I was thinking along the same lines Reg and going to tackle this topic....
Ask not for whom the road tolls...it tolls for thee!!
Yes just when you thought nothing further could possibly be privatised, up popped this one yesterday. As is the style of the current government, it is floated in the media first to see what level of uproar the idea achieves. To me this is a chronically awful move. I dont understand it, they are flogging the motorist to within one inch of his/her life already and now this ugly possiblilty is looming on the horizon.
The government say it is not tolling, the newspapers say it is tolling...the idea is in a state of bewilderment at the moment yet to be made clear.
However.... the idea is to get private companies to build new roads, or indeed to widen existing roads..and so on. Now, these private companies have to make a return on their considerable investment because as we all know road building is hugely expensive...so how do they get a return? Well easy..it's simple straightforward economics, they must charge you the motorist to use their piece of new road.
This applies, according to the young reporter on Radio 4, to road widening and so on...so there could be great chunks of existing roads on the existing network that could end up being tolled. A frightening prospect. Not only is the nation hamstrung by enormous petrol costs, ever increasing insurance levels, murderous parking charges and whathaveyou, now we have this looming towards us like the juggernaut from hell.