If roads are wide enough for buses, vans, why do we need a width tax?
THERE is an awful lot of nonsense talked – mainly in the States of course – about the size of cars on this island and now Peter Roffey is on about his punitive width tax again. For heaven's sake, the motor car is an integral part of modern life, providing convenient, comfortable and enjoyable transport for thousands of people in Guernsey. Get used to it and stop treating us as an unlimited source of income to be blown on wasteful projects.
And remember, there is not a single car in Guernsey that is as big as or as wide as the builders' trucks, the removal vans, the window cleaners' vans, the garden centre pick-up trucks, the furniture vans, the phone company vans, the parcel delivery vans, the gas company vans, the skip lorries, the fuel tankers, the scaffold trucks, the sewage trucks, and many more, to say nothing of our oversize buses, the Ferryspeed trucks or some of the States' own vehicles. None of them pay emissions tax like the motorist, and all of them manage, with a bit of give and take, to get round this island quite successfully despite their width. And yet deputies like Peter Roffey can think of no better way to raise more money than to tax the private motorist even more.
Well, thanks a bunch. I have a better idea – why don't we save a substantial amount by getting rid of some expensive deputies? If you need names I am sure there will be plenty of people queuing up to help.
BRIAN GROVES,
Sarum, Granges de Beauvoir,
St Peter Port, GY1 1QT.
