Suffering still to come

Hintza

For interest I thought some of you might be interested in the following letter published in yesterdays Daily Telegraph 28 May 2008


Sir - You don't have half the problems that Dutch car owners have.

I own a small Hyundai Getz diesel which cost me £15,250 three years ago because the luxury tax on cars here is 40 per cent and VAT 19 per cent.

Road tax is levied according to weight of car and fuel consumed. I pay £665 a year.

Showroom tax is already in place for cars emitting more than 110g/km. Sales of cars producing less, such as the Toyota Yaris, are rocketing.

Fuel, on average, costs the same as in Britain.

In 2012 our government will start levying a mobility tax of a minimum of 10 pence per kilometre using equipment to be installed in every car.

Big cities will be closed to cars more than 20 years old. Amsterdam will start this silliness next year. You have a lot of catching up to do in Britain. Good luck.

Peter Visser, Almere, The Netherlands

Pew_Pew_Pew_Lasers!

This is also the country which presumes guilt on the part of the motorist in motorist-cyclist collisions.

A bunch of morons.

anewman

Wonder what happens with second hand cars there (other than the ban on old cars in big cities) and what the average wage over there is.

vikingaero

The thing is that the Netherlands is relatively flat, has OK and cheap public transport and fundamentally most people live in small towns and villages unlike the UK where we have towns with sweet FA in the middle of nowhere.

lilac_lady

Maybe we MSE-ers should invest in shares in a bicycle company?

vikingaero

lilac_lady wrote: »

Maybe we MSE-ers should invest in shares in a bicycle company?

Cycling works in the Netherlands because of purpose built tracks away from traffic. Also where land has been reclaimed the dykes provide ideal cycle tracks from one town to another. But what the Netherlands has is respect. Leave a bike chained up and it will still be there. Leave one in any town centre in the UK and people will still try and steal it or vandalise it.

boatman

The UK government has privatised everything, so no decent bus or train services, people have to rely on their car. Out of town shopping centres where you need a car. 24hour Britain where Shift workers have to have a car because although we expect everything to be open all the time the transport is not available to get you to work. Its difficult to settle and buy a house near your place of work because no one knows how long they will be in a job for, there are so many short term contracts with limited sick leave and pensions, so you need your car to get to wherever your work will be. Need i go on.

locutus12

The thing Peter Visser, Almere, The Netherlands forgot to mention was this:

NETHERLANDS, YOU HAVR BLOODY GOOD PUBLIC TRANSPORT!

ive been there many times, its excellent, fast, cheap and efficient. so there honestly isnt much need for cars unless your really lazy.

but over here ? you try catching a bus to link up with a train and see where it gets you.