Fuel costs more than a fine?

With national budgets and public spending being cut all over the place, including that of the Police and other Emergency Services is it not time to increase the level that drivers, and others, are fined when they break the law. Currently the £80 fixed fine is becoming less than the cost of a tank of petrol. Given the number of cars still on the road, clearly not occupied in travelling to and from work, many people are obviously not bothered too much about the cost of fuel.

Perhaps by dramatically increasing the level of fines one of two things would happen. Either the government would get some income which could be used to help fund the Emergency Services., or everyone would drive more sensibly and the number of accidents would go down thus reducing the costs of the Emergency Services.

I can almost hear the sceptics that say recovering the money from increased fines would erode any benefit from doing so. No it would not, because once an offender had received a Penalty Notice they would have to cease driving and surrender their driving license. The driving ban should last until the fine was paid in full or they had negotiated a payment plan. Oh yes!, if the fine is not paid the car gets crushed too.

Similarly the costs of an accident, or at least a substantial contribution, should be charged to the insurance companies of the parties at fault. Why should all the careful drivers and the public that don’t drive have to pay to clear up the mess created by those that are reckless?

Recovery will be in jeopardy

A ludicrous situation is going to happen shortly when the Bank of England is forced to raise interest rates to slow down inflation. It will effectively screw up the financial recovery!

I have no confidence in the Bank of England experts or those in the Treasury because just as they should have separated the Investment Banks from the Retail Banks when they had the ideal opportunity. They should also have separated the domestic interest rate from that of commercial borrowing. The Bank of England would then be able increase interest rates on domestic borrowing to slow down inflation whilst leaving the borrowing rate for commerce and industry at a lower rate to encourage growth.

WHAT IS A JOB WORTH?

Our economy is about the sixth largest in the world, yet we're told we're broke. What rubbish, we're merely spending our money on the wrong things like Local Authority Chief Executives who take home over £300,000 per year. This is OBSCENE.

Even if these people were being paid £100,000 it would be too much. I would hazard a guess that their authorities are over budget and requiring to make dramatic and drastic cuts and even then they will still be over budget and short of funds. They should not just have a pay cut, they should have a P45 because none of them are competent senior managers.

All our local authorities are over borrowed and over budget. What makes the executives think they deserve high salaries? It is obvious why they work for local government, they could not hold down a job in commerce or industry for very long, or even more unlikely, manage a business by themselves.

Every business has to live within it means or it goes bust. Our local authorities and our central government have gone bust, yet the remunerations and pensions of all the idiots that run them go up and up. It is time to call a halt. A graduated remuneration scale for ALL public employees should be defined and enshrined in law then we will not have the ludicrous state of affairs where a Local Authority Chief Executive is getting paid more than the Prime Minister.