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Congestion charging is a foul concept dreamed up by greedy uninspired governments who want to rake in a lot of cash quickly without regard to fairness or equality. Congestion charging will work because it will price the average car driver off the road and force the less wealthy onto the loser cruisers(buses and trains). Britain is about to introduce nationwide road pricing, a satellite will record every single journey by every single car in the country. Car usage will be charged electronically at a rate between four pence and one pound fifty pence per mile. Added to the already highest motoring costs in the world this will force somewhere in the region of 30% of UK drivers to stop using their cars. The concept is all the more foul because it is being introduced by a government led by a cowardly prime minister who has not faced the people in a general election.

There are fairer alternatives to the bludgeon of taxation but they will never be considered by a witless government that is only interested in tax revenue and doesn't care for the consequences. The British Government wants a source of easy revenue whose extortion can be justified as necessary for environmental and green issues but is really necessary to replenish the public purse which they have squandered in unprecedented proportion on projects such as Northern Rock.

Here are some quick fixes for reducing traffic congestion which could be quickly implemented at reasonable cost but will never be adopted because they don't provide opportunity for the extortion of more tax revenue;

a; Taking illegal drivers off the road would reduce the number of cars by about a million. The government makes little or no attempt to do this and yet, by their own admission, a million drivers in the UK are driving without insurance and many more are driving while disqualified.

b; Encourage private companies to adopt work from home policies. Anybody that works all day at a computer terminal in a finance, insurance, sales or similar job could be easily set up to work from home. Millions of commuters could be taken off the roads each day.

c; Introduce a school bus system similar to that used in the USA. Make it the right of every child to have free, supervised, safe transport to school. We don't have this in the UK and as a result parents drive their kiddies to school. On schooldays the morning and afternoon road congestion caused is unbelievable.(In the UK school buses are only provided for students living three or more miles from

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