Going West

So, they've decided to extend the Congestion Charging zone to the west. Bad idea if you ask me. I actually thought I'd fallen victim to it last night when I went to Car Giant to help a friend choose a new car. Apparently only some routes from my house to car giant actually enter the CC zone, which makes it even more confusing. It doesn't help that my satnav has no idea that I've entered the new extended zone either, and it probably never will unless I pay for updated maps. They really should provide free updates when tolls/congestion charging is introduced. Surely that's not much to ask. I realised that I might be in trouble when I drove over a "C" painted on the road. This was, in actual fact, my first and only warning of the impending CC zone. After I'd seen it there was no way I could turn around, it was far too late. The complete lack of any prior indication is a tad unfair and sneaky of you ask me. Obviously, being me, I panicked a bit wondering whether I'd done the same on the previous night's trip to Car Giant and would therefore be finned a massive £100 for daring to use the roads my car tax money is supposed to go towards maintaining. Fortunately, after a phone call to the CC phone line, I realised that the zone stops operating after 6pm. I'd crossed over after 6.30pm so I was safe. Or possibly just lucky. How many people would have been caught out by something that seems to be a deliberate trap. Besides, I was nowhere near the centre of London. Surely the new borders extend way too far to the west.

I’ve just looked at a map of the congestion charge zone. It does seem that you can stray into it quite easily if you simply turn down the wrong road since its borders are quite squiggly and random. It’s actually quite ridiculous and somewhat counter-intuitive. Now that the zone extends further west into more residential areas more people will have to pay to simply leave their houses. Of course residents get a 90% discount on the fee meaning that they can, for 80p, drive anywhere in the C Charge zone, even through Central London. This means that Central London has opened up to all the rich people (who probably didn’t care about having to pay a paltry £8 to drive into London anyway) living in places like Chelsea, Kensington and Notting Hill whilst still excluding the less well off who can’t afford the £8 charge. Yep, that Ken Livingstone’s really a class warrior. Arse. You do realise that he only takes the train into work everyday because he can’t drive (and if a friend of mine is to be believed, because he’s a raging alcoholic. But then he said the same thing about Charles Kennedy weeks before it all came out in the press so he may not be wrong).

The extension of the congestion charge zone went ahead despite the objections of countless residents and local councils. Livingstone clearly;y has too much power and misunderstands the principle of democracy. He should not be allowed to get away with this. Well, I'm certainly not going to vote for him at the next mayoral election. That said I wasn't going to anyway, what with his promise to not run as a candidate for mayor if he wasn't the official Labour candidate (he left the party and ran as an independent in the first election for London Mayor) and his subsequent defection back to labour (a man who so easily switches his loyalties clearly can't be trusted.) Not only that he wasted millions of pounds of council tax payers moneys mounting a legal challenge to the partial privatisation of the tube before simply abandoning it with no real explanation. It leaves one to wonder whether some money stuffed into unmarked brown envelope changed hands.

Plus, that also means that any traffic will be diverted around the zone, leaving the rich areas virtually free of non-residential traffic whilst the surrounding, poorer areas to cope with a vast influx of new cars traversing their formerly quieter roads.

Oddly enough, this may mean that the revenue raised from congestion charging will probably go down overall, not up. It really is idiotic. I don’t think that congestion charging in Central London (where parking is already extortionately expensive, though not enough to put off the rich people) is a bad idea, but the western extension is quite frankly ridiculous.

Clearly this is the beginning of two-tier motoring. It’ll only continue if the Government introduces their proposed pay as you go road taxation. Very soon only the rich will be able to afford to drive. And surely that's a terrible step backwards suggesting that there will never be a classless society and everything any government has ever said about having one is clearly bollocks.