On 10/02/07, Roger Millin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > London we accepted the congestion charge on behalf of all of you > > because the situation had become intolerable in our city as it will > > eventually in yours. > > Hang on a minute, you accepted it on behalf of all of us???? > You have the best public transport system in the whole of the UK, > where you don't need a car in the main, and you accepted what the > Gruppenfuhrer Livingstone dictated for all of us????? Hhmmm, does not > compute. You accept what you want for London, the rest of us lesser > mortals can decide for the impoverished remainder of the UK ;-)))
I confess to a little stirring here, for which I hope I shall be forgiven, it being such an uncharacteristic part of my make up :) I'm not unsympathetic to the argument of rural communities. When I was a kid I lived in a village with three connections an hour, six buses in total, to Leicester and Loughborough. They're down to one an hour in each direction now. I guess the only way kids manage to live in the place is by persuading mum and dad to take them places. We HAD to have CC in London because following the Easter 2000 (?) snarl up where traffic coming off the Euston Rd after the bank holiday had led to total gridlock, not just in the centre but across great swathes of the inner suburbs, it became clear that things were getting critical. Livingstone made congestion charge a main platform of his transport policy. He was an independent at that stage, remember. People voted for him, knowing what they were going to get. Yes, we got the charge - but we got a fleet of new buses too. And tube investment on a level we haven't seen this century which the next generation will benefit from I wouldn't advocate charging in towns where there's no congestion crisis, let alone charging as a matter of course, yet another tax. But where town centres are dying from congestion, London has proved that to a point, road charging works. BUT - and I say this to you who may be facing it soon where you live - there HAS to be a quid pro quo. If they're gonna charge you for taking your car into a town when there's no public transport alternative, you have to ensure that that money is used to provide one. OK, apart from one or two conurbations, there's never going to be the concentration of population outside London to support a tube system with trains running every couple of minutes or so. But surely a bus service to a village three times an hour isn't beyond the wit of the politicians? Steve
