The Department for Transport is to publish a consultation report it commissioned on cutting the death toll amongst younger drivers in the autumn. The major proposal is increasing the age limit for gaining a full driving licence to by a year to eighteen. To do this they will impose a 12-month training period for new drivers, in effect preventing 17-year-olds from holding a full licence. According to DfT research a 12-month learning period would save up to 1,000 deaths and up to 7,000 serious injuries a year. All very well, but I don't really understand the logic entirely. Is this about raising the age of the driving limit, getting drivers to have more experience on the roads or keeping the number of cars on the roads down?

A year long learning period will actually be nothing of the sort. The cost of driving lessons alone will ensure that many people will not actually bother learning for that long. As such, drivers will not be going on the roads for the first time with more experience, just a year later than they might have been. So whether you are 17 or 35 you will have to apply for your license a year before you can take your test, you won't have to gain any further driving experience. Why not make the tests harder and ensure that drivers are taught the skills needed to handle a car? It all sounds a little bit like keeping car numbers down to me rather than an effective, well reasoned policy on cutting road deaths.

The Department for Transport (DfT) announced this morning that "Yorkshire commuters [are] at [the] heart of strategy for rail growth". Cleethorpes and Northallerton stations will be refurbished, bottlenecks around Leeds and Manchester will be tackled, extra carriages will be made available for Leeds and Sheffield suburban services, capacity on some routes of the Trans-Pennine Express will be increased by 30% by lengthening trains, and by "53% for peak hour commuter trains serving Leeds". Lucky old Yorkshire, being at the heart of the Government's plans.

Three minutes later, the DfT announced that "East Midlands railways [are] at the heart of strategy for [rail] growth". This strategy is now a bicardiac beast, which tends to be an unstable condition. But nevermind. They'll get longer trains in Nottingham and Leicester, faster journeys on the Midland main line, and "passengers will also see more punctual services as the Government is buying improved reliability". Very cheering, I'm sure, but what quality of service did the Government think they were buying before?

Another two minutes later, and the East has been added to the heart of the strategy. This beast's physiology is starting to look curious indeed. Guess what: longer trains, more capacity, better punctuality... At least this big heart will be beating as one.

Who are these people in Government who simply can not make a decent estimate? It seems every single Government major investment project runs vastly over budget. Where on Earth do they find them - it's not like it's one department or the odd project, but every single department and every single project. If this was the private sector these goons would have been sacked years ago. The latest piece of Government over spend has been revealed by the National Audit Office to be from the Department for Transport's road schemes - 200 of them! You'd have thought after the first 50 or so they might be able to spot a trend and start making better estimates.

I've added a link to the Not Proud of Britain (But Would Like To Be) blog, simply for this comment on the Bloggers4Labour blog. It is one of the most intelligent observations that I have seen on the false economics of the Government's road-pricing scheme. Does the Government really think that people sit in rush-hour traffic for the hell of it, and that all they need is a financial incentive to get them to drop off the kids or go to work at a different time? It's not difficult to spot the flaw in the plan, is it? Headmaster/mistress and boss may have something to say about it. Snafu sums it up superbly in the language of economists. What a pity a blogger has a better grasp of economics than the large number of academic pseudo-economists who have come out in support of road-pricing simply because it looks superficially like a market.

If ever proof were needed that this government is using the environment debate as a smoke screen to stealth taxes and pushing through their agenda, then just look at how they are acting in their everyday lives. You would think a government overly concerned with the changing climate would be going out of their way to get the public to buy in to the green debate by acting responsibly themselves. But no. The number of miles Ministers are driving each year has risen sharply. And even more worrying, they are making us pay for their luxury travel. Their wage bill has increased from £5.5 million a year to £7.3 million year. The Government Car and Despatch Agency drove 2,394,200 miles in 2004-5 and 2,834,000 in 2005-6.  Never mind saving the planet, it seems our ministers want to see every inch of it, before it goes, by chauffeur driven car. How can ministers justify this amount of car use and why has it increased so much?

