Frizz

I’m thinking about the extension of the congestion charge in London, which comes into being on the 19 February. I’ve been looking at the map and trying to understand the justification for charging to travel in North Kensington, Westbourne Grove, Portobello Road, OK maybe the Kings Road, but the more I look at it the less it makes sense. I hope that the small shops on little streets, which are just that bit too far from a tube station will be OK. At the moment I don’t have much need to drive that way, but I have done in the past and there are lots of little places I would stop off at, that I won’t be able to afford to once the charge comes into force. There’s the really good veggie place for lunch on Portobello, or the Oxfam and the organic shops on Westbourne Grove, and all the little boutique shops there too. It’s not like I can’t live without them, of course I can and I’m thinking hey Ken is actually going to save me money, but they are a part of what makes London special for me. I was also thinking does this mean that all the people who live in the extended area, will now be able to drive into central London without paying any more money? So once the congestion charge covers the whole of London, we’ll all just have to pay the extra tax, but we’ll get our city back again. It’s not that I’m against not driving, but I’d like a sensible system that’s not about earning Ken money and pricing people out of living in London, but actually about getting people out of their cars in a fair way. And what I’d really like is school buses, which seem to exist in many other countries - if we are really talking about congestion (which of course we are not), then who doesn’t notice that during the school holidays there is no congestion.

And don’t get me started on how much it’s now costing me to travel by ‘public transport’.