On Nov 27, 2:34*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:
On Thu, 27 Nov 2008, Andrew Heenan wrote:
"Tom Barry" wrote ...

Boris to announce today. Bye bye public transport improvements, hello
happy petrolheads.

Happy for a week or two. Then the penny will drop. Back to all day
queues at Kensington Church Street. Hoist With Their Own Petar.

Plus more income (and less congestion) in the original zone.

Lager and crisps all round!

Quite. As a resident of northeast London who works in central London, i'm
happy that inner-west Londoners will be discouraged from driving into my
bit of the city, and quite content to watch them stew in their own juice
in theirs.

There is talk of a loss of 70 million in charge revenue, though. I'd like
to see this made up by increasing the central charge, but there's no
prospect of that happening, so i suppose it'll have to come out of the
budgets for public transport, cycling, and black lesbian mime groups or
whoever it is that Boris hates this week.

I was never really in favour of the congestion charge, although I was
in favour of what it was trying to achieve, ie stop selfish people in
cars from clogging the streets. Trouble was that it was a bit
indiscriminate in who it affected.

But I saw a news item with totally spurious complaints from
campaigners against the charge.

Like one owner of a takeaway saying that people didn't drive there
because of the charge, but what time of day do people drive to
takeways?

And even sillier, people claiming that it was stopping people going to
Portobello Road market. Were they seriously claiming that everyone
should drive there and park in the area (or ever did)?

Interesting thought that people who had paid that charge would then
continue to central London. I hadn't thought of that, but it might
improve things if it wasn't for all the roadworks that are making bus
travel impossible at the moment.