Motor Trader The award-winning and longest running UK magazine for car retailing professionals. Your first stop for News, Jobs and Reports for the motor industry.
Spare a thought for those really struggling in the wake of the economic downturn.
Not people with jobs on the (production) line, or pensioners who can’t afford to turn on their heating.
No, there are far more worthy recipients of our sympathy.
Step forward residents of Kensington and Chelsea, forced to pay the London congestion charge since its boundaries moved west last year.
According to a survey carried out by Transport for London, nearly one in three claims to have difficulty in paying to drive within the zone.
It’s a real tear-jerker, and soggy eyes will come thick and fast when you remember the eye-watering fee for residents isn’t £8,00 a day like the rest of the hoi polloi. It’s just 80p.
Maybe there are a few home-owners in the richest part of the richest city in Britain who struggle to pay what amounts to around a third the cost of a cappuccino on Kensington High Street.
But half the 80p-a-day whingers are those in households with ‘incomes above £75k a year’. Nice.
Fear not dear though reader. The plight of these downtrodden Audi Q8 drivers has not gone unheard.
A knight wearing the shining blue armour that only a Bullingdon Boys alumni can don, has come to save them from financial ruin.
Under one proposal in his congestion charge consultation, Boris Johnson says residents in Kensington and Chelsea could soon pay nothing to drive within the zone.
That’s right – a 100% concession.
That’d be a shrewd political move; far more palatable than losing an estimated £65 million a year through scrapping the extension entirely.
Residents in Ken and Chelsea wouldn’t like that option either; they’d lose all concessions and start paying full whack to drive their Porsche Cayenne’s through the central London zone to their banking jobs in the city.
Oh, erm, thinking about it…….