Roads work - Road Works

So Mr Cameron thinks it will be a good idea if we privatise more roads to encourage them being maintained up to standard and to prevent the infrastructure from deteriorating and falling behind the rest of Europe.
On the face of it this is not a bad suggestion, as the Government both locally and nationally has failed to maintain the standards for many years. In Hull we have some immaculately maintained speed bumps with potholed roads either side. It is actually possible to drive over the speed humps faster than on the main carriageway without loss of comfort or risk of damage to your car. I fear we have already fallen well behind the standard of European roads, partly because we are crap at everything we do, but mostly because we pay much more into the EU than we get out of it, and not the other way round, like Spain for example, who have many fine new roads built at our expense over recent decades.
On Holiday in Germany a couple of years back I was warned on the day I arrived at the hotel that there would be roadworks going on through the night. And there was. For one night only. An army of workmen large enough to invade Austria arrived with many large and noisy machines and in the space of six hours they stripped the old road surface off, repaired the substructure relayed the surface, painted new lines, and installed a whole host of new signs. Then they buggered off to do the same somewhere else the next night. The road was closed for no more than six hours from start to finish. Had that been English workers it would have taken six months. Why? Health and Safety I suspect has something to do with it, and unions possibly.
The main A1033 has had evening closures for about three weeks now, and so far as I can tell all they have done is patch a few bits of tarmac before a pedestrian crossing and lay a few block pavers around the roundabout at Marfleet. And that didn't need doing. There's a bit further along that looks as though it has been used for a ploughing competition, then patched with Wrigleys Spearmint and rolled flat with a corrugated dustbin - i.e. it's not flat. The road is returning to the state it was in before a very expensive redevelopment from a dangerous 4 lane single carriageway a few years back into the dangerous dual carriageway it is today. My Dad, a driving instructor, swore that if he closed his eyes, he could tell his pupils exactly where they were by using the bumps and potholes in the road as a system of braille. It used to frighten the life out of them if he was driving, but strangely he never ever crashed.
So, Mr Cameron's idea has some merits, using private investment to repair our roads. Although he seems to want to use my pension to do it - the pensions he has just increased my contributions for, remember. This being the case, if I literally do own the road, then I expect an express lane with no speed limit, no traffic lights, no caravans or pedestrians, or cyclists, or - well no one else basically.
The problem is, if they spend my pension, and private investment money on the roads they will want some sort of return - they will become toll roads.
Well, let's just think about this shall we. I already paid tax in the form of income tax when I earned the money to buy a car, then I paid VAT on the car I bought. (If I had been able to afford a brand new one I would have doubtless paid extra purchase tax too) Then before I can drive the car on the road I pay Vehicle Excise Duty - otherwise known as road tax. Road tax is of course supposed to fund road maintenance, bu the treasury seem to have forgotten that and spent the money on something else, wars, the unemployed, overseas aid, Spanish motorways.....
Having paid several taxes already it is then time to drive the car. This involves buying petrol, or diesel, both of which you pay lots of tax on, and a tax on the tax in the form of some more VAT. This could be spent on road maintenance, but the Government wisely spend sit on more Spanish motorways, lesbian outreach centres, Health and Safety, another War, some overseas aid for the Indians (second fastest growing economy in the world) etc etc. In short, very little of the many tax pounds you have so far paid to drive a car on the road have gone towards roads.
Mr Cameron believes that those who use the roads most should pay more. A laudable argument. But they do already. Because, unless it has escaped his notice, you can't use the car without fuel, and you pay for more fuel the more you use the roads, thereby paying more tax. So don't make a lame excuse to introduce more road charging by pretending it's doing some sort of favour to any of us and taxing only the rich. Because it isn't, and it won't.
Freedom of movement is essential in a free country. The ability to get to work is essential in a free economy. And with 50% of my pay already being deducted in on tax or another, and 20% of the remainder taken in VAT I have precious little left to spend. Mr Cameron, don't price me off the road, and don;t price me out of work.