Whatever your views on road pricing, most would have to agree that the Government has made a complete mess of trying to get it introduced. It is expected that nearly 2 million people will have signed the e-petition on the No.10 website by the time it close tomorrow and I can not say I’m surprised.

Firstly, the Government have treated the electorate with complete contempt once again. They thought that by setting up the e-petitions facility on the website it would make it look as if they are listening and we are all playing an important role in the democratic process. However, we all know now that they are a complete waste of time and needless to say, tax payers’ money. The problem with the petitions is the easy retorts the Government can give them. So what if 2 million people have signed it? – Another 58 million have not. The current line coming out is – what are the alternatives to road pricing?

As my earlier post’s wishful thinking suggested, it seems that issues being kicked in to the long grass is going to be a more common theme than anyone could have hoped for. The infamous road pricing scheme looks set to be kicked in to the long grass for now. Not because one and half million people have wasted their time signing an e-petition – a tool used to make it feel like we’re entering in to the democratic process, but is actually a way of shutting us up. No, the latest weapon against introducing road charging is the incompetence of the government itself.

With the revelations of what each MP is claiming in travel expenses finally coming to light thanks to Lib Dem MP Norman Baker, some interesting stats have been revealed.

You have to ask where Janet Anderson, Labour MP for Rossendale and Darwen, was going as she claimed back £16,612 on road travel – and note MPs can claim 40p a mile for the first 10,000 miles each year and 25p thereafter. Needless to say, I have been doing my sums and it works out over an incredible 52,000 miles a year. Now, Janet’s constituency is 220 miles from the Palace of Westminster, which works out at roughly 120 round trips a year. Considering Parliament only sits for just over half the year, she must be doing this journey back and forth at least three or four times a week while the house is sitting. She must be exhausted!

The Independent is never shy of calling for more government money to be spent on one thing or another. Now we know why. Apparently taxation is not a drain on the economy, but a means to create wealth.

They report today that the Department for Transport estimate that "road pricing could raise up to £28bn by 2025". Let's not worry about how they can so precisely calculate a figure so far in the future, or whether they took the costs of the scheme into account. It's rubbish, of course, but we'll leave that for another post some other time.

What I am interested in here is what we can learn about the understanding of at least one leading journalist at The Independent about how the economy works. Because, in their box-out "The case for (and against) charging" (the brackets nicely illustrate the "balance" that they bring to this argument), they report that road pricing would "benefit the economy by £28bn".

Silly me. There was I thinking that we need to keep taxes under control because they represent a drag on the productive part of the economy, when all along I should have been pushing for ever-higher taxes, because the government can apparently magically double the value of money in the hands of taxpayers, simply by taking it off them.

Next time you read analysis in The Independent making a moralistic (and usually simplistic) case for more spending on this or that, remember that, in their eyes, they'll not only be improving the lot of those on whom the money is being spent, but expanding the economy as well. Then put the paper down, and buy one written by economic literates.

The environment debate, and I use the word debate in its loosest form, has become rather like the so called “war on terror”. That is to say, you can’t really question the government over with it without being accused of being some sort of self-serving monster that has no interest in the well being of the world and its people. As a result, the government (and opposition parties) are not only trying to out “green” each other, but they are cynically using climate change to impose “big brother” like regulation and also use it as an unquestionable form of taxation or method of raising money for Treasury’s deep, deep pockets.

"Doing nothing is not an option." So says the Government's spokesman, as an explanation for why they will press ahead with road pricing against strong public antipathy.

The culture of doing something because "something must be done" is what this site exists to challenge. Though it is endemic, you rarely hear this approach to government expressed so baldly.

There are arguments for and against road pricing. And there are arguments against those arguments. But "doing nothing is not an option" is no argument either in favour of any particular option, or against people who oppose that option. On that basis, you might as well stick your arm in the fire, because the flame is dieing and "something needs to be done".