Respect - Respect our views on congestion charge, meeting told

Respect our views on congestion charge, meeting told

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Respect our views on congestion charge, meeting told

RESPECT candidate Roy Wilkes went head to head with Charlestown ward councillor Mark Hackett in a congestion charging debate at Moston Social and Labour Club on Tuesday night.

Addressing a largely sympathetic audience first, green campaigner Mr Wilkes told Councillor Hackett that taxing motorists was the wrong way to go about cutting traffic emissions.

Rejecting conventional environmental and 'anti-car' thinking, the Respect party is part of a broad coalition opposed to the Toll Tax, including businesses, residents, and anti-road toll groups such as Manchester Against Road Tolls (MART).

Mr Wilkes told The Advertiser: "Somebody came along from MART, but they have got a very different perspective. We are in favour of public transport but we don't see this as the best way to improve it. Climate change is such a serious threat that the measures that need to be taken to reduce carbon emissions need to be far more radical than are being proposed. We need to really provide people with a genuine alternative that will get them out of cars."

Respect wants to see free public transport and a returning of buses, trains and trams to public hands.

Mr Wilkes also asked why the Government could afford to spend £3 billion on bailing out Northern Rock or on Iraq, but an expansion of Manchester's public transport system required the introduction of the C-charge.

"We don't think we should back down to that sort of blackmail," he said.

He also claimed the Toll Tax was a regressive tax that would hit the poorest hardest, likening it to an increase in tobacco taxes.

"The poorest ones are the ones that have the hardest time giving up smoking, so increasing the tax on cigarettes actually just makes them poorer," he claimed.

Other anti-Toll Tax campaigners have dismissed the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities' (AGMA) congestion projections as scaremongering. The council's own State of the City report published two weeks ago revealed "no detectable increase in traffic congestion on local roads over the past year."

But Mr Wilkes said: "Everyone's experience is that commuting by car in Manchester is a nightmare experience. Whatever surveys come out of it there's an environmental cost of congestion but also a diminishing of quality of life."

Councilor Hackett told The Advertiser: "We need improved public transport. I don't think the financial aspects are crucial. The key thing is to get the investment in public transport. In the long run it is essential for people's health."

He said a culture change was needed where people lived differently.

Cllr Hackett added: "It doesn't mean cars are not appropriate for certain journeys, but others would be a lot better served by public transport. Congestion charge is part of the choice we are likely to be faced with in Manchester.

"It is ridiculous to throw away billions of pounds of investment in public transport. "If we don't have a congestion charge we face a real danger of congestion being a huge economic disincentive. "We need a change in people's behaviour and congestion charging could be a way of doing that.

"I love my car, I am very much a car person. I am not anti-car. I don't think congestion charging is the crucial issue."

North Manchester Respect is hoping to organise similar public debates on the issue across the city in future months.

News and articles of interest

Here are some articles and news reports we think are worth looking at

Gaza: The Real Terrorists - Stuart Littlewood
The patience of all decent men must surely be exhausted.
Today's slaughter of innocents in Gaza, with at least 230 reported killed in raids on "Hamas terror operatives" (as the Israeli military put it), amounted to "a mass execution", said Hamas.
Can there now be any doubt who the real terrorists are?
The killing spree couldn't have happened without the tacit approval of America, Britain and the EU. The political pea-brains that direct the pro-Israel western alliance were partying, gorging themselves on Christmas fare or binge-shopping while this massacre of hungry women and children and their despairing menfolk in Gaza was being planned and executed.

Stench of Death Hangs Over Gaza - Ola Attallah
With thick clouds of smoke billowing into the sky and dead bodies littering into the streets, a stench of death rose from the ruins of the Gaza Strip on Saturday, December 27.
"Where are my sons?" screamed Um Ibrahim as she ran hysterically looking for her little kids.
She lives near a security compound Israeli planes pounded to the ground on Saturday.
"I don't know what happened to them," cried the bereaved mother.
Her neighbor Um Abed fell unconscious when she saw her son among the dead in the attacks.
At least 206 Palestinians were killed in massive Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Saturday.
"The number of victims has reached 195 martyrs with more than 300 wounded, 120 of whom are critically hurt," said Moawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency services.
"The toll has gone up because of new Israeli raids and the discovery of several martyrs under the rubble."

Gaza massacres must spur us to action - Ali Abunimah
"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing." Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel's latest massacres were broadcast around the world.
A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel's attacks, and others will follow.

Face to face with the Taliban - Ghaith Abdul Ahad
Qomendan Hemmet sat cross-legged under a window of the mud-walled room. His shoulder, sunk in an old military jacket, rested against the wall and a radio antenna stuck out of his pocket. Next to him sat his deputy, wrapped in a big blanket, silent and sleepy. Around the room sat his men, their faces contorted by years of fighting and poverty, dressed in shalwar kameez and magazine pouches, eyes dark as the kohl lining them. Radios crackled, phones rang non-stop, and more fighters came, drank tea and left with orders.
"Salar is the new Falluja," declared Qomendan Hemmet emphatically. "The Americans and the Afghan army control the highway, and five metres on each side. The rest is our territory."

Communication Workers Union vows to fight any privatisation - Christine Buckley
The main postal union gave warning yesterday that it would fight any move to partly privatise Royal Mail as expectations grow that the organisation is facing a huge shake-up.
This week the Government is expected to publish an independent report that it commissioned into the postal service which will pave the way for an overhaul of Royal Mail.

Free Bush shoe-thrower, Iraqis urge - Aljazeera.net
Thousands of Iraqis have demonstrated in Baghdad's Sadr City in support of a journalist being held in custody after throwing his shoes at George Bush, the US president.
Muntazer al-Zaidi was detained for what the Iraqi government on Monday said was a "barbaric and ignominious act" during a news conference the previous day.