9th January 2011, 12:57 PM
This is all veering massively off topic and might be better in a separate thread, but....
Driving may not be that difficult, but passing a test is more difficult these days, and costs a lot more money. The national average is 40 lessons, so that's scraping together about ?800, and that's after you've found the time to practice in one town to learn the test routes. Not that easy when working 5 long days a week (fancy a 2 hour lesson straight after an 8 hour day?) and often moving around the country. Oh, and nowadays you have the additional cost of the theory test, plus they've just changed the test so you have to be able to do independant driving with no directions given. A very good idea, but the test is a lot harder now. My advice to anyone would be to get your licence as soon as you can.
As for the mileage payments making you money in the end, well that's fine if you are doing business miles and getting paid mileage, but I would hazard that most of us don't get paid anything to get to the office in the morning. For most of my colleagues that would probably be between ?15 and ?30 a week in fuel just to get to work depending on how far from the office they live. We do get paid driving time and some passenger time to get to site so we claw a variable amount of this cost back via this, and can make a profit on running a vehicle, but how many units actually pay this? No-one knows. And remember that you need additional insurance if driving your own vehicle to different sites.
The Diggers' Forum is planning some detailed research on this whole subject very shortly so we can get some real figures on travel and away work and how it affects us all. Watch this space.
Now, back to the old days....
Driving may not be that difficult, but passing a test is more difficult these days, and costs a lot more money. The national average is 40 lessons, so that's scraping together about ?800, and that's after you've found the time to practice in one town to learn the test routes. Not that easy when working 5 long days a week (fancy a 2 hour lesson straight after an 8 hour day?) and often moving around the country. Oh, and nowadays you have the additional cost of the theory test, plus they've just changed the test so you have to be able to do independant driving with no directions given. A very good idea, but the test is a lot harder now. My advice to anyone would be to get your licence as soon as you can.
As for the mileage payments making you money in the end, well that's fine if you are doing business miles and getting paid mileage, but I would hazard that most of us don't get paid anything to get to the office in the morning. For most of my colleagues that would probably be between ?15 and ?30 a week in fuel just to get to work depending on how far from the office they live. We do get paid driving time and some passenger time to get to site so we claw a variable amount of this cost back via this, and can make a profit on running a vehicle, but how many units actually pay this? No-one knows. And remember that you need additional insurance if driving your own vehicle to different sites.
The Diggers' Forum is planning some detailed research on this whole subject very shortly so we can get some real figures on travel and away work and how it affects us all. Watch this space.
Now, back to the old days....