Nice to see Nick Cook so concerned about the financial plight of public sector staff and people on the minimum wage. Pity it doesn't extend to making up the significant real-terms pay cuts experienced by public sector workers since 2008 due to austerity policies pursued by his own party.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Scottish Budget 2019/20 (now mostly about workplace parking)
(145 posts)-
Posted 5 years ago #
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@Morningsider: that’s because they are caused by the Conservative party; he is a member of the Edinburgh Conservatives, a local group which is part of the RuthDavidsonsScottishConservativesVoteForRuthDavidsonParty. They have nothing to do with the Conservatives.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I would be interested to hear what Mr Cook thinks would constitute a fair tax. If the WPL is unfair, what is fair?
The VoteForRuthDavidsonParty will be undone when Baroness Davidson of Stockbridge hatches from its remains.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@Stickman To be fair, it's also NotTheSNPParty and NotAnother********IndyRef Party.
Posted 5 years ago # -
The Conservatives would happily have a system where no one pays any tax, because they don't understand (or care about) what makes a civilised society.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Also, if the WPL helps to prevent the dangerous and against-planning-regs of this playground being used as general staff parking, I'm all for it.
https://goo.gl/maps/ooy8A2xuN2A2
"Disabled parking only - no deliveries"
How many of these cars/vans are disabled? https://goo.gl/maps/V3VAcYfSNy72
Posted 5 years ago # -
The Conservatives would happily have a system where no one pays any tax
I don't think that's true. They fetishise roads and the military. They don't want to pay taxes, but they do want taxes to be paid. Just not by them.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I wonder if Nick has even stopped to consider how many minimum wage workers public sector workers have access to a private parking place at work. I don't know the figures but suspect that a higher percentage of private workspace individuals could be found coming from Morningside than Craigmillar in most workplace car parks.
I realise I am guilty of stereotyping in this post for which I apologise. There is a real risk that this will be throttled by consultation hell with multiple consultations at every level of government. I really hope the Green's stick up for it or get equivalent concessions before voting the budget through.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@acsimpson - one of the MSPs (can't remember who) was suggesting a referendum on it! Always the coward's way out for bread and butter politics.
This was a bone chucked by the SNP to the Greens and I'll bet they back track and delay as much as possible.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I hope I'm wrong and Adam McVey has been sticking up for it, in his article and on twitter.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Rosie - the WPL is being introduced as an amendment to the Transport (Scotland) Bill that is currently being considered by the Scottish Parliament.
The amendment will be considered by the REC Committee which has five SNP, three Tory, one Lib Dem, one Green and one Labour member. It will require every SNP Committee member to support it for it to have any chance of success. Possible, but not guaranteed.
The Bill will then pass to the final plenary debate. There will almost certainly be a (Tory?) amendment to remove the WPL from the Bill. Labour, Lib Dems and Tories would all support this. It would only take a couple of SNP rebels to pass, once unthinkable but now a real possibility on something considered a vote loser.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@Morningsider Thanks for the explanation of the process, which I didn't know.
It's such a tiny change, it's not mandatory and it's very unlikely that any Council would adopt it except Glasgow and Edinburgh. It makes me despair that it is such a political hot potato. No votes were ever lost by enlisting troops on the motorists' side in this ceaseless war against them.
Posted 5 years ago # -
This whole stramash highlights the limits of dumbocracy in the post-truth world. The media, Tories, Labour, Lib Dems are all parading manufactured outrage and spurious lies because they think this will score them an easy win in forcing the SNP minority government t to u-turn.
That's all it's about. We'll all be losers if this idiotic populism continues as is.
Posted 5 years ago # -
https://twitter.com/carlaw4eastwood/status/1096727964543315974?s=21
“All over Scotland today Scottish Conservatives are campaigning against the SNP Car Park Tax.”
With picture of Jackon Carlot and four Tories standing in a car park.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Here's Stephen Daisley. He is gleeful that this is an opportunity for the Unionist parties. His articles are a good inside on the Tory thinking behind their agitation about what's a fairly minor piece of legislation.
"In their guts, the voters hate the parking levy and are beginning to feel well and truly scunnered with the government that is paving the way for it."
https://stephendaisley.com/2019/02/09/snp-parking-tax-is-a-political-car-crash/
Posted 5 years ago # -
Daisley’s whole schtick is being a Scottish Ignatius J Reilly, but he doesn’t have the charm or wit to pull it off.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Well of course e-cars will be exempt (I made that up btw!)
