The Importance of Being Idle

Random Ramblings

Today's been a pretty good day work wise, just a series of deliveries and collections where everything went as it should do and nobody was unhappy. It was good. It didn't even rain. On top of that my copy of The Day The Earth Stood Still arrived in the post, so it's happiness all round.
However I have to wonder what my government is doing with it's new car tax policy. They talk it up as being a "green" policy, but that just seems to be the buzzword that's attached to anything which seems faintly ridiculous and unfair these days; "Oh that's terrible" "Yeah, but it's green mate, saving the planet".
SO, the plan is apparently this; rather than the simple two tier road tax system we have now, there will be many tiers reflecting the carbon friendliness of the engine. Which seems reasonable. However, it's applied retroactively, which is to say it's being applied to cars registered BEFORE the law is passed. Now, for the law to be "green", that is to say altering the behaviour of consumers to act in a more ecologically friendly way it has to have the power to alter future behaviour, in this case encouraging you to buy a car with a smaller or more efficient engine rather than a ridiculous 4x4 for urban driving. However what this law is gonna do, as it's applied retroactively, is punish people for making decisions before the law was passed and simultaneously lock people into those decisions; by which I mean if you've bought said 4x4 back in 2001 when it seemed cool (it wasn't and you're a cock, but still) you're suddenly hit with a prohibitive tax bill for it you never knew was coming and you can't realistically sell the car and move to a smaller and more friendly one because who's gonna want to buy this monstrosity with the huge road tax? The market for these heavy polluters will be destroyed, so the people who already have them will think "Fuck that" and keep driving them as long as they can! Is that ecologically friendly or unfriendly? I'd say just plain unfair.
Another thing that I've been wondering about is the number of census zones I've seen whilst travelling about. Now, I expect to see them during census year, especially on the day that it's supposed to be done, but just randomly? I wondered what legal force they have; I know they police wave you in and out, but the people asking the questions are just people in hi vis vests, and I've got one of them. Do you have to answer their questions? Do I really have to account for my movements to the government? After all the government works for me, and I KNOW they have to account for their actions and explain themselves to me, but I'm fairly certain that I can go about my law abiding business as I wish and not explain it to anybody. Then I wonder if these wandering census' are normal or are they a new invention? And why does the government need all this information? They already know far too much about where I am and what I'm doing, virtually the whole country is covered in bloody cameras and various electronic devices that track us 24 hours a day. I don't understand the people who are comfortable with this surveillance society that we live in these days, in fact I think those are some very naive people who in all honestly don't think that The Powers That Be will fuck you over just because it's convenient; after all it's not like governments don't have a history of screwing with, experimenting and imprisoning people for no apparent reason. And as you know, I firmly believe we need to retain the power to rise up against our government because there will come a time when they cannot be trusted.
This is turning into a very stream of conciousness rant now, so I'll stop.

posted by BadMonkey @ 6:29 PM