London Congestion Charge (US Embassy)
 

Has there been anything in the media in the US about the Embassy in London refusing to pay the £8 per day congestion charge?

I can only have 1 window open at a time on this pc (logged on in the library) so I can't provide you with all the facts here & now, but for a brief overview:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4352520.stm

I wondered if anyone had any opinions on it? Of course the British press/ television is mainly based in London and therefore the journalists (using public transport or paying the charge themselves) will have an obvious bias. I share it being an ex-Londoner myself, and I admit mine is probably knee-jerk "follow my rules when you're on my manor"......

So does anyone think this is a defensible position?

No taxation without representation! When are you Royalists gonna get it?

You guys charge people to watch television. We think that's silly too.

It was covered on Fark. Seems the relevant details are that embassy folks are not required to pay tax and that foreign embassies are coming to the conclusion that this is a tax even though mayor says it's a charge.

This is the part of the Times story that I thought was most important, emphasis mine:
Is London going to remain a great city of the world? :( Not if it charges people to be there.

So diplomats are expected to pay $14 per trip to the Embassy/Office if it is located in central London, or ride the bus/take a cab, where there is no security, no bombproofing/armor, and a scheduled, predictable route?

That doesn't sound very safe. I'd say the hell with it, too. It is a tax, pure and simple. It is a fee collected by a government for the purposes of funding government programs or regulating public behavior. How the hell can it be called anything *but* a tax?

I'd love to hear the NYC Mayor's take on this, considering the problems they have with diplomatic tagged cars around the UN and various embassies. :eyebrow:

What a bloody joke, it's not a tax any more than a toll road is. you pay for what you use. As for business, living here, trust me, any claims of the city being quiet and everyone going backrupt because of this is utter crap. It has however made traffic move a little again and is widely viewed here as a major success. You have to understand that you're mad to drive into london anyway, everyone, from execs to bus uses the PT because its the only way to get anywhere in a reasonable time short of a chopper thus the idea that there are less people is frankly, laughable. Furthermore, recently they closed Oxford St to traffic for a day, a friend of mine is a manager at the massive TopShop at Oxford Circus - they recorded a 40% increase in business.

The Libertarians among us note that when excessive costs, like a "congestion charge" are imposed upon doing business, or upon employment, business and employment both decline and fall.

Britain needs more libertarianism or Britain will become as Spain, and mid-20th-century Spain at that.

Take a town planning course, halfwit. Maybe traffic isn't an issue in buttfuck, nowhere USA but this is a very old city with a limited road space network with a massive, massive traffic problem, the economic cost of it is huge. The city centre simply didn't move, real, complete gridlock every day. Thanks to the congestion charge, it works again. To illustrate my point I'll give you a couple of quotes from the bastion of liberal wolly-headed thinking, the Economist which hailed the scheme as a success:

No one said it didn't work.

If we start having to pay to breathe the air, does the air become a service? Here in Missouri, USA, that backward place, we pay an energy surcharge based on our electrical and gas usage. It is used to fund pollution reduction. I guess this, using the same reasoning as the London situation, would be an "air service fee", and not a tax?

If you want to call it a toll -- put up toll gates like the ones we have here in Bumfuck, Kansas -- even with RF meters so you can just roll thru.

when you start running out of air, a system of effective rationing might start seeming like a good idea, until that point it sure does sound silly doesn't it. Of course you have to breathe air, noone is making you drive though the centre of london. Every day everyone that travels though the centre of london, from diplomats to street cleaners can make a decision, do I take a car or do I take PT/walk/chopper/bike/moterbike, if you choose to take a car, you pay the congestion charge. and elspode - urbane gurilla is trying to claim that it doesn't work.

I didn't get that he said sit didn't work. I got more like a "more government regulation is screwing up the world" sort of vibe.

I think the core of this issue is that semantics won't make me think of it as anything other than a tax, and semantics won't make you think of it as anything other than a service fee.

Meantime, someoneone is going to have to figure out what to call it so that the diplomatic corps, who aren't going to be riding buses or subways anytime soon, will pay it.

My point was it's a net economic benefit, his implication is that it's a net loss.
There were a couple of scholars of the vienna treaty that governs this stuff on the radio, they thought it should be paid.

