From AW, Manchester....

Well what do you know. Just six days after I wrote the previous article, the nightmare begins.

Manchester City council has generously offered its services to take part in a trial of computerised road tolling.

1000 mugs sorry subjects are to be enlisted for trials of a device which registers when you enter the town center. Those wits in the Town Hall are quick to point out that the subjects won't be charged during the trial (Oh that's big of them!).

The idea of the device is that when you go in the city centre and hence cause traffic jams and pollution, you get charged - simple, effective, costly! What the councilors also mentioned in the small print, was that they don't want these measures to have an effect on city centre traders. So by stretching their limited imaginations a long way, they suggested that the meter would also be placed around out of town centres such as the Trafford Centre.

Now let's follow that logic on a bit further; big business loses shoppers from Manchester and nearby Trafford to places like Warrington or Bury so they get entry tax enforced on these towns too, so shoppers go yet further afield and the tax follows them, spreading around the country like a plague. Soon it will engulf the whole country.

So what about these devices themselves. Who's going to pay for them?

You are! Who did you think would? If you want to get into any useful area of the country you will have to buy one.

20 million cars equal 20 million units. If each unit costs us say, a cheapish 50 quid, that's a nice 1000000000 quid. Yes! count those zeros. One Thousand Million, the government aren't going to stump up for that one, no-way.

So, if one of those slimy, civil servant types asks you to be a guinea pig for the good of the Environment.

TELL HIM TO SOD OFF!