The Tepid Take

The congestion charge is one of the most progressive examples of road pricing. Here’s why extending it would be regressive.  It pays to begin with a history lesson: the congestion charge was launched – against a wave of substantial political opposition across the board – by Ken Livingstone, in 2003. Responsible for substantial reforms in his time as the first Mayor of London, Livingstone saw backlash  for the congestion charge from across the political spectrum, not just from taxi drivers or private car users but theatre workers and the Samaritans. Livingstone was himself a prominent part of Labour’s Militant faction and leader of the Greater London Council when the Thatcher administration saw it as an enfant terrible deserving of abolition. This provocative background has left the congestion charge tarred with a red brush. But road pricing is not a left-wing policy; it was first suggested by Milton Friedman. For related reasons or not, road pricing is not nominally progressive - at le

    I like indie rock music. And one of the best things about the genre is that it's packed with lyrics. You can't move for the lyrics, they're coming out of each and every... everywhere. And a riff or a melody or a leitmotif is all well and good, but what I'm really interested in is those all consuming words. I want to examine them, to discover depths and profundities that literary theorists find in Shakespeare or Wordsworth, in the likes of David Bowie or Declan McKenna.       So enter the first contender. A month ago today, Everything Everything released their fifth studio album, Re-Animator. It was beautifully composed: a maelstrom of gentle, whirling melodies sat among stadium sing-alongs and odd time signatures. Above all, though, it's bursting with lyrical master strokes - and it's those that I'm going to dig into today, track by gorgeous track. 1. Lost Powers "Come on, you only lost your mind..."      An opening ode to the hardship of our t