Congestion Charge

I had the misfortune to visit London a couple of days ago. For those of you that are not familiar with this country. There is an area in central London (The Congestion Charge Zone ) that you cannot drive your car in without pay a fee ( £8 ) called, funnily enough, the congestion charge. There is no getting away from it. There are cameras everywhere and it works on numberplate recognition. I was under the illusion that the idea of the congestion charge was to reduce the congestion in the centre of London. Silly me. Having taken one and a half hours to travel the last two miles of my journey, it would appear to me that they are actually charging us for the congestion.