This one is frightening – the Mickey Mouse government we have is considering increasing the time between MoT testing from the current 12 months.
Unbelievably, the reason behind this is as follows:
There is growing public anger over soaring petrol prices and the overall cost of driving a car. This has forced Philip Hammond, the Transport Secretary, to look at ways in which these costs can be curtailed. He has now ordered the MOT system to be reviewed.
Can you believe it? And they have the cheek to suggest this, too:
This could save motorists a significant amount of money in the long run.
Well, that’s from the article, but anyone who thinks it is true is an idiot.
If you take a car in for its MoT, the test itself only costs around £30 (to £60 depending on where you go) – this means that if you keep the car for 20 years (yeah, right. And assuming the MoT price stays the same) from new, instead of paying out £510 (first 3 years don’t need an MoT) you’ll pay only half that if they increase the lifetime of the certificate to 2 years. A saving of £250 over 20 years is not “a significant amount of money”, even if 20 years is a “long run”. And they ARE NOT going to increase it to 2 years – it’ll be 6 months or something pointless.
But where the costs really start to mount up is when you have to have work carried out. So if your tyres are bald or your brakes are down to metal, having that fixed every year is expensive – as is all the other stuff that goes wrong. When I used to have to worry about MoTs it was impossible to get the car through without £400+ of work each year. On my old Citroen Xantia, a new clutch cost nearly £500.
So what these idiots are advocating is that people will be allowed to drive around for two years (or whatever period they go for) in a death trap, instead of just one before it fails its MoT and gets fixed.
If the car has a fault, it has A FAULT. It needs fixing. Increasing the MoT period is a mandate for people to drive dangerously defective cars.
Oh, yes. We all know that the MoT doesn’t protect you if you are stopped and found to be driving a defective vehicle – even 10 minutes after the MoT was issued. I’m sure the families of those who will likely die as a result of people NOT being stopped by the police (who are subject to cuts of their own) feel much better about that.
If the idiots in this coalition want to help financially, then cut the stupid fuel duty by 10p.