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I have two problems with the recent Lib Dem policy announcement about using road pricing to lower fuel duties and fund spending on infrastructure for more "environmentally friendly" forms of transport. The one, which I will return to in another post, is about the difficulty of solving two problems - paying for roads and trying to force people off them - with this one policy. But for now I want to suggest a solution to those many commenters on the Lib Dem Voice thread that any implementation of road pricing is going to be necessarily an intrusion on our privacy.

In fact, the technology has been around for five decades: the flight data recorder, or "black box". It even ought to cost less as it would mean no additional physical infrastructure such as ANPR gantries or roadside transceivers.

Take a regular GPS Sat-Nav system. Already the technology is being developed to deliver all sorts of content to such devices (see the "Sat-nav for people" section on this BBC Click report). It would be a small step to link this to a billing system in the vehicle that got data about the current price of the road you are travelling on, and on other alternatives to help you make up your mind about what route to use, and to calculate a total bill for a journey and initiate a payment transaction without even telling the billing authority where it has been.

Ah but, people say that's open to abuse or tampering to avoid bills on the one hand, and because there's no central information about how your bill is made up it would not be possible to dispute a bill on the other. Well, this is where the "flight data recorder" comes in. You do have the details of your journeys stored, but not centrally, rather in a box in the vehicle. A box say that has to be audited as part of your annual MOT perhaps. And that can only be accessed when security information is provided by both the person or authority wanting to read it and the owner. That way, if you think it is to your advantage to disclose where you have been, for example to dispute a bill, you are in control of when that data is disclosed.

Again, this technology is already around, and in applications much smaller than aircraft. My security guard in the hall of residence has a little device called a "Deister" which they use to "prove" that they have been doing patrols. There's no live link snooping on where they are going, but the Deister gun will be audited and has logged a patrol if there is any dispute.

Can anyone see any other objections to such a way of doing it non-intrusively?

The last debate on tonight's Question Time was over votes at sixteen. Most of the panel, gratifyingly, supported this Lib Dem policy. I know Sam Coates, erstwhile near neighbour of mine here at Brookes and deputy-editor of ConservativeHome, doesn't like the idea and his arguments on his own blog did give me pause for thought for a few seconds.

But the overwhelming feeling I was left with from that audience of under-21s tonight was that they are no different at sixteen than at any other age as regards ability to take on board an argument and make decisions based on information they receive.

Standing on doorsteps canvassing it is quite clear that as high a proportion of over eighteens seem not to care a fig, or are as open to the influence of lies, spin, tribalism and statistics, not to mention on occasion family or peer pressures. At least the sixteen year olds now have a future to plan for - why shouldn't they have a say?

Oh, and none of this "compulsory political lessons" please either - engaging folks is the job of the would be politicians. Just as many adults need compulsory political lessons as any other group I'd suggest. Which may be an old fashioned liberal position, but not one that should discriminate between the young and politically disengaged and the not so young and politically disengaged.

Technorati Tags: electoral reform, politics, voting, young

Back in September I wrote about seeing our glorious Oxfordshire leader, "Kaiser" Keith Mitchell, on the southern region section of the Politics Show attacking Land Value Tax.

He was on again today, talking about one of his pet subjects - car travel and road transport. He made a wonderful case for Land Value Tax. He pointed out that once upon a time the M40 stopped at Oxford, and from then on it was a network of slow country roads. And then they extended the motorway and you can now zip right through to Birmingham and that "it has brought prosperity to the northern Oxfordshire towns like Banbury and Bicester".

Now, what did those towns do for that prosperity? What did they pay towards the motorway? Nada. Nothing. Zip. If truth be told many in the area probably baulked at the thought of a motorway coming through their corner of England's rolling green land and ruining their property values. They may even have actively campaigned against it for a while.

Could it be, one wonders, that Keith is indulging in a bit of thinly disguised rent seeking, unwilling to acknowledge that his constituents near one of those newly prosperous towns, have gained that prosperity for no input on their part?

If you want to fund transport infrastructure fairly, whether that be planes, trains or automobiles, the clear answer is to capture some of the gain in prosperity experienced by the areas, the new markets if you will, opened up by that new infrastructure. Land Value Tax. It's simple and it's fair.

Read about it at the Institute of Economic Affairs, a crazy loony left think tank, or so I imagine Kaiser Keith would think.

...and find a set of blue lights chasing you up the motorway, at least they could do it in style, Italian style:

I've always taken a slightly different view of the inbuilt age discrimination in the minimum wage legislation for under 21 year olds than many it would appear. When I was a councillor in Oxford we had a few instances of employers of young people - mostly restaurants - pushing the limits of the legislation anyway. I never did approve for example of including tips in the minimum wage. If someone's working they get paid, if their customers think they've done a good job they should feel free to enhance that, not make up the employer's shortfall.

But mostly, I felt that young people, people starting out on life's employment journey, are the very ones that need a bit of a boost. They're the ones potentially with the expenses of setting up home and so on, living independently for the first time. So I really never liked the differential wage for under 21s. I can, just about, accept that 16-18 year olds, who if I recall correctly were not even protected by the initial legislation (which was a total outrage if I'm remembering it correctly), may be paid less in order to encourage them to stay in education, and to encourage employers to give them added training related benefits.

So I'm quite pleased to see the quandary apparently being created by this weekend's implementation of anti-ageism legislation:

Age law 'threat to minimum wage':

Young people get a lower minimum wage than the over-21s

Laws being introduced on Sunday, which ban age discrimination at work, could endanger the minimum wage system, a business group has warned.

Workers aged under 21 can currently be paid less than their older colleagues.

But the British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) said this may be considered discriminatory and be open to legal challenge under the new legislation.

I hope there are some test cases, and I hope personally they win. Eighteen to twenty-one year olds are adults. Why should they have any fewer rights than anyone else?