Um, essentially, they did. Except in a way that doesn't even slow traffic down. Which was the point.

I agree with the need to control traffic in congested, ancient, architecturally significant areas like London. However, if I put myself in the place of a Londoner going out to do some shopping, I'm probably not going to buy nearly as much stuff if I have to carry it back home on the bus. Looking at things like that, perhaps it would be a disincentive to spend as much.

Similarly, when dining or doing something else that I could more easily do in a suburban location since I no longer wish to be gouged to drive into town, maybe I just stay in the 'burbs to be entertained.

If I'm looking to locate a business, perhaps I think twice before putting it somewhere where my customers have to pay through the nose before they even get to my shop/office/whatever.

I guess it just remains to see if the statistics will support these possibilities over time. If so, it will be very safe and comfortable to walk around and look at all the lovely, well preserved, empty buildings.

Before this tax, the tradeoff was convenience of car vs massive gridlock. Now it's convenience of car vs small fee.

I'd pick the latter. Imagine if you're in a traffic jam, and someone said you could get out of it for $8. Sounds good to me.

But $8 a day dounds like a lot, doesn't it? How many people go shopping every day? It only really adds up for commuters, who are the biggest target for moving to public transportation.

Well actually its either a tax or a charge depending on where you live.

The definition of a tax is any obligation imposed on a citizen that is involuntary but not punitive (not a fine levied by a court for example). If the City of London charges five pounds to tour of the Tower of London, I can easily elect not to take the tour and not pay the fee.

Now, if I live in the congestion zone and owned a car prior to the congestion charge, then, for me, the levy is involuntary and, by definition, a tax. If, however, I live outside the zone, then driving into the zone becomes voluntary and a taxable event is triggered when I do so.

Now if you move into the zone post-Congestion fee with a car then its not a tax but a charge.

On the subject of the economics, there is nothing conceptually flawed about the fee. In fact, it makes perfect sense to decrease the demand for something in limited supply by raising the cost. There is a potential problem for businesses whose business models receive the exogenous shock of a sudden decrease in clientele but, if there costs decline in equal or greater proportion to their revenue, then no harm done. It is difficult to imagine that all businesses were affected identically - there had to be some businesses who lost more than they gained but there's nothing inherently discriminatory about the charge.

As far as the original question goes, if the diplomats live within the zone and have no alternative but to pay the fee - no public transport available from home to embassy- then its a tax and they are exempt from paying it.

You'll also get a higher class of people by keeping out the riffraff and commoners. People who have plenty of money don't worry about niggling little fees. They just have their chauffeur's pay it. :lol:

Which is safer? Diplomat being driven to the embassy in an armored Mercedes by a trained evasive action driver, or a diplomat on the subway? Shouldn't those charged with the safety of the diplomatic corps take this into consideration? If, in their determination, it is unsafe for the diplomats to take public transport, and that it is important that they use private vehicles, which is it...tax or fee?

Most of the diplomats should be shot anyway as they're political appointments.:lol2:

Elspode - what you're not getting is how few people use cars in central london. Seriously. If you're anywhere near the congestion charge area it's so dense and populated you'd have a quicker time crawling to your local supermarket than taking a car most of the time. No, I'm not exagerating at all. If you do take in a car you're likely to find you spend more time finding somewhere to put it (and paying far more than the congestion charge for an hour of parking) than you do shopping. Also - if you live inside the zone you get a 90% discount, this is one of the issues with expanding the zone, suddenly all the bloody chelsea tractors will be discounted. As for diplomatic security, this is like any other service. I assume an armoured merc costs more than a normal one, is that extra cost a tax? Sounds illogical doesn't it? So why does this service come under the title tax and others not?

Delaware markets itself as the tax free state to attract shoppers. However, when you buy a car, they charge 2.75% after trade in credit as a "Doc Fee" to register your car there.

Not to mention, their payroll taxes are huge.

Because the British government doesn't offer the choice. The vehicles are supplied by the respective embassy (or so I would imagine...I dunno, perhaps the British are extremely generous to their resident diplomats?).

