On Congestion Charging & Demanding the Impossible

The Congestion Charge is probably one of those items you'd expect to see more of on this blog, and we have had small articles in the past (here and here), but with a day to go until voting ends I (Child of Lewin) thought I would offer my views. I identify myself because on this occasion, the opinions expressed are purely my own.

Look who votes No*

Indeed. Lots of diverse people for lots of diverse reasons. I dare say the same is true of 'Yes' campaigners. There's no denying that the loudest 'No' proponents can invariably be described as Clarkson-esque 'Mr Toad' numpties. But you would be equally wrong to equate those who are concerned about a more powerful European Union as being crypto-fascist, UKIP, Kilroy Silk-like shopkeepers. Such polarisation and lack of analysis is not excusable for those who are serious about such matters.

A Capitalist solution

The first thing we need to address is the origins of Congestion Charging itself. To some people, it may be a revelation to learn that it has less to do with reducing CO2 emissions and more to do with market economics.

The Keynesian economist William Vickrey was a theorist of 'Congestion Pricing' - best described as a way of regulating demand. The Keynesian tag is important - it means he's from a school of capitalist economists that favour direct intervention to mitigate the adverse effects of capitalism, such as recession, depression and boom - in opposition to the Monetarist approach which took particular prevalence in the 1980s. The advocates of the Keynesian approach (tagged 'socialism' or 'communism' by the extreme right or ignorant, but in actual fact anything but) are on the march again now, given that Capitalism in facing possibly it's greatest ever crisis. But the uncomfortable truth for many pro-congestion charge individuals and groups who purport to be on the left and in some way radical is that they are arguing in favour of capitalist device to regulate demand: Keynesianism is about improving stability in the private sector (hence the bailing out of private banks with public money).

In this way, at the public seminars they held, the primary concern the GMPTA reps were keen to emphasise was that congestion charging was first and foremost 'good for business'. This is important - environmental and the 'public good' angles were tellingly much lower down the list on the very first slide of the powerpoint presentation.

So as a tool, Congestion charging is meant to address 'failures of the market', primarily the failures to eliminate practices which are harmful to the environment (in the view of campaigners for it). To do this, it relies on coercion through taxation, primarily because underlying it is a pessimistic and thoroughly reactionary (and discredited) view of what is termed 'human nature' - i.e. that human beings are overwhelmingly selfish, and therefore the perceived common good has to be enforced etc. 'People' are the problem, and have to be forced to behave correctly, for their own good as well as others. A good example of this is the facebook group 'yes i DO want the congestion charge in manchester, bring it on' whose description/strapline is 'just get the train or a bus and leave your crap car in your stupid little village. we can hardly move from you twats, let alone breathe'- so it seems that the provision of public transport is all about morality twinned with a contempuous view of the 'masses'. The vaguely eco-left milieu that populate these groups should really know better than to associate themselves with such crass moralism and anti-analytical bullshit, but it seems to me that they are also part of the problem here. This section of the bourgeoisie are not really concerned with social change - they don't want to argue, rather instead they want people to be like them - to share the same diet, dress, lifestyle and music.

But the underlying flaw in the argument that a Congestion Charge (and therefore the associated TiF bid) is something to do with reducing car use is a classic contradiction - it acknowledges and recognises the dominant place the car has under capitalism, as the car will be the way to get revenue to repay a huge £1.2 bn loan in future.

Furthermore, the argument that the Congestion Charge is needed to combat CO2 emissions looks rather pathetic when one considers the promoters contend that the plan will only do so by 6%. This is also presumably the best it can do, and it's frankly not good enough. The 'Yes' proponents must know this and realise it compromises their efforts to be taken seriously in future on climate change.

Regressive Taxation

My primary objection to the Congestion Charge is the effect it will have on working people. It is a regressive tax - that is to say it will be a flat rate tax, like the hated poll tax - which will effect the less well off far more severely than the rich. £10 a day to drive in and out of the 2 zones during peak times may be merely inconvenient to the well off, but it's disastrous to the working person, at a time when wages are stagnant and food and fuel/energy prices are rising.

The GMPTA have countered this by saying that 'the poor' don't drive, or own cars. Again, the terminology is the key - for 'poor' read 'underclass' rather than the much broader 'working class'. For the pseudo-left proponents of the congestion charge, class analysis is abandoned altogether - the 'poor' get a (paltry 20%) discount, the rich can afford it (one thing they readily admit, because they have no intention of challenging the wealth & status of this small group) and the rest of us probably can anyway if we admit it. And anyway, it's for our own good.