Stephen Daisley should be concerned about climate change and air quality. Costs of driving versus public transport have gone down steadily for many years.
Far from being a war against the motorist WPL is merely trying to re-balance costs.Posted 5 years ago # -
I dug up this from 2000, yesterday:
http://www.parliament.scot/S1_Bills/Transport%20(Scotland)%20Bill/b18s1.pdf
The debate then around WPL (L being licensing rather than levy) was similarly heated and generally not in favour.
19 years later, we're still doing nothing about climate change, while tapdancing around the criticality of it and saying it's all those people eating meat or flying on holiday.
Posted 5 years ago # -
You gotta hand it to the Greens, striking a blow against liberty, enterprise, AND human progress, one free parking space at a time.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Here's a very rough estimate of how many people might be affected by the workplace parking levy in Edinburgh, based on the Nottingham experience.
The Nottingham workplace parking levy applies to approximately 25,000 parking spaces, from a total of 42,000 workplace spaces. Nottingham had a population of 329,209 and Edinburgh a population of 513,210 in 2017 (ONS data),
Assuming a similar density of off-street workplace parking spaces in Edinburgh as Nottingham and that workplace parking spaces are proportional to population, Edinburgh would have 39,000 parking places liable for the charge.
The BBC reports that eight out of 10 organisations pass the tax on to staff. Assuming the same proportion of Edinburgh employers do so, and that spaces are evenly distributed between employers, then the fee would be paid by 31,200 employees.
There were 330,000 employees in Edinburgh in 2017. So the levy would be paid by 9.5% of all Edinburgh employees, or to put it another way - nine out of 10 Edinburgh employees would not pay the levy.
I was also going to look at how many people with below average income would be affected, but it is Saturday night and I'm off to the pub.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I do like this levy as it pinpoints single occupant drivers also a way of City of Edinburgh attracting revenue from the many non Edinurgh residents who drive in to Edinburgh of a Monday morning. In my head this is standard life car parking space perk et cetera but maybe teachers who tend to drive to work have been exempted?
I am not being Fifist here. Fife is a great place to live. But single occupant cars driven from Fife, the other Lothian authorities, the borders and south Lanarkshire/falkirkshire etc all cause wear and tear on Edinburgh roads but the drivers pay their council tax elsewhere.
Car sharing would be a way of splitting the cost of this tax. Single occupant tax another good idea that no one will like.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Perhaps there should be a toll on the Forth crossing, M8, etc.
Or some sort of ring of ANPR cameras around the city...
Posted 5 years ago # -
Or a congestion charge
Posted 5 years ago # -
I do wonder why the WPL isn't being positioned as a more targeted version of congestion charging...
It is primarily tackling peak time travel and leaving behind all the daytime shenanigans for shopping, visiting people etc.
Posted 5 years ago # -
“I do wonder why the WPL isn't being positioned as a more targeted version of congestion charging...”
Simple answer is that SNP Gov wouldn’t like to be associated with the possibility of CC.
Remains to be seen whether party colleagues in Glasgow and Edinburgh councils are interested and strong enough to campaign on it.
Adam and others have had enough bother arguing for a tourist tax.
Perhaps Glasgow will take the lead. That city probably suffers even more than Edinburgh when it comes to people driving in and paying their local taxes elsewhere.
What’s the worst that could happen? All those who currently drive refuse to work in Ed/Glas??
Might be an increase in jobs closer to home...
Why does Fife get Amazon warehouses and Edinburgh gets the finance jobs in people warehouses on the edge of town?
Posted 5 years ago # -
(MidL gets shopping sheds and film studios.)
Posted 5 years ago # -
Good article here about the Nottingham experience:-
Posted 5 years ago # -
From link
“
“The Loughborough study found Nottingham was doing well economically when you compare it to similar cities in England, so the WPL hasn’t deterred business, but what it has done is improve the transport network quite considerably so people are benefiting,” says Professor Tom Rye, director of Napier University’s Transport Research Institute. “
That’s not just because of the WPL. If you look at the council’s transport department, it has always had inspirational people; people who have been willing to look for new solutions and to put those solutions in place. But the WPL is definitely helping.”
“
Ah yes, people who think beyond ‘traffic flow’ (for private cars).
Posted 5 years ago # -
Successful tram in Nottingham too.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Can anyone point me in the direction of a good thread, or article, or note on how road funding is devolved and distributed at a national, council and local level?
Have been asked to write an article for local community association magazine and keen to pop together something that is informative but might reset some thoughts on how to gain traction for funding.
Posted 5 years ago #
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