I have never been shy of championing minority opinions, but recent months have seen me biting my lip and keeping my own counsel in quite uncharacteristic fashion. I may be an opinionated old sod, but I draw the line at total social exclusion - I still want an invitation to the occasional social gathering or at least to get served in the local pub. If Punch magazine were still around, then a Victorian cartoon would catch my situation perfectly; I would sit centre-frame, surrounded by repulsed and flabbergasted faces, and the legend beneath would identify me as The Mancunian Who Thinks The Congestion Charge Is Really Not Such a Bad Idea After All.
Judging by the local papers and media, radio phone-ins, message boards, local elections and not least the responses to Comment is free pieces by Martin Wainwright and the Guardian's editorial writers, opposition to the C-charge is close to absolute. Nobody outside the walls of Manchester Town Hall wants it in place; nobody believes the promises on public transport; everybody believes the scheme will lead to some form of disaster – whether personal, political or economic.

Now I admit the C-charge would not be my preferred solution to the city's dangerous infestation of poisonous metal vermin. Road-pricing in all forms merely gives preference to the wealthier over the poorer. Personally I'd just remove half the car-parking spaces in the centre, let the drivers scrap it out until they give up, and solve much of the problem at a stroke - and I guess that's why the likes of me never win elections. Nonetheless, something needs to be done, and if the C-charge is the only available alternative to the status quo, then I'm prepared to give it a whirl.
Most people's objections to the scheme are personal and selfish. So are my reasons for supporting it. I live on the edge of what will become the city's inner ring. To be precise, I live just at the point where the A6 converges with the A34, meaning that every morning and evening commuters from the suburbs and satellite towns of Stockport and Cheshire crawl past our window, pumping their cocktail of poisonous gases, heavy metals and particulates straight into the fragile lungs of my kids. Yes, perhaps we could move elsewhere, but not everyone has the financial means to do so, and I would no more wish that pollution on someone else's child than I do on my own. It seems more than a tad unreasonable to me that those city dwellers who statistically are least likely to own and drive their own cars are the ones who are forced to inhale the bulk of other people's fuel farts. Yes, I too share the blame. We have a family car, and I drive it around on occasion. It is no coincidence that our car generally goes where the buses and trams do not. While Manchester has excellent public transport going in and out of the centre, to get sideways - across town - is often agonisingly difficult and stupidly expensive. To travel the four miles from my house to visit a friend in Chorlton would take two or even three buses and cost upwards of four pounds for a one-way trip. I can be no more precise, due to the random chaos of deregulated bus companies offering rival fares – another blight on public transport users in the city. If the additional investment in the transport infrastructure can begin to make Greater Manchester transport less of a farce, then bring it on. But I would hope there is a bigger potential benefit to the city in the C-charge. Many callers to the phone-ins and correspondents to the letters' pages have been desperate commuters, insisting that the only way available to travel from their satellite home to their work is by car. To paraphrase, people are complaining that the charge would force them to change their lifestyle. Well, that is kind of the point. Such people have to realise that their lifestyle choice is at the root of the problem. There is no divine right for people to commute cheaply to work each day. The costs of their transport choices have been borne for too long by the rates and taxes of the city-dwellers, by the global and local environment and by public health. Enough is enough. It is time for those who drive around the city to take responsibility for their choices. Or better still, it is time for them to make better choices.

Many of the social and economic problems of Manchester's inner city have been exacerbated by middle-class flight, out of the city and towards the suburbs. This leaves the schools struggling, local economies floundering and small businesses folding. If the C-charge can encourage more of the better-off citizens of Greater Manchester to look for a house in Cheetham Hill, Whalley Range or Levenshulme instead of Marple, Hazel Grove or Alderley Edge, then the benefits will extend far beyond clean air. The congestion charge could actually be the saving of the city.