Greenwich enters the stealth tax age
Not content with having dragged Greenwich's name into the gutter over the casino affair, the Leader of the Council has decided to try and implement the worst of all stealth taxes to grace us. Yes, a congestion charge!
I first read about this from the troublemakers GreenwichWatch, who do a superb job at humilating my local council on a regular basis. In fact, even the blogfather Iain Dale, had a pop a Greenwich Council for even contemplating a CC zone.
However, this is the sort of thing that come to expect from Greenwich, especially over the last couple of years from a media hungry leader. But what worried me more was Ken Livingstone putting his ugly seal of approval for this plan to go ahead. Well, Ken actually said "consultation", but if the western extension of the central London zone is anything to go by, that it means it will happen regardless.
As reported by GreenwichWatch on of the plans identified by the council includes the Blackwall tunnel southern approach, and southbound exit. Which, as every motorist in London knows, is the only viable river crossing for South East London!
So, (in full rant mode and suffering from sleep deprivation from working a night shift) as you can imagine, I wasn't best pleased to find a potential new congestion charge on my doorstep. Which, in turn, switched on my "conpiracy theory radar".
Apart from the usual taxing motorists, and the wanting of headlines by Mr Roberts, I thought of two possible theories.
The first is that the Labour run council, and specifically Mr Roberts, are currently blaming everyone execpt themselves for Greenwich's failure to land the super casino licence. They've even tried to blame anyone who supprted the bid, for not supporting it enough. So, as a result Greenwich is being told by AEG that it doesn't want to invest £350million into the borough anymore, and what better way of raising revenue is there. Yes, you guessed it tax motorists on the only viable river crossing for miles.
The second is based around an incident that occured all the way back in September, when Ken Livingstone tore shreads off of Chris Roberts, after he voted against the Labour Group on the ALG, and opposed the transfer of planning power to Livingstone from Government. So, by trying to implement a Ken policy an attempt to get back into his good books, or even a charm offfensive to get himself a London Assembly job, after all it is candidate selection time for all parties for next year's London wide elections.
So is this a case of Chris Roberts wanting to get back into Ken's good books as he has political ambitions of his own, or is this retribution for Greenwich losing out in the casino bid with motorists and residents being the ones penalised?
1 comments:
Nice rant, LBS, but it's really only a stealth tax if you define the term to mean "anything other than income tax". The Congestion Charge is actually pretty transparent.
As for whether this is the right policy, I guess that hinges on what your objectives are. I happen to believe that pollution levels in Greenwich are too high and that our gridlocked traffic is to blame. The best way to reduce pollution is to reduce traffic. So we need to encourage a proportion of the motorists who currently use Greenwich's roads to not use them. A congestion charge is a good way in policy terms to do this.
I've posted this on other blogs, but I'll post it here if I may. If you don't want a congestion charge, you're going to have to do rather better than bleat on about stealth taxes and how unfair it all is. Instead you will need to show:
Either
(1) The objectives are wrong. [Let the children of Greenwich suck down NO2 and PM10, who cares about their lungs and their health?!]
or
(2) The policy is wrong. It won't reduce traffic at all. [Do you really believe that?]
or
(3) There is a much better way to reduce traffic through Greenwich. [So let's hear it!]
I would tend to agree with you that Ken Livingstone is akin to Satan, but we have gone way beyond the point at which our environment can safely diffuse the pollutants that are being put into the air. That says to me that we need to reduce traffic. Rather than doing that on an arbitrary basis (e.g. no red cars on Wednesdays), the Council is using economic incentives. What would you propose instead?
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