Select a region
Anyone else remember the last time paid parking was debated, and it was being proposed as a revenue source for an improved bus service, free bus journeys, and investments in cycling infrastructure? Forget all that for now, we might just be charged to park with no benefits at all.
To clarify, I have always been against paid parking.
I don't think we should do anything just because the UK, Jersey, or anywhere else does it. And that includes paid parking, sales taxes and many other things which make our island just a little bit different to our near neighbours.
For what it is worth, I have also never believed that paid parking would actually reduce the number of cars on the roads. I can see the arguments for it, and I think it would help deliver an increase in active travel - but overall we will still have too many cars for such a small bit of rock.
People drive because they feel that they need to, not because it's free to park.
So that means it would be a money maker, and not a vehicle for societal change.
It seems that P&R may agree with me on that (I haven't asked), as they're now suggesting 'transport taxes' to replace their proposed GST ahead of next week's Tax Review (take two) debate.
Pictured: As Bully would say, "look at what you could have won" - or in Guernsey it's a case of "look at what you could lose".
They say we need more money for public services or those services will be cut, and they say we could raise some of that money by bringing in paid parking, distance taxes and a motor tax.
If the States did back paid parking now, then we can forget any notion of it being part of a wider scheme to encourage active travel or to reduce congestion, or to help the environment. It would be brought in as a revenue raiser with no carrots to tempt us to follow any green sticks.
A distance tax is interesting. Presumably taxis will be exempt? What about delivery drivers? Or how about vehicles used by charities to pick up and drop off service users, parents sharing the after school pick ups and drop offs at activities across the island, or community carers?
I can see how it is fair to say the more you drive, the more you pay. But with so many likely caveats and exceptions, it will always be difficult to ensure a charge like that is fair on anyone.
As for motor tax - could someone please remind me what happened with that? I'm pretty sure it's on the fuel I put in my little car.
I know we need to raise more money to fund the increasingly expensive public services which so many people rely on. But P&R have failed to take the public with them on this Tax Review journey. They only needed a slight majority of States members to back their plans and they haven't got that either.
Whatever decision is made next week will be unpopular - but rather than proposing increasingly carrot-less options to charge us more for going about our daily lives, why not explain more clearly what we will gain - not lose - from any new charges.
Pictured: Critical roles within key States departments continue to be advertised - suggesting work won't be slowing if GST or its alternatives are rejected.
Threatening to close hospital wards is an empty threat and we all know it.
Besides anything, there's an advert running for a new manager to oversee the hospital development so that programme is clearly not in line for a halt should GST - or any of its alternatives - be rejected.
Yes, it is a one-year contract according to the picture above, but the advert also states that "as it sits within a potential eight year programme, there may be opportunity for extension in the future".
That could be an eight year commitment to building work improving the island's health care services far into the future. Only an incompetent government would look to recruit someone to do that if the finances were reliant on a wildly unpopular proposal being voted through the States.
