I completely disagree with the concept of road pricing but not for the reasons implied by the petitioners.

Motorists are NOT being overtaxed. The evidence: I have never heard anyone say that they can't make a journey because the petrol will cost too much. Most people are happy to travel up to 40 miles a day by car to work rather than move somewhere nearer the job. It is usually much cheaper to drive somewhere than to take public transport. All the oil price and tax increases of recent years has had no effect on the number of cars on the road, nor on the size of cars. In short, there is no incentive to give up driving, even in these days of (alledged) global warming.

The idea of tracking every vehicle at all times is NOT sinsiter. Most people couldn't give a hoot whether they're being tracked or not. Most people like the added security of CCTV cameras and watching every car will only increase that feeling. The only people who have a problem with being watched are criminals. (Anyway, we're not really being watched, we're just being recorded. The idea that anyone would actually sit down and go through the tapes of millions of driver just to see what they're up to is ridiculous).

The petition says nothing about improving public transport which is most people's preferred policy for reducing congestion.

So to me, the petition reads like a petrolhead's charter and therefore won't be getting my support.

I said above that I disagreed with road pricing and I have two reasons for that. Firstly, road pricing will cause people to make detours to cheaper roads, more detours means more petrol consumption. Secondly and most importantly it takes no account of the size or fuel efficiency of the car being driven; unlike a tax levied on petrol.

In fact those two reasons seem so obvious to me that I cannot believe that a responsible government would even consider more road pricing. I can't help thinking that maybe, when the Government said it was putting this out for consultation, they were actually doing just that. Maybe they haven't made a policy decision yet. Or maybe the whole thing has been a scare to soften us up for the big hikes in petrol tax that are inevitable if we want to cut congestion and save the planet.

I certainly hope so.

Just a few pics from my recent long weekend in Sun City

The Wear Bridge - Sydney copied ours. If you look carefully on the left hand side you will see one of the few pterodactyls still left in the wild.

Penshaw Monument http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penshaw_Monument The monument and the bridge are depicted on Sunderland AFC's badge.

Me looking at The Angel of the North in Gateshead. It is an awesome erection. I'm the one on the left.
Not a great picture but it shows Bud Biggelow's in Sunderland City Centre. The pub is coloquily known as The Bucking Bronco because it has a rodeo machine in the corner and people take turns to ride it. I managed 29 seconds but sadly I don't have photographic evidence. You can just about make out 2 girls dancing on the bar wearing not a lot. About every half hour the barmaids stop working and get up there and dance. It might not sound very classy but it'll do for me thank you very much. Sunderland is now regarded as the best place for a night out in the North East.

I could easily lose a fortune on predicting rugby but I could win it back by gambling on idiocy. The following things, which disgusted me today, were predicted by me yesterday (except one).

Airheads in the media told me not to go out unless it was 'absolutely neccessarily'.

After I'd carefully driven 23 miles (instead of the usual 16) I arrived at work a little late only to find chairs unoccupied by the airheads who listened to the airheads.

I had an unproductive day because people whom I needed to speak to had either not bothered to get their arses into work or were elswhere covering the work of those who had not bothered to get their arses into work.

BBC radio was saturated with non-stories about the weather. A few lorries had jack-knived, motorways were 'a bit slow', there were a couple of accidents. No one had the nous or honesty to admit that today was a pretty typical day on Britain's roads; they had decided two days ago that it was going to be chaos, and regardless of the truth, that was how they were going to report it.

The boss sent round an email this morning saying we could all go home at 3:30 because of the (alledgedly) inclement weather. Now you might be wondering why I would be disgusted by that wonderful news but that would be to assume that I hate my job. Well maybe I do but I also have targets to hit and a backlog of work to catch up with. So when I lose an hour and a half's production from my team I know that paypack time will come and that I'll be paying eventually. At 3:31 the place was like the Mary Celeste and I succumbed too at about 3:45.

The roads were virtually deserted at 3:46 and were clear of snow. All the schools in the county had been closed so there was no school run. I called into Tesco's and I've never seen the checkouts so queueless. One of the assistants told me that yesterday had been manic as people had stocked up. Stocked up!!!! Why????? How long did they think the snow was going to last?

This brings me to the one thing that disgusted me that I didn't predict. And that was a report on BBC radio that supermarkets in Merthyr Tydfil had run out of stuff because of panic buying. Wales, you have let me down. I thought you were made of better stuff. Is it just the customers of Merthyr Tesco that are wusses or is it the entire Welsh population. I sincerely hope it's the former.

