Recent newspaper articles have focused on how few people the council says will actually end up paying the charge. If this is the case, how on earth is it going to fulfill its purpose of being the income generator to repay the 1.8 billion loan? It it doesn’t pay its way, charges will go up and the area expanded (although its already so huge its hard to see how they’ll do that)
Other likely outcomes are that the fines will be huge – yet to be declared.
In the list of people who wouldn’t pay the charge, the absence of private hire cabs (who are exempt in London, but seemingly not in Manchester) seems incredible. When we’re encouraging people to not take a car into the city, shouldn’t people have more access to a cab, not less? At a time when it seems huge fuel prices are here to stay, it seems crazy to penalise those further who earn a living from driving.
Nobody is really asking the right questions about this in the media. The balance is between how much the charge will generate in revenue, versus the cost of the loan. If it doesn’t cover it, whats the point, its just a huge waste of money. In order to try on the right side of public opinion the council tries to make it appear as if hardly anyone (apart from private cabs) will pay it. Lets have some serious answers about how many cars will need to pay the charge in order to service the debt, and what happens if this isn’t meet, is it simply added onto our council tax bills?