyard. In these days of PPB's
( pretentious plastic boxes ) I strongly feel that we should try to keep
our motoring heritage, not just in the form of museum pieces, but in real
working cars used regularly.
To be fair, recent legislation has helped considerably. A lot of the big
polluters have gone. There was a certain car made by a certain manufacturer
that sold in very large numbers that had 1 piston ring that wore out or broke
very quickly. These smoking monsters are all but gone now, only the well
maintained examples remain.
@Verbose guff mode off.
All the best
Duncan "Replace those impact joints 'again'" Bryan
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