Public Transport & the TiF bid

The flip side of the Charge 'stick' then becomes the 'Carrot' - an alleged 'Revolution' in the way people travel. But it's important to note that, at this stage, the TiF bid has 'proposals' rather than commitments - it's proponents know full well that subsidising the private sector invariably translates sooner or later into bottomless pit economics which will directly impact upon the investment and service provision that is envisaged now. It's therefore not possible to make anything other than vague promises.

Furthermore, the TiF deal for Greater Manchester has been the outcome of a competitive bidding process - with winners and losers on a national basis. 'Revolutionary' at the expense of other 'less deserving' Cities. Which sounds positively reactionary to me.

'Revolution' also implies something brand new - whereas many of the proposals are either leftovers from previous plans or existing initiatives that were always in the pipeline. The much vaunted Travel Smartcard for example, is a national initiative, already timetabled for introduction in the next 5 years. Wigan gets very little out of the TiF bid, but one of the cornerstones is the 'Leigh Guided Busway' - a scheme that has been on the books for nearly a
decade. Most of the 'new' Metrolink Trams were already ordered prior to the TiF bid.

You would expect a revolutionary plan to contain at least aspects of a radical approach - free transport, re-regulated and re-nationalised bus and train services. But that's not on the table. In fact, and on the contrary, the TiF scheme will see massive subsidies to the private sector, many of which have already begun to cynically cut back on services outside the Charging Area (perhaps in order to restore them so they look 'revolutionary' at a later stage), and also raise the prices of public transport massively. The main recipients of cash funding will be Stagecoach and First Group, who between them monopolise the bus and Metrolink services in and around the city. In addition, a massive £300 million will be paid to install the charging infrastructure, which is in itself a huge surveillance system with massive implications for civil liberties and freedom of movement.

Alternatives

Putting aside the abolition of capitalism and thereby assured death of the car industry for just a wee while, even a re-aligning of priorities would make a huge difference. Who amongst the more sincere 'Yes' proponents could object to moving the £6 bn annual spending on Road expansion into paying for free public transport?

And if they are not in favour of that, then how can they seriously convince anyone they want to 'revolutionise' anything? Hasselt in Belgium is an example of the possibilities of making public transport completely free - a 1319% increase in use of public transport over 10 years since the introduction - there's no surveillance nor crime because no documents are required (hint - it's FREE!).

Conclusion

Those who are for the Congestion Charge therefore need to accept the 'bitter pill' of the above outlined facts, alongside their vague, ill-defined, class ignorant, private-subsidy-jamboree of a scheme. The rather desperate line that 'it's either this or nothing' indicates a cowardly attitude to struggle and campaigning, alongside a willingness to swallow Capitalist doctrine seemingly at every given opportunity. If this really is the best we can expect to achieve, then they - more than anyone else - are in for a huge disappointment.

*I need to point out that, as an Anarchist, I don't 'vote' for anything or anyone on any occasion - the Militant Liberal 'Yes' voters who use 'Anarchist' as an indication of lifestyle and a flag of convenience would do well to remember that.

Sean Parker-Perry - Longdendale Labour's Congestion Charge rebel?

Over at Tameside Mafia, there's news about James Purnell's latest recruit which is interesting enough, but the blog contains an interesting nugget of info which is likely to point to the real reason why Sean Parker-Perry was sacked.

The blog has unearthed a comment on the Tribune website which runs as follows:

SO MUCH for free speech. The delegate from Tameside was barely off the rostrum after delivering a blistering attack on the proposed Manchester congestion charge when he got a text from his boss demanding to know, in so many words, what he thought he was playing at. His boss is Pensions Secretary James Purnell. And the delegate is a councillor.

It can only be Sean - Purnell's new recruit was a Councillor, but is no longer. The last thing Purnell wants is an acolyte who thinks for himself - especially if it's in a different direction from the Party line on the issue of the Congestion Charge.

So where does this leave Sean in terms of Longdendale Politics? Well, we all know that Roy Oldham is Tameside's biggest advocate of the Congestion Charge, and Councillor Reynolds can be found amongst the members of selected pro-Charge groups on Facebook (or at least used to) - so he's certainly isolated locally, and definitely so amongst Tameside's Labour Councillors (even if some of the local MPs are not 'on message'). No doubt the local Labour Party will have to consider taking him in hand at some point, it being a Party particularly concerned with discipline at this time of crisis.

