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Boris boon for Porsche
Porsche is set for a £400,000 pay-out following London Mayor Boris Johnson’s decision to scrap plans for a £25 congestion charge on gas-guzzling cars coming into central London. The luxury carmaker was so incensed by the plan (put forward by ex-mayor Ken Livingstone) that it immediately launched a legal battle, and now the scheme has been canned, a court ruled yesterday that the Greater London Authority must cover all its costs.
The news didn’t exactly come as a surprise: scrapping the plan had been one of Boris’s key manifesto commitments before the Mayoral elections, so it was only going to be a matter of time before he kicked it into touch. He claimed it would have a harmful effect on small businesses and families that lived in the congestion charge zone (not surprisingly, he didn’t mention the Ferrari and Porsche drivers of Mayfair who would also benefit, although we imagine they were an equally important target demographic for his campaign…)
Johnson also had the backing of a study that suggested the proposed new scheme wouldn’t actually decrease emissions, because it also allowed the lowest-polluting cars to come into the zone for free. The end result could have been more cars on the roads – which does seem to defeat the point of a congestion charge slightly. (Although it’s not entirely clear to us why he couldn’t just scrap that part of the plan, while keeping the hike for gas-guzzlers…)
Not everyone’s happy about the decision, as you’d expect. The green lobby is up in arms that the Mayor has apparently caved in to the demands of a very wealthy manufacturer of gas-guzzlers. ‘This is a mayor who is telling us he wants to see value for money, and here he is paying one of the richest car companies in the world hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money,’ harrumphed Green Party assembly member Jenny Jones to the Guardian yesterday.
Generally speaking, luxury carmakers and their clientele don’t tend to attract widespread sympathy, so it’s no surprise Porsche has tried to avoid bad PR by giving the money to children’s charity Skidz (Johnson welcomed this as ‘a generous decision’, but in reality it could hardly do anything else). Although Porsche could probably have done with the cash – last week it admitted that its North American sales are down nearly 15% for the year to date, and we can’t imagine it’s flogging as many sports cars on this side of the pond either.
Still – as the credit crunch bites, how nice that supercar owners still get to drive round London for £8 a day. Good to see the powers-that-be targeting their support at those who need it most...
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All Comments
Killick 08-Jul-08, 13:06
The congestion charge is inequitable in concept. It means that everybody pays the same,thus forcing poorer people off the road. It also makes it virtually impossible for people with families to get into London during the week as the cost of public transport for a family is high as well.Boris should give everybody one free day in London every fortnight.
MICHAEL MORAN 08-Jul-08, 13:15
This is an extraordinarily unbalanced piece of reporting and unlike the way MT would normally consider news items. You have ignored so many other factors in your rush to savagely attack Porsche that it beggars belief:1. Despite being a headline grabbing, Porsche-owner bashing, electioneering stunt by Ken Livingstone, his proposals would have affected many different car brands in the G CO2 emissions band (and their owners) – Porsche just happened to be the car brand strong enough to stand up to Ken.
2. Far from reducing emissions, Ken’s daft proposals in the round would have had a significant net increase on car derived CO2 emissions in the capital.
3. His proposals also fundamentally changed the very nature of the congestion charge – it was never intended to be nor positioned as a CO2 levy. The UK government takes that responsibility in its taxation policies and judging by the proposals in the last budget, is taking it very seriously indeed!
4. But perhaps finally, and most importantly, the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, emboldened by Porsche’s stand, took their own legal action based on the inherent unfairness in the proposals and it was their actions, as much as Porsche's, which saw Ken defeated in the courts – a judgement that I understand never became public since the election of Boris Johnson overtook events, so to speak.
It is also fair to say that Porsche, from a somewhat difficult position with regards to vehicle emissions performance, given the nature of the beast, are investing huge amounts in alternative technologies to improve their future emissions performance.
If you must let evidently left wing reporters loose on a story like this, at least ask them to inject a little more balance.
Mike Moran
Ex Commercial Director, Toyota (GB) PLC
Graham Mills 08-Jul-08, 17:19
Here we go again with the politics of envy :- "The congestion charge is inequitable".One basis of the taxation system is that Income tax is the equalising one that hits the richer more than the poorer not that EVERY tax should do this.
I'm surprised that you don't want TV licenses to cost more for people with big TV's but then again you probably do....