On Sat, 2 Jul 2011 21:14:55 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message
, at
13:05:45 on Sat, 2 Jul 2011, Owain
remarked:
Tolls are rarely charged on routes you *have* to use, there's normally a
"long way round". Which doesn't exist for the US Embassy, being inside
the zone. So it's a lot more like car tax, than say the Dartford Toll.
Wouldn't they get a 90% residents' discount anyway?

Not if they're resident in the Embassy - it's on US territory.

It isn't, many embassies are actually on Crown land. The privileges
enjoyed by diplomats and consequentially their "offices" etc. derive
from article 22 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations
1961:-
1.The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the
receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the
head of the mission.
2.The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate
steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or
damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or
impairment of its dignity.
3.The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property
thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from
search, requisition, attachment or execution.

A U.S. lawyer's view
[http://law.jrank.org/pages/20420/ext...oriality.html]
re "extraterritoriaity":-

"A theory in international law explaining diplomatic immunity on the
basis that the premises of a foreign mission form a part of the
territory of the sending state. This theory is not accepted in English
law (thus a divorce granted in a foreign embassy in England is not
obtained outside the British Isles for purposes of the Recognition of
Divorces Act 1971). Diplomatic immunity is based either on the theory
that the diplomatic mission personifies—and is entitled to the
immunities of—the sending state or on the practical necessity of such
immunity for the functioning of diplomacy."

Does that matter in this case? They are resident in London, even if that
bit of London isn't (for some purposes) GB.

Or is the resident's discount a misnomer, and really something like a
"Council tax payer's discount"?