alcazar

iTrader: (2)

This, within a couple of weeks that OUR petition went to the lying scruffy scots pension thief, only to be rebuffed, and he gave India and China £900,000,000 instead!

Vote these B@stards out asap!

And NO, I DON'T CARE who we vote in instead!

Alcazar

fivetide

iTrader: (1)

The removal of the bridge tolls is a bad move IMHO and a simple vote winner for the SNP.

They now need to find funding for a new £5bn bridge to be built, what's the betting the toll on that one will be about a fiver not the £1 that they've just scrapped.


5t.

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Aye, but we DON'T need a new bridge. What we DO need is some way of uniting the N and S banks of the Humber without the high levels of tolls we have.

NOWHERE else in the country would be allowed to continue with the problems we have with that fekkin bridge!

Alcazar

sti-04!!

Chillax

Iain Young

Not driven over the Severn bridges lately then?

Leslie

Simple. Just remove all the bridge tolls in the UK. And make all charges and benefits for Scotland the same in England instead of attempting to buy Scottish votes as they are. The West Lothian business is all wrong..

Les

rossyboy

iTrader: (8)

I'm Scottish and its not something I wanted. I dont remember there being a huge public outcry or petition about the tolls on the bridge. Its only £1 FFS. Not only that, it was only £1 to go North. It was free going the other way!

Its a scandal that £Millions of funding will now have to be found from elsewhere to cover the cost of something that not many people were particularly bothered about in the first place.

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

If you introduce a toll to pay for the cost of building a bridge, once the bridge is paid for the toll should be scrapped. That is of course, if you even believe that there should be a toll in the first place.

We pay taxes for public services, things like bridges should come out of public funds. I don't see the Millennium bridge over the Thames charging people to walk over, and that cost a bit.

You might be able to argue that if an area does not actually need a bridge, then it will be built if the locals are prepared to pay for it. To continue to charge them after they have paid for it just does not make any sort of sense, other than it being another way to make money.

Hoppy

I've never understood why we should pay tolls for bridges at all. Isn't that what Road Tax is supposed to be for? What's the difference between a bridge and a few miles of motorway? Except that if you live near a toll bridge, chances are that you have no alternative but to use it. And pay. Not right

Richard.

PS And the toll booths create a lot of congestion, wasting everybody's time, while shuffling along in first gear increases fuel consumption and pollution dramatically. It makes no sense, other than raising money, of course

Iain Young

Depends on the type of bridge. In the case of a suspension bridge, they are very costly to keep running so construction costs are not necessarily the only factor...

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

Yes, I did forget about that part. However, the above point does sum up my feelings. We pay road tax. I cannot help but feel that we are expected to pay twice.

The councils are trying to do that with bin collections. They reduce the frequency of the collections until you pay a private firm to come and do it for you.

rossyboy

iTrader: (8)

I agree it will cut congestion, but the fact remains that the loss of income leaves a big black hole in the finances that will be found through taxation elsewhere, or service cuts.

Hoppy

Agreed. Some bridges are no doubt very costly to maintain. But a) that's not the principle behind Road Tax, b) all roads need maintaining (although many are pertetually in a shocking state), c) only a fraction of Road Tax is actually spent on roads, and d) I don't think it's fair that many, many drivers are forced to pay extra on a regular basis.

If you do a lot of miles, you'll pay a lot of fuel duty. That's fair. But just because you live near a bridge, and are forced to pay a toll, is not. Simple as IMHO.

BTW, there are no toll bridges near me, so I've no personal axe to grind

Richard.

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Aye, course I have. You pay one way, don't you? We pay both ways, a total of £5.40 for a car.
And just how many people living on one side of the Severn crossings HAVE to travel over them for medical treatment?

We've effectively paid for the bridge, but the government won't write off the interest, and the present toll, and level of use CAN'T pay it off. Ever!. Remember, this is not the Dartford crossing, this is a relatively depopulated area of the country that was supposed to be brought together, and helped economically by the b@stard bridge.
We haven't even a major motorway feeding onto it. When it was suggested to continue the M11 up and across the Humber Bridge, as a diversion for the A1 and M1, the Tories pooh-poohed the idea, and said the A1 could cope, and anyway, they were going to turn the whole of the A1 into motorway...........we're still waiting for THAT

I'd even go for the £1 each way that the Dartford crossings have, but we've NO chance of that. No auto tolls, no toll readers, no discount except VERY basic 10% if you travel daily.

Alcazar

borat52

I dont really want to raise a politcal argument here, but from an Englishmans perspective who lives near to and uses the Seven bridge regularly, I'm less than happy having to pay to cross the bridge knowing that some of my tax is going to make crossing in Scotland free. I'n my opinion its either free for everyone, toll for everyone or completely devolve Scotland and England. I favour the latter as it makes things simple, they look after their affairs, we look after ours and then neither party have anything to complain about. And yes, let them sort out the tax on the North Sea oil. I'm personally sick of double standards for Scottish and English citizens given we both pay into the same pool of tax.

Then again, England already votes conservative below manchester, so labour have everything to gain and nothing to lose. They wont lose seats in England as they dont hold many of them, and people in Scotland, quite rightly, will keep voting in a regime that reats them vey well indeed.

Tam the bam

It was the SNP who abolished the toll charges not Labour, they were dead against it, in fact Labour had just spent a small fortune installing new toll barriers on the Forth bridge.

fivetide

iTrader: (1)

Now rubblised by the SNP at a cost of £500,000 minimum

5t.

Iain Young

We only pay in one direction, but it costs £5.30 for that one direction (and £10.60 for small vans / pickup trucks etc).

Well if you needed to go to the main Bristol hospital for example (especially for the child heart specialists there), you could drive down to Gloucester and back up the other side I suppose, but it would add well over 100 miles to the trip.

What sort of bridge is it out of interest?

borat52

Indeed, and this is the ludicrous situation, tax raised in England is contributing to a Scottish initiative simply becuase the government have given power to the Scottish parliament over how to distribute English tax revenues. I think in order to prevent civil anger over this, the only fair solution is for Scotland to collect and allocate their own tax, and England to do the same with theirs. Then I'd see no reason for any person to be unhappy about different laws/taxes for different peoples.

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

The Humber bridge USED to be the world's longest suspension bridge.

Alcazar