Who knows, perhaps Sean will go the whole hog and come out against the Bypass? Stranger things have already happened...

The Longdendale Bypass & the Credit Crunch - is this the end of the road?

Today is somewhat of a watershed for this blog, because we finally got ourselves in newsprint. Yes, the MEN even asked us for a quote! The story was the one we broke nearly 2 weeks ago, about the massive projected cost increase of the Bypass.

But it's also bad news for other areas - the Government has approved the Cheshire (A34) bypass, and has pretty much underwritten it by pouring in £48 million (94%) of the total £51 million needed for the scheme. One can't imagine the government throwing £295 million at the Longdendale Bypass, and indeed, they have no intention of doing so.

So with an ever-widening 'funding gap' (between what Central Government will throw in and what the North West Local Authorities must find themselves) , the longer this whole thing plays out the better the chance this scheme - and others - will never see the light of day. In the coming months, expect to see the Longdendale Overlord Roy Oldham scuttling around government ministers and laying down the law at the North West Regional Assembly to get his pet project through.

But there is a wider context to all of this. As the costs increase paper outlines, road construction price inflation has doubled since the previous estimates, no doubt largely due to the price of crude oil and inflation generally - old costing models no longer stack up, hence the huge cost rises when these are rationalised. Is it any wonder that Road Construction firms are moving to merge to weather the bad times, not to mention diversify*.

And another way of looking at this is in the context of the much vaunted (but plainly fucked) Transport Innovation Fund (TIF) bid in Greater Manchester - the projected maximum cost of the Bypass is 10% of the money in the TIF. The Longdendale Bypass plan is 5.7 km long - apparently, 'transforming public transport in Manchester' (their words, not ours) is only worth 57 km of roads like the bypass - or 3 years of UK funding for the Iraq war (it's a good job we don't think the TIF bid is the holy grail which will deliver the North West from climate change, like Liberal Bourgeois Greens do - clearly, crumbs for the masters table will suffice for some).

Finally, the top of this blog has the latest New Report from Channel M. At one point, the reporter, Richard 'monkeys might fly out of my' Butt, states that he can understand why people 'have been campaigning so hard and so long' for the road - making his point against a backdrop of freely-flowing traffic. Clearly, there's no need to get hold of Mike Flynn to wring a quote out of - he does the job himself.

*Carillion - the contractors for the bypass - bought Alfred McAlpine in December 2007. McAlpine had the contract for maintaining Sainsbury's supermarkets. What a coincidence then that Sainsbury's have now plainly stated their intentions to build a Large Superstore in Glossop...

Bypass - or bypass? That is the question...

The Real Bypass: the only bypass that we, the flooded, thirsty, hungry, tired and dejected need is a heart-bypass operation. At least that is the only type of bypass this government should be considering funding. I have seen my sweet little Brother's adopted town. namely Tenbury Wells totally wrecked: smashed cottages, broken hearts, and tears. No, not the rivers of blood we were emphatically told would be flowing by the early dawn of the 21st century. Rivers of sewage, pieces of peoples lives washed away, misery, and fear etched into the faces of people whose tales tell of their dreams and aspirations being washed away in a torrent - not of class or racial hatred, but in a swirling, snarling monster that was once the River Teme. Was this the same gentle meandering river I stood watching my young son shouting excitedly "I've caught one, I've caught one!"?

What is the point of my inane ramblings? Well, it's really quite simple. Whilst I hot-footed to and fro, up and down the A49, I realised that my time was now being spent not fighting as a volunteer against road schemes that contributed to the causes of Global warming. I was dealing with the consequences of not doing enough to stop the onslaught that we refer to as climate change . There is always the counter-argument: yes, I could be wrong and all of this could be a weather blip, wretched bad luck. I, for one, am the eternal pessimist and would urge all of those with vested interest in the survival of humanity to maybe err on the side of caution. If anyone can get word to Gordon, the same treatment he recently dished out to the Manchester Casino may be the masterstroke that catapults him into the stuff of legends. All in all, I don't think Gordon has a done badly in the limited time he's been in the job. So go on Gordon, make my day , do us all a favour and and let's have a period of reflection. Where we can evaluate in the present political climate (no pun intended) whether or not it is wise and discerning to be contemplating building on the Glossop flood plain. I am, of course, referring to the Glossop Spur.

