We don’t get much snow in the UK, so it isn’t worth having thousands of snow ploughs rusting away to be used for a couple of weeks every decade.
One solution was to provide much cheaper snow plough attachments that farmers could put on their tractors to help clear rural roads on the odd occasion that they were needed.
Apparently that’s not allowed to any more, because tractors run on untaxed (red) diesel fuel and are therefore not allowed to do work on the roads.
Well I don’t know how much tax fuel duty the government would miss out on if they let farmers clear snow on red diesel, but it must be an absolutely miniscule proportion of the fuel duty collected. By insisting that tractors can’t be used, the roads don’t get cleared, no tax is collected anyhow, and it just adds to the disruption.
It isn’t even safety fascism, it’s just a case of banning something because tax can’t be collected on it, when it would benefit everyone if it were allowed.
