I have to admit guys, as much as I dont want to I am also, like I am sure MANY other citizens looking at possibly getting a tag, Paying the reduced fee compared to 3 times the amount??
I do think I am going to avoid the highways as much as I can, but its not always possible.
You can say as much as you like that YOU WONT PAY, if you have used it and dont pay, you going to get shit, thats a fact. Thats how I see it, and no I dont have a tag yet.
To me the questions are these.
1) Am I happy with the way the country is being run?
a) Mildly unhappy
b) Its a bit concerning
c) Deeply unhappy - we are headed for disaster if this continues
2) e-tolls are:
a) A good thing and ultimately for the benefit of us all
b) A poorly planned and executed project but the concept was OK to start with, sort of.
c) The latest example of a government just raping it citizens at every turn and which potentially heralds a whole new range of additional taxes under the "user pays" principle on a lot of other existing infrastructure
3) The government is using my existing tax money
a) Wisely and efficiently
b) Making a few mistakes here and there, but doing their best
c) Just pissing huge amounts of money away on their own lavish life styles, excessive salaries and perks, incompetence, corruption, cronyism, factionalism and stupidity, resulting the ever increasing need for more and more and more money from tax payers while we get less and less?
Answer those questions and then decide whether its maybe worth while paying a bit more for your tolls to try and bring down this scheme. You dont have to do anything illegal, just make it as bloody difficult as possible to collect the money.
If we can stop this scheme we also start a whole new mindset in the population that we are not powerless and can make our displeasure known to a very arrogant government.
Last word:
In any properly run country introducing something like etolls may not necessarily be a bad thing (apart from the privacy concern) because:
1) I would expect that they would reduce taxes that were used to pay for road maintenance before etolls - to compensate for the money collected from tolls
2) A large portion of the money collected would not be siphoned off into a Swiss bank account or some foreign country or private companies with opaque ownerships and shareholdings etc
3) The existing taxes collected (other than etolls) would not be wasted and I could trust that they would be properly used for my benefit as a citizen, so I can rest assured they could not have used that existing money instead of having to introduce etolls
4) The politicians and their friends would not be able to set up and drive through schemes in which they had a personal commercial interest
5) Politicians who were suspected of bribery and corruption or who had known links to corrupt businessmen and convicted criminals would be forced to resign the day after the news was made public.
6) I would expect that once the debts were paid off, etolls would be cancelled or reduced.
Topic: E-Tolls go live - 3 December 2013 (Read 62565 times)
