Vehicle tracking

[Banquo's Ghost]

You go to jail for not paying your TV licence tax ?!

No, you go to jail for not paying the fine imposed on you for not paying your TV licence. (i.e. You cannot pay the £150 tax, so here's a fine of £1,000 on top. Oh, you can't pay that either, Go to Jail)

I know little about the social situation in the UK, so then my question becomes: how on earth people who own cars, who can afford to maintain them (*), buy gas (or petrol, if you prefer ), cannot afford to pay whatever road tax ?

Well, it's the same in most countries. One can pick up a jalopy for as little as £100 (around 200 US dollars) and drive it perfectly well. Maintenance is an option for these people, but if they want to, they are often capable of doing much of it themselves or having a mate who does for a beer. Road tax is something of the order of £175 per year and insurance, especially for young men under 25 can be as high as £1000 for even an ordinary car. These last two are seen as optional.

Also, while I fully believe you that prisons are full and represent a huge burden on the taxpayer, it's a bit hard to accept the argument that a new tax won't be put in place simply because we can't harbor more criminals in our jails. You see what I mean, don't you ? I mean, following that train of thought, people would feel free to do any crime after some point, because the jails are full and the system just can't take any more criminals and put them in jail.
I find it hard to swallow that can happen in a civilized country like the UK...

Can you explain a bit more, please ? I'm finding myself unable to tie all these loose ends...

The issue is not "the jails are full, avoid making new criminals" but what offences create criminals that deserve jail. Imprisonment is a fantastically expensive method of creating new and better criminals. Without dragging this off down another prison debate, I think imprisoning people for their inability to pay fines is fat-headed, and stringent but non-custodial methods such as community service would be better.

Full prisons are the result of politicians taking the easy sound-bite to punish crime. The upshot is that really dangerous criminals (rapists, murderers etc) are now being shuffled around into open prisons (low security establishments with a high absconding rate) or even cleverer, housed in police cells being guarded by policemen who might be better off out catching villains.

My point for the thread is that this tracking database, even if it worked, is another sound-bite.

In the case of TV licences, it seems to me far more cost effective to exempt people on low incomes from paying the tax - or to remove the flat-rate tax (the rich pay the same rate as the poor) altogether and fund the BBC differently.