Now, to get back to why I was screaming up and down the A49 . Well, it's really quite simple. While most of the middle England and the south of our beloved 'Land of dope and curry' was swimming, paddling in their own waste, I was making haste, beating a retreat. To assist my mother in her daily pilgrimage (twice daily) of trying to negotiate that other masterstroke of the Highways Agency's lunacy, namely the M60. And the reason? I was taking her to visit my Father, who happened to be residing in Wythenshawe hospital, having just undergone open heart surgery. Mum's confidence being severely tested by the harrowing experience that is the M60, it was left to yours truly to do the honours. Picking up the mantle of ferrying my mother to and fro, I got to thinking when Uncle Roy 'I want mi name up in brass lad' Oldham and the other magnificent seven have tendered their bid, that in all eventuality could lead to the introduction and implementation of congestion charging. What would be the cost to pensioners be? On my calculation, it would have cost my mother £140 to have visited twice a day at £5 pound per entry to and from the inner ring-road levy (this seems to be the the price fixing level that is being bandied around). Now excuse me for raising this point, it seems to me we have got it all wrong here. Is it morally right to expect the poorest members of our green and pleasant land, to subsidise years of transport and infrastructure mismanagement and under-development? It really beggars belief that Labour-controlled councils want Casinos, & road-charging schemes, that will force the poorest in society to pay for their and the Tories years of flagrant abuse, underfunding and 'fast dollar' over-development of our shared occupation of this country.

When-o-when will the numb skulls realise the game's up we've got to deal with the cards we've been dealt? The lowering of C02 emissions involves all of society - the rich and the wealthy will, by the virtue of their wealth, be more than able to buy the right to carry on polluting in just the same manner as they do now. I am not suggesting for one minute that all wealth-creation is necessarily a bad thing: indeed the opposite can be argued with more than an element of success. However, are these the same members of the Labour Party who kept carping on about the inequality of the USA and its ability to buy its way out of its global responsibility? I am, of course, referring to that more than corrupt idea of carbon trading. So what is the difference? Well, there is none. The responsibility for our shared occupancy of this planet started the day you were conceived - personal or collective wealth should have little or no bearing. We must show the poorest members of the world community that you cannot buy your way out of your shared responsibility and obligations to help deal with the worrying phenomenon that is global warming. If you don't believe me, ask all the recent victims of the wretched flooding whether they believe global warming exists. At least the recent weather had the integrity to wreak its havoc and destruction in equal proportions on rich and poor. A lesson that our so-called leaders could do well to learn from.

And so it is within the present climate (again, no pun intended) that I urge J P Watson and the supporters of the proposed bypass scheme (especially the HIGHWAYS AGENCY) to be brave and to think hard and long about the outcome of the present Public Inquiry. If we can all be brave, then surely now is the time, within the spirit of the moment, that we can at least

afford ourselves a moment to pause and reflect upon our greater responsibility. I am of course talking about our obligation to the planet and humanity. If we are to learn to live and cope with the demands that global warming will sweep upon our planet, then we need a period of national reflection , when all future development - including road schemes - needs to be brought to question. Thanks for reading {Green an' common}.

What's good for the Goose is good for the Gander...

It would be disingenuous of me to suggest that all anti-road campaigners are for the congestion charge (despite the fact that scumsuckers like Jeremy Clarkson are it's noisiest opponents). In the realm of the bourgeoisie, much of what is posited as 'green' politics has little to do with social justice and everything to do with enhancing inequality. After all, in a possible (& likely) future world where people are charged a levy for activities that contribute to climate change, the rich will carry on as normal, while the poor will be a lot poorer. A much wider appraisal of the way that our economic and social system is snuffing us out as a species, and how that is what needs to be changed, seems a long way off.

And as if to confirm that, one only has to look at the behaviour of Greater Manchester's council leaders for yesterday's Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) meeting to vote on Congestion Charging. 8 out of 10 leaders arrived by car to the meeting, including Roy Oldham, who lives a 10 minute bus ride away! Because that's how much this man believes in public transport. Much better for him to hop into his chauffeur driven 'ultimate driving machine' (a BMW paid for by Tameside's taxpayers, and a brand of car chosen virtually exclusively by bourgeois tossers worldwide), than mix with the masses on the bus. His quote? He would have used public transport "if it had been good enough" - for him that should read. But what is good enough for the 'masses' has to be good enough for everyone, or else there will be plenty of equality in our eventual extinction...