Again, I don't dispute that something should be done. The original thread was about diplomats not paying the fee because they consider it a tax. I agree with them. I mean, are there so many diplomats that allowing them an exemption would undermine the whole system? I have visions of gangs of diplomats roaming the streets of London with cricket bats and SUVs, beating up on old ladies, now.

I'm not a big fan of the automobile. I think much of the freedom we Americans attribute to it is illusory. However, when we look at what went down in New Orleans where everyone who was dependent on public transport by choice or not was screwed, it bolsters my anti-planning bias.

My theory goes something like this: America has a problem with the automobile because we have a Puitanical attitude toward sex.

I don't know about you all, but the whole reason I wanted my first car was so I could have a reliable place to get laid and a way to obtain a partner with whom to pursue being laid.

If we all hadn't had to sneak off and fuck in our cars when we were kids so our families wouldn't be offended, we wouldn't have gotten so hung up on cars, and we'd be less car-oriented and more public transportation oriented.

Okay, maybe my thinking is flawed. I just got this vision of teenagers screwing on city busses, and everyone else pretending not to notice...they'd probably get upset over that even in Europe, where they not only have naked people on regular TV, but lots of great trains and busses.

Curtains, Els, curtains. Even if you have to carry your own. ;)

Monk, do you LIVE in DC or just work there? You are paying exactly this kind of "levy" to the District of Colombia from your paycheck if you are commuting from Virginia, then. I lived in Roslyn and worked on K Street, and every paycheck I was deducted for "using the roads and public safety services", even though my car came into DC rarely. I used public transportation, but I was still CHARGED, without my consent or knowledge, for passing through, as it were. That was 40 years ago, and knowing how governments have become ever more rapacious, Virginia commuters now are probably paying 10 time what I did.

They also tried to instigate the same kind of tax when I worked in San Francisco but commuted from Alameda. Like: You are coming into our city in droves and wearing out our roads and the seats of chairs in our restraunts so somebody has to pay us, and besides that you "use" our police when our residents try to rob you, etc. Some of the business leaders confronted the City about it, however, and bluntly told them that they better look around them because businesses were already in full flight from San Francisco to more "user-friendly" cities in the area, and if they wanted to empty the streets to save wear and tear, that could be arranged. The City backed down that time, but I imagine by now it is back and in spades. And businesses continue to leave San Francisco for more reasonable locations. I never thought I would say it, but San Francisco nowdays is run by policies that are TOO LIBERAL FOR ME TO STAND :blush: Never thought I would say that. Eh.

I don't remember the legal mandate to build the US embassy inside the congestion zone. Or travel in mercs. The sum involved is around 150kGBP so far but up until now the US embassy haspaid the charge along with all others, apart from Germany.

I live in DC and work in Virginia.

And my guess is, since Congress is in charge of DC, that that commuter tax is long dead at this point.

I pass by HM on the way into work every morning as I work in DC but live in VA. DC keeps bringing up the the idea of having commuters who work in the city pay DC state income tax but it hasn't gotten off the ground. I'm employed by a VA business so it wouldn't affect me either way but I'm not very fond of the idea for obvious reasons. My objections used to be pretty clear cut back when the Federal governmet was making a Federal Payment to DC every year but I don't think they do that anymore so its difficult to determine how fair or equitable it is or isn't.

In any event, VA doesn't charge DC residents to work in our state or drive on our streets but the underlying economics may not be as clear cut as that makes it sound.

DC is in a hard place, financially. A huge amount of real estate is owned by the Federal Government and embassies, and a huge number of DC employees pay their income tax to Virginia and Maryland. Anything they may try to do to offset this can be vetoed by Congress.

That would be overkill, and probably have no chance of passing Congress, but a commuter tax of some sort would be reasonable.

Trying to control pollution levels in individual cities by micromanaging people's driving habits is futile. You're simply not going to be able to pry people out of their cars -- not in America, anyway.

That said, I would love to commute to work on a train, and the Front Range is long overdue for a line that runs from Denver to points north and south. I'd save thousands of dollars in gasoline every year. I've considered the bus, but the schedule and routes are weird, particularly between towns. If public transportation was efficient, clean, and convenient, I'd be all over it. Not in its current state, though. Spending 2 hours on 5 busses to travel 20 miles sucks.

