Mobility scooters are a menace.

My two year old boy was injured by someone dangerously driving a mobility scooter, who seemed to think that making a barely audible beeping noise beforehand gives them the right to crash into you. Some owners/operators of these vehicles also seem to think they have the right to drive them the on the wrong side of the road in city centre rush hour traffic.

Hopefully the £250 tax on them can be used to fund a compulsory day's training (like a motorcycle CBT) to explain the responsibilities of a mobility scooter operator and show people how to use these vehicles in a socially acceptable manner!

Be fair now - that's like saying that we should penalise all car drivers for the actions of a few nutters. Oh, wait, we already do...

Maybe it was the driver in Hampshire that drove his disability buggy onto the M27 that prompted HMRC to think "Well if they're going to use them on motorways then they must be cars"... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/6742503.stm

I'm a disabled person, but fortunately, I can still drive a car at the moment. Do you think I should have to pay more in case I decide to go banging my car into people?

That extra £250 will mean that some disabled people won't quite be able to afford to buy a scooter, so will be pretty much housebound. How would you like to be in that position? If you are in that position sometime in the future, I'd like to bet that you would shout just as loud as any other disabled person when the cost of living for disabled rises for any reason. We already have a situation where disabled benefits have NOT kept pace with inflation over the last 10 or 12 years, not by a long way. This will just make things worse for a lot of people.

Have a little thought for others, please.

I have a friend who has recently bought a scooter - and I can assure everyone that it is a) NOT a luxury, and b) not by any stretch of the imagination a 'car' !

This is quite odd actually. I live in a county, over one-third of whose £950,000,000.00 a year Council Tax-take is spent on care for elderly and disabled adults. This cost to each individual taxpayer is very large, however, it would be larger still, were The Council to be liable for VAT on purchases of care and care-related equipment, e.g. handrails, walker-frames, etc. By adding the tarriff on scooters, HMRC stupidly transfers the British manufacturing industry's losses to disabled people, and to the local taxpayer, who will have to pay where the individual can not. It will disempower the private individual from maintaining their independence, causing those in need to defer these vital purchases, and aggravate health problems for which the taxpayer is statutorily responsible. This move on the part of HMRC is a disgrace, a risible cacking-up of their duty. If you ever doubted that the public sector was infested with cretins, stand corrected.

they've probably looked at America and realised we soon will have fat people, not just disabled people using them too.