The cherry on the doughnut was provided by a friend of mine whom I'd arranged to go to Scrabble club with tonight (I will change his name to protect his identity). When I phoned him this afternoon it emerged that he hadn't been to work becuase there was '2 to 3 inches of snow on his estate'. That is a direct quote, I kid you not. Now I know Brenda does not particularly enjoy his work and he's not afraid to take advantage of the sick scheme, but dodging work on this pretext is a disgrace. Nevertheless I cannot blame Brenda entirely. The people to blame are the ones who create the environment where people can get away with pretending that they are in a disaster area.

That is the media, in particular the BBC.

Good things that came out of today: (1) The kids got a day off school. Sadly it seems that not many of them used it to it's full advantage. A couple of kids tried to pelt me with snowballs from a bridge while I was on my lnchtime walk and I saw another pair making giant snowballs but it appears that most of them were kept indoors by their terrified parents.

(2) A couple of females took the bad weather as an excuse to dress down a bit. One was wearing a scarf at her desk (which seemed a bit strange because the heating was perfectly functionary) and some were wearing jeans. Alison, if you're reading this, you look pretty tasty in your civvies (name not changed because the chance of her reading this is extremely negligible).

...until you have looked out the window anyway.

The UK is currently in the grip of panic because a bit of snow is forecast. I say UK, in fact it's more like just England. Nope, really it's southern England. Southern England is the only place in the world that can grind to a halt because of a few flakes of snow http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wusses

Tonight, every third vehicle on the road is a gritter. The other cars are fully laden with emergency tins of beans. The shelves have been cleared at Damart. Four-by-four drivers in London have been seen swapping their chocolate labradors for huskies.

And yet, it wasn't always so. When I were a lad the snow would routinely come up higher than my welly tops. But I can't ever remember the school being closed. Snow was a time of great joy as we built baricades out of giant snowballs, threw iceballs at the smaller kids and got scrubbed by the older bullies. Being dragged in the house by your mam long after nightfall was the only way the fun would end: Until the inevitable tragedy of the thaw came along of course.

I'm not sure if this was an era thing, a time of life thing or a north/south thing (I grew up in northern England), but the terror in people's voices as they contemplate the great white deluge is half laughable and half tragic. Even at my time of life, if the snow does arrive tomorrow, I would consider it a terrible waste if I didn't make a snowman and have at least a brief snowball fight with someone.

So what's really behind this panic? Regular readers will not be surprised to hear I blame the BBC. Yes the BBC. That once great organisation which the world turned to to be informed about important matters. Nowadays it has been reduced to shoddy journalism to fill up it's 24 hour news station. When the BBC was great, a 20 minute news bulletin was enough. It was worth watching and the lead item was indeed the news.

Nowadays the main item is often the weather. And like all journalists, no matter how lame the story is, they have to make it sound exciting or, more usually, terrifying. A BBC news reporter told us tonight that we can expect 'up to 15 centimetres' of snow. Fifteen centimetres? That's exactly the expression I use when I try to make 6 inches sound like a lot. (In fact, in recent years, I've started to prefix it with 'up to...' aswell).

I'm almost certain that if I listen to the radio in the morning I will get some airhead travel reporter telling me not to make that journey 'unless it's absolutely neccessary'. Well what on earth does that mean? I happen to think that going to work is 'absolutely neccessary' while some people may think that driving a heart attack victim to hospital is a bit risky in the snow. You won't see those in the latter category at work tomorrow; their chairs will be empty because they have rang in to say they 'can't get in and the radio told them to stay at home'. You see; the BBC is bad for the economy.

I have a 16 mile drive to work over hill and dale, country lane and dual carriageway. I'll maybe set out a few minutes earlier, I might arrive a bit late. I'll drive very carefully and I'll get there. I'm no hero: I just grew up in an time and place where people weren't big girls' blouses and the BBC didn't spread scare stories.

Shameless plug: Please help my view count by rereading my other blogs on weather forecasters
http://xylophone.blog.co.uk/?tag=weather%20forecating
http://xylophone.blog.co.uk/?tag=weather%20girl

That's all I can assume after the rugby authorities connived with 30 international players to produce a storming victory for England and a phenomenal performance for Johny Wilkinson, simply to make me look daft.