The depressing Manchester vote.

[simoncc]

Doesn't just affect people in Manchester. Take commuters for example.... car commuters into Manchester may have gladly paid the charge, rail commuters would have benefited from the extra investment. But they weren't given a say.

Tosh. They were given a say. The referendum was for the whole of greater Manchester, an area from which the vast majority of central Manchester commuters come from.

The whole C charge affair has been a fiasco. The councils could have imposed it and were going to do so until it became blindingly obvious that if they did the next council elections would have wiped out every single pro C-charge councillor, and then the C charge would have been scrapped by the new councils anyway. To save face the pro-C charge lobby proposed a referendum with the inevitable result. £20 million has been wasted on this futile exercise just to save the seats and blushes of the stupid councillors and the hired council 'officers' who came up with the idea in the first place.

 

[LLB]

Doesn't just affect people in Manchester. Take commuters for example.... car commuters into Manchester may have gladly paid the charge, rail commuters would have benefited from the extra investment. But they weren't given a say.

If I were visiting Manc to go shopping, I'd object to paying the CC to go in there after already being shafted by VED and fuel duty. It would hit businesses badly for the day trippers who would look at towns and cities offering a CC environment.

People who live there don't want it and have sent a message to the government that CC is a vote loser. The only ones who would favour it are the ones who wouldn't have to pay it. I take it you fall into this category

Take it like a man and give it a rest Dom

 

[Night Train]

Most leisure visitors to Manchester wouldn't visit during the charging times anyway.

I don't think the vote was againt the offer of investment or lacked a long term view. The information given with regards to the cost to those who would be charged was inadequate and misleading. Had it not been then I think the vote could have gone the other way.

The real facts and figures in the documentation and information was very conspicuois(sp) by its absence. That leads to mistrust if so much information was witheld.

Given an open and fully informative proposal for investment and charging would have allowed people to be able to decide on the benefits in both the long and short term.

If you wanted a bank loan for home improvements and the bank offered you the money but told you that you had to use their expensive and poor quality builders who you did not trust to finish the job on time or within price or do the work that you wanted them to do and then the bank refused to tell you how much your loan repayments were going to be nor for how long you would be repaying it you would say 'No' too.