General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Fedup: Like most government policy, this has been a long time in the making. Greater Manchester had a referendum on 12.12.2008 whether to introduce a Congestion Charge, which was overwhelmingly rejected, much to the annoyance of the Councils and unexpected by them.

That threw the appointment of Mayor of Greater Manchester back because had they won on that, the GM Mayor would have been appointed and the Congestion Charge would have been brought in much earlier.

On 4.5.2012 Greater Manchester had a referendum on whether to have a GM Mayor. That was rejected and Leese said at the time that he would honour the electorate's vote. (Lying barsteward).

On 29.5.2015 Tony Lloyd was voted GM Mayor behind Council doors and on a vote by Manchester Councillors only. Then, of course, in came Burnham on 8.5.2017. Burnham then proceeded to bring into place this Congestion Charge, renamed Clean Air Charge.

Burnham had a mandate from the then government on Transport, he took away pensioners rail travel and gave it to the most able (youngsters) and started the loonacy of the cycle lanes all round manchester.

The cost of all this, the cameras, the monitors, the collection, admin, etc. is to be paid for by the commercial vehicles, which in turn will be passed on to the consumer. When all the vehicles in the Zone comply, and the fines aren't coming in, they will no doubt start on the private vehicles.

Tonker has left an illuminating post on the other thread, New Traffic Signs, stating how much per day/week the Council will be making out of this.

People really need to start gluing themselves to the cycle lanes. Democracy in Greater Manchester has disappeared and here in Wigan we should be calling for a referendum to be returned to Lancashire.