The Downing Street website has had something of a traffic increase lately. And probably not one they anticipated or wanted. A certain Peter Roberts started a petition calling for the scrapping of the “planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy”. It has now over 1 million signees.

Here what the government proposes: scrapping the car tax, and (I believe) petrol taxes in exchange for a pay-as-you-drive system. You’d pay say, 2p per mile in rural areas, and more in cities. Supposedly this would make people think when they drove, and where, easing congestion which the government says will increase by 25% in the next decade.

But what I as someone who doesn’t own or drive a car thinks is, that this is unfair to people like me too, as well the poor referred to by Mr Roberts. What are the government going to do with the funds? Just the usual as they do now? Or are they going to make a truly worthwhile, cheap, eco-friendly, and on-time national transport grid? Trains, buses, light rail etc.,

Another point that seems to dog their plan - if the aim is to clean up congestion, and they believe that less cars on the road will do that, why not make petrol even more expensive, prohibitively so like say, £20 per gallon? Fund eco-fuel buses and electrically powered trains, and that should lessen the amount of people that use a car.