Pounds for pedals??

Cressers

Why should the taxpayer help pay for your next bike? Buy it yourself!

bompington

Cressers wrote:

Why should the taxpayer help pay for your next bike? Buy it yourself!

1. because every bike on the road is one less car
2. because on average cyclists cost the NHS less money
3. because I'm already paying for your new car

Aggieboy

bompington wrote:

Cressers wrote:

Why should the taxpayer help pay for your next bike? Buy it yourself!

1. because every bike on the road is one less car
2. because on average cyclists cost the NHS less money
3. because I'm already paying for your new car

4. because I'm an MP.

STEFANOS4784

5. Because i'm a tax payer so will be paying myself anyway.

Cressers

So I take it that none of you will have any complaints about MPs expenses?

Slow Downcp

Cressers wrote:

So I take it that none of you will have any complaints about MPs expenses?

How is that relevant to the question?

Cressers

MPs are criticised for claiming luxuries from public funds, and you who support Pounds for Pedals, and already have a perfectly good bike, or several, want to do exactly the same! With the nations' finances in a perilous state why should taxpayers' money go to finance your hobby, and the overseas made cycle industry?

JC.152

so....buy a cheap bike from halfords for about £60 then get £100 back

The Chingford Skinhead

Cressers wrote:

Why should the taxpayer help pay for your next bike? Buy it yourself!

I presume the petition is about providing good bikes that are rotting in sheds to developing countries.

Why should I, as a taxpayer, be paying for the scrappage allowance on cars. Cars are killing the environment (as well as over 3000 people a year) and there is no restriction requiring the new car bought to be a) british or b) fuel efficient

Cressers

I agree, the car scrappage scheme is a blatant abuse of taxpayers' money for electioneering purposes.

chuckcork

Jake, calm down.

Personally I would have loved to trade in an old bike for £100 and put it towards a new bike, but I gave my old bike I wasn't using away to a bike recycling project

Personally I agree, every bike is one less car, and for numbers of bikes I have in the garage at the moment a folder that I'd use with the train if I was going to work that way (driving 4 days a week, cycling the other day at the mo'), a audax bike I use as my club run bike and to get to work, a Spesh Sirrus for going to the shops and lugging groceries back (could use the folder for this too as it has a rack). I also have half a bike that needs lots of expensive bits (well I want to add lots of expensive bits) that will be a nice road bike when I'm done with it.

As for costs, getting more people cycling could save the NHS in the long run considerably more than £100 per person, what with a reduction in car crashes and death and injuries caused and long term treatment and rehab work for those more seriously hurt, the reduction of obesity and related disease like diabetes, and so on.

I think though it would be better if bikes, bike parts, clothing, servicing etc were simply zero rated for VAT. Its ridculous that the government wants to encourage cycling as a positive behaviour while taxing it like its a car, it should be considered a form of public transport which I understand is also zero rated...just as well given how expensive it is.

Cressers

I'm not getting at you personally Jake, but making a generalised comment about the way that people want the state to do everything for them rather than do it themsleves. Yes I agree that more cycling is a Good Thing but don't see that the state should try to influence individual behaviour in this matter. The argument that an unessecary cost is Not So Bad when averged per head over the entire population has been used to support many an expenditure, but the fact, for example, that the royal family cost each one of us 'only' 70p a year is not a valid reason for the maintainece or otherwise of the monarchy.

spen666

Jake151 wrote:

....., Well its £100 and there are about 60,943,912 people in the UK so thats £0.00000164 per tax payer as apposed to £0.000032817 per tax payer for the government scrapage deal. .....

Jake,

clearly mathematics and detail are not your strong point.



There may be 60,943,912 people in the UK. However, not all of these people are tax payers, so your figure of "£0.00000164 per tax payer " is completely false



Now turning to the motor car scheme, again your mathematics are wrong.

The same point re the number of tax payers as I refer above applies. Secondly, you would find out if you did even the slightest bit of research that the government is only paying £1000 of the £2000 scrappage costs, so your calculation is wrong as it is based on a figure of £2000 paid by the tax payer for each car scrapped.




However, please don't let the truth get in the way

pneumatic

I had three spare bikes in my garage.

I gave two of them to the local bikeworks scheme (so they could be done up and either sold to fund the project, or given to kids who needed them and couldn't afford to buy)

I swapped the other one for a painting on the grounds that the artist needed a bike and didn't have any cash to pay for one.

If UKgov had paid me 300 quid for them and then paid the same again to get them shipped in a serviceable state to some other corner of the planet, I'd have profited as an individual, lost as a taxpayer and never known precisely how my old bikes helped anyone.

Fewer grand schemes, more common sense. (IMHO!)