Especially when you think that 20 miles in two hours is a good bicycle pace, and a distance you could likely cover in a single hour. But you don't get any reading done.

The congestion charge isn't really intended to address pollution, although that is an obvious benefit. Its designed to reduce the amount of cars entering Central London.

Additional information regarding the issue (from CNN)
"A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said the embassy had only stopped paying the fee from July 1, when it was increased from £5 ($8.73) to £8 ($13.96)."

Which surely answers the question when is a charge a tax? When you don't want to pay it any more.........

We Americans have some prior history with you guys. Extra charges on Tea or something like that?

So the US Embassy needs to move itself (after somehow finding a way to locate a building large enough and secure enough within London..if that's even possible) to a "no toll/road tax/service fee" area. It needs to spend literally, millions of dollars (and pounds) to do this, just to avoid a "fee" that was imposed AFTER they had been in that location...how many years?

I could see your point if they chose to move there after the fee was imposed, but they didn't ASK for this fee, so as was earlier pointed out, it's involuntary, they are diplomats and CANNOT take PT, so therefore it's a tax.

I think it's great that traffic has improved. I think it's great that City of London is raking in potentially $110m pounds per year. If the residents get 90% off, it's obvious that they aren't expected to move, as you're suggesting the Embassy does.

This is a tax for all those who were in the area prior to the imposition of the fee. (Therefore they have diplomatic immunity). It's a charge for all those who weren't.

Years ago I used to drive to the centre of London and park for free (I'm talking mid 60's) - you could actually do it then. Driving in London was an art form. You had to be a Londoner to do it really, because you either knew the 'code' (routes and rules of engagement) or you didn't and non-Londoners were classed in the 'non-prisoners' league (real sink or swim stuff).

In the early 80's I drove to the city area of London via what we call 'back-doubles' side and residential roads off the main route. Started off because there was a massive transport strike, and I had to get in - I knew some routes that I thought would work, strung them together and added a bit here and there to avoid obvious bottlenecks, and it went like a dream (much to my surprise). I made the 20 mile trip to my office in about 45 minutes, and could do so using 'the route' irrespective of the time of day (I still use it sometimes these days although it has changed quite a bit and is only worthwhile doing at relatively quieter times of day - see below).

In the 90's the government started messing big time with the through access via these side roads, blocking off or making no entry/one way. At peak traffic times, journey time lengthened to well over 1 hr and could stretch to 2 hours as a result cars being forced to use the same main roads as everyone else.

At the end of the 90's I was working very close to Marble Arch (north end of Hyde Park). The train commute (that I had been using for most of the 90's because of the previous paragraph) took as long as driving because Marble Arch is just so arseholesworth inaccessible (two changes of train or underground whatever way I tried). Resorted instead to driving half way by car to a place I could still reach quickly and also park in the road there free of charge, then completed the last 5-6 miles by bike - reducing overall time to just over the hour again. Changed jobs after about a year removing need for further commuting, but vis-a-vis the congestion charge I would go for this alternative every time. I still really cannot believe the number of people I would see in cars day-in and day-out sitting in the same line of traffic that was hardly moving and for whom it would clearly take an hour to travel 1 maybe 2 miles.

Today the congestion charge keeps me away from going to the centre by car. I have driven a few times aiming to arrive just after 6.30 pm when the charge stops. Result? - the roads have been jammed every time - seems everyone wants to drive and miss the charge. I began wondering how long it will take for the shops and businesses to cotton on and revise their trading times, so that what they lose during the day they make up for in the evening. I can see it happening.

The big play on the congestion charge from the mayor and government was that public transport would improve to cater for the extra passengers that it would create. Haven't noticed anything to suggest that public transport has improved - more that it has become less efficient.

IMO its another tax by stealth, a device which this government seems to have a love affair with - a bit like making you pay to use the hospital car park AND on top of that wonderfull levy, fining you when you overrun your stay (they couldn't care a shit that you overran because the department you were visiting was so inefficiently run it couldn't see you at your appointed time (even though it insisted that you had to turn up at the appointed hour).

I'm all for improving the centre of our cities, I just think that when this is given as the reason why it has been imposed, our lords and masters are just spouting their usual unsupported and uncorroborated rhetoric.