[QUOTE=Mojo;362226]/controversial mode on
Mr Lordy you would not know controversial if it came up & kissed you.
Why should we as a populace submit to having our movements tracked without so much as a referendum?
That’s the real question.
As to the other points:
They keep picking on car drivers 'cos they are an easy target as Government infrastucture already exists to track cars & drivers.
Why the hell would we pay for road usage when we already pay more for our vehicles than anyone else in the known universe? I certainly would NOT.
Sod them, if it is true which I doubt then I ain’t paying so come & get me @ 4am Tone’s Gestapo !!
/controversial mode off[/QUOTE]
I agree Mojo…mostly.
Kissing controversy? I usually prefer to shake my head and wander away muttering, 'cos getting wound up about it destroys rational thought.
Anyway…
Some time back, I worked in an area that delt with such systems and tools. The question you ask is a very valid one, but we are a long ways off from implementing a big brother system for real.
You can track a large body of people (as a single entity) to a high degree of accuracy all the time. You can track an individual with a high degree of accuracy all the time. You can track 30 million motorists with very low accuracy all the time. But you cannot (yet) track 30 million motorists with a high degree of accuracy all the time.
For the system to work, every vehicle would need to be tracked to within a couple of metres 24hrs a day. That simply is not possible yet. Yes, there are systems that can locate an individual to that resolution right now (mobile phones for example), but that is one person and the system is targeted to identify and locate that single person. Yes there are loggers that can fit to the vehicle and log it’s motion and where-abouts, but that comes back to the problem of scale and techology interoperability. The camera network in theory could register a lot of cars, but like the London charging system, that is a boundary scan network, not a tracking network.
From my rural location I get clicked by perhaps half a dozen traffic cameras on my way to work. If I lived in a city it would be 10 or a 100 times higher - but they still would know exactly which roads I travelled and hence it would not be submissable as evidence for road charging or big brother activities.
I do agree however that if a system were to be built to indentify and track individuals (it would then the be whole populace - 60 million of us), then we should be allowed to have our say about it.
It’s just that the petition that this guy organised has gone off on a tangent and is no longer about road charging - it’s about civil rights and that’s a different subject matter that as I’ve tried to show can’t be done just yet.
Preecey is right, fuel duty covers most of the requirements for road charging. Add into that a boundary scan system, as in London and you have a system that satisfies the “green manifesto” of the government while raking in more dosh.
By the way, Edinburgh City Council recently held a local referendum to determine if residents wanted a boundary scan road charging system such as London’s. The answer was a resounding no. Shame really, if you have ever fought the Edinburgh rush hour traffic you would know what I mean - A medieval city layout choked with 21st century traffic. So now the residents can’t complain. The funds raised would have been loaclly administered, even if there was a levvy from Government it would have gone to the Scottish Executive and not to Westminster. In Scotland, our roads are mainted using local funds. But no, irational thought by people caused a ground swell that was concerned that they may be identified and tracked. That won the day and Edinburgh suffers the consequences.
And we complain about Government? How about mis-information disseminated and propogated by those who have their own agenda?
how’s that for controversy?
