Pay-as-you-go road charging

The RAC has given an excellent demonstration of most of the dishonest tactics used by politicians to obscure policy debates

Every now and then, you get an idea so phemonenally stupid it deserves a blog post. The RAC's proposal for a national pay-as-you-go road scheme is one of those ideas. The idea that everyone should be forced to retrofit an expensive satellite spy-system into car - not to mention the enormous potential for fraud and large administration costs - when we already have fuel duty is so obviously stupid I don't think it even merits argument.

But this blog isn't about that. I want to analyse the tactics used by the RAC, and hopefully help people to keep the wool away from their eyes when politicians use the same techniques.

The "something for nothing" delusion

Mr. Glaister argues that 1) the private sector benefits from better roads, 2) motorists benefit from not having to pay fuel duty and road-tax, and 3) the Treasury gets to mine a new income stream.

This is a very common technique. By separating out businesses, tax-payers and the Treasury, you look like you have got a fairly policy, and sound like you have really have thought about it and conducted a broad and balanced analysis. It allows you to look only at the benefits, without analysing the costs. You instinctively feel that there is no need to probe deeper into into the benefits and costs for any individual party, because you instinctively feel that there has been a proper analysis.

Of course, this is nonsense. If businesses benefit from better roads, this is only because they pay more tax. If motorists benefit from not needing to buy a tax disc, this is only because they had to buy a big black box instead. Conversely, the treasury's new income stream can only come at the cost of losing other income streams. None of this tells you anything unless you know who is paying more, who is getting less and what the net effect on investment is.

The result is that the questions that really matter are completely obscured. Questions like how much investment should there be? How should this be paid for? Who should pay it - should car-users subsidise lorry-users? How big should the public sector be?
These important issues get thrown up by real debates about public spending. But politicians simply avoid having these debates in the first place by having a ridiculous focus. For example, note how little discussion there is over cuts to the schools budgets when compared to discussion over free-schools: this is despite the free-schools policy only affecting a minority of already top-performing schools. Or how we have avoided a debate about local government finance by having a Council Tax freeze instead of debating the real problems. Or how politicians escaped debates on social care, pensions or the retirement age during the general election by focusing only on trivial freebies like the winter-fuel allowance and free bus passes.

People naturally respond to balanced language, even if the policy is not balanced. It is why tripartite expressions like "equality, fraternity and liberty" are so popular, and part of the reason why http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ tracks the number of times MPs use "three-word alliterative phrases" in debates. You may like to know that Ed Miliband has done it 338 times, and that's only just above average. A little birdy told me that Nick Clegg is floating with the idea of suggesting a 66% threshold to dissolve parliament, so that the coalition looks moderate and compromising if he goes for 55% - not unlikely, I think.



And the consequences? It is no surprise that people don't trust politicians anymore. We instinctively react to balanced language because normal people usually only use things like three-word alliterative phrases if they have something significant to say. That is why these linguistic techniques are so confusing, and it is disappointed to see that the RAC has joined politicians in the battle to pull wool over people's eyes.