Manchester says No to congestion charge

Given that I'm a highly opinionated person, I express surprisingly few of my opinions on this blog. But I'm going to make an exception in this instance. Today I'm pretty proud to be a Mancunian, even though I knew really that the congestion charge vote would go to a No as I didn't know a single Mancunian who was voting in favour.

Some of the comments in the Guardian demonstrate the kind of contempt for the views of ordinary people that I've come to expect from this government. One very astutely draws parallel with the Irish referendum over the summer that rejected the European Lisbon treaty and as a result drew ugly responses negating the validity of democratic mechanisms when you don't get the result you want. Responses along the lines of "those ungrateful Irish after all that Europe has done for them" and "we'll carry on run the vote again until we get the right result" are not guaranteed to bring universal harmony across national and social divides any time soon. However, they're extremely likely to bring out the inner rebel in quite a lot of people, certainly those with any self-respect.

I don't agree with people who are saying, albeit sympathetically, that it's about reluctance to vote for extra taxes at the start of an economic downturn. And it's certainly not true that the No vote is a vote against public transport; Mancunians are justly proud of their tram system. I really think it's about people getting fed up of being told what to think (where was the No campaign, for example?), and that is a good thing, surely, for everyone, no matter where they live.