It's been brought to my attention that back in April this year HMRC announced changes to the mileage rates payable for private cars and vans, motorbikes, and bicycles.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rates/travel.htm
Note that it's only users of private cars whose rate has increased, from 40p to 45p per mile. The Institute of Chartered Accountants for Scotland was rather critical of the 12.5% increase not fairly reflecting the 55% higher pump prices of fuel (2005 vs 2011). But 45p isn't going to help discourage people from using their car, given that this so-called punitive increase is better than what was on offer before.
Yet we still see (the maximum) cycle mileage rate kept at 20p per mile -- and 24p for motorbikes which, as far as I remember, also need petrol. Has the price of bread and pasta increased as much as petrol and diesel in the past six years? Have bike shoes and socks and chains and tyres increased the same? We did have that huge bump in Japanese component prices a couple of years ago when the economy realised it wasn't as stable as it thought it was.
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