Spot on, tunesmith and I agree wholeheartedly that something needs to be done. But taxation has never stopped people doing anything. The tax on fuel only affects the poor, road tax is used for everything but maintaining roads and the congestion charge would be no different. It was a knee jerk reation and a cynical method that the funding bodies used to stop the already promised investment.

Central government had already promised investment and now cannot afford it. So they told the local authority that they can only give them the funds if the congestion charge is introduced. It has been known from the offset that a referendum asking people if they want to pay more tax was doomed to failure. The poor suckers running Manchester are so inept they could not see through the ploy and fell for it hook, line aqnd sinker. Some were stupid enough to imagine that the referendum being held just before Christmas, when people are already wondering how on earth they will make ends meet, was a good idea. Not only that, they funded the 'yes' campaign out of the taxpayers pocket so we are all paying for it already! Where do we find these people and who keeps them in power?

Let me ask some questions that I could never get answered by our elected representatives. What was the congestion supposed to do? Stop people using cars to get into Manchester? Yes? Well, how effective would it be? If it was so effective that it did indeed stop people driving in where were the extra funds going to come from? If it was ineffective and people still drove in anyway, what was the point of it and how would the extra revenue be used?

Rhetorical questions of course. The charge would not stop people driving in. The funds would not go to improve public transport and yet another transport policy would cause hardship to the poorest amongst us, like the closing of the railways and deregulation of buses before it.

There plenty of good solutions, some already mentioned here. But they all involve heavy investment and radical thinking. Something that central government is not prepared to do and local governments are incapable of.

OK. Off my soapbox now. Do I look any cleaner? :-)

Cheers

DeG