KEBABLAND_BMW

hi to all our UK Friends, well just after seeing the appauling state that the UK is now currently in, this has to be all single handily down to the UK Labours Govns Fault,

SPIRALLING LIVING COSTS
CHILDREN WITH NO RESPECT FOR ANY PERSON OR PROPERTY
CRIME IS ON THE UP SIGNIFICANTLY
NO MORE RELIGION LEFT-NO FEAR OF ANYTHING

I feel sorry for you guys in the UK

I really hope that the Political party CONSERVATIVE WIN - ONLY Mr Cameron can save the UK.

VOTE CONSERVATIVE

simba

swajames

The Conservatives remain essentially unelectable. Utterly torn apart on Europe, trying desperately to hide their inherent xenophobia, and in Cameron they have a leader who specializes in the politics of opportunism and paucity of original thought - he's simply the nearest the Conservatives could find to Blair after the failures of IDS and Hague.

Here's the flaw for those of you who posted here who seem to be a little hard of thinking - the UK economy is strong, and under Labor the UK is in a fundamentally better position (socially and economically) than it's been under Conservative leadership. You can take all the potshots at Blair you like, but Brown's performance as Chancellor since Labor has been stellar (particularly when contrasted against the performance of Lamont or Clarke) and that's what will get Labor a third term. Simple fact is the Conservatives were more relevant when politics was more extreme right and left, and the populace today is much more moderate.

Russ1974 - that's just ridiculous and baseless conjecture (describing "90% of people who fall into the aforementioned brackets") - not only is that fatally undermined by the fundamental strength in the UK economy, it also proves the theory that 87.65% of all statistics are made up.

Kebabland_BMW - another pretty ridiculous post. Those issues exist everywhere (they are certainly prevalent in the US) and, frankly, I don't see what religion has to do with anything being discussed here.

AlexFW

Don't complain so much E60beemer .. There you don't pay motorways, while here and in France, for example, we pay for them .

How many GBP for a speed ticket, with 70 MPH limit and your speed of 100 ?

Here EUR 400, 10 points (the drive licence has 20 points) and you can't drive for 3 months

Russ1974

I assume you don't live in the UK. Being foreign, that surprises me, come on over and have some free money and a house I went in to my local bank a couple of weeks ago. They had posters in Polish. Road signs in a town near here are now in English and Polish. Here's an idea, if you aren't English, and can't be bothered to learn English, don't f*cking come to England to live!

Anyway... the UK is going down hill under the Labour government. It will only continue to get worse. The nation is turning in to a society of "scroungers", living off benefits and the taxes of the wealthy. Labour's idea is to tax the rich and give to the poor. Modern Robin Hoods. With Conservatives, they promote that hard workers should be richer. It's not hard ... if you are poor, work harder to get richer, is it really that hard?? With Labour, you have the choice - you can work hard and pay lots of tax to support the poor, or you can slack off, not work, and get enough benefits to live a comfortable life so you have no incentive to work. There are now generations of youngsters growing up in council houses, with parents who live off benefits, and will simply teach their kids how to get the most money out of the benefit system as possible.

Pah. Bloody scroungers. Get a good job and buy a BMW. Also, rich people should have their own lane on the motorways. I would LOVE all motorways to become toll roads. The UK roads are overcrowded with people driving cars on Motability (that is where, if you have any slight illness or disability, the government gives you lots more free money and a free car!) or stolen / untaxed / uninsured cars. Unemployed people should be forced to wear bright yellow shirts so working people can identify them. They should only be allowed on the roads between 2am and 6am. Keep the roads clear for people who have jobs to travel to.

Oh and another thing. The UK economy is strong? Only because they make so much money from fuel taxes, which is needed to fund immigrants and unemployed people. They should throw unemployed / immigrants in to the sea, and drop fuel by 40p a litre. Not only would there be more space on the roads, but we'd be able to afford M5's.

That is the end of my party political broadcast. Vote BNP. Or Conservative.

swajames

I'm British. I live in California, but I'm back in the UK a lot, so I know what's going on - which is really no different than it is in most other industrialized nations. It's certainly not unique to the UK. The same issues you highlight above re immigration into the UK are also issues in in Germany and other EU countries, and we see them here in the US. Your post does however reinforce the points I made in mine about xenophobia being a feature of Conservative politics, though in fairness your own political views, based on your post/rant above, do indeed seem more aligned with the BNP rather than the Conservative party...

pinguhk

wow that alot.
in HK itis about $60us for speeding and 3 points, (the drive licence has 15 points) 1st time you can't drive for 3 months then 2nd time 1 year ban

E60BEEMER

COMPLAIN I WILL, You come and try to live here, its good for scroungers that get free homes and money, but people like me have to earn money work extremely hard so my family can eat and survive,

GOD DAMN THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT. HOPE THEY BURN IN HELL.

They will i know, but for how long, eternal life in the Lake of fire, for all all these chaos they have brought to our land.

God help us and the Conservative party!!!!!!!!

BlackCat

The most recent research I can find suggests that the UK is around average for car taxation within Europe, with the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark and Ireland all having higher tax and the likes of Spain and Luxembourg lower tax.

What is apparent is that the UK skews its taxation towards car use (i.e. fuel tax) rather than ownership. Although it's perhaps a rather blunt instrument, this approach would seem to be relatively effective in addressing the issue of climate change. It's certainly one of the reasons I swapped my M6 (11mpg around town, <200mile range) for a 535d (28mpg around town, >400 mile range).

BC

MacSid

This sounds about right, with the exception of the observations on the Netherlands - we get taxed on ownership as well as use (but to varying degrees). The average cost of a litre of Super here is EUR 1.48, which is not a heck of a lot different from the price per litre in the UK. EUR 100 per fillup was, dare I say it, normal when I had my E39 525i. Diesel is about 50% cheaper, admittedly, but we get hit with a higher road tax - it's almost double the road tax for an equivalent petrol engine. fortunately, if you do enough mileage, you eventually come out on top with the diesel, and this prompted my swap from the 525i to the 530d (plus the 530d kicks ass!)

Ownership taxes here are, as your research suggests, plain stupid. A well-specced 530i here is EUR 49,800 base price, plus EUR 9,460 in GST/VAT, plus EUR 20,500 in car owneship tax for a Grand Total cost of EUR 79,760. I'll bet, however, that our friends in Sweden, Denmark and Norway will top those prices.

Top all of this off with the fact that our personal income tax rates go all the way up to 52%, and there are plans afoot to bump that up to 62%, and this funds all the social funding that goes out to the elderly, infirm, indigent and immigrants (yes, them too!). All that said, the UK is one bloody expensive place to be in. I actually turned down a job offer a couple of months ago that would have taken me to Windsor - despite being a 34% increase to my paycheck, I would have been more than 20% worse off in total because of the costs of living in South East England!

My (frequent) business travel would have had to go through the Circus-Otherwise-Known-As-Heathrow, but that's a different rant for a different forum.