There is something in the air in Manchester at the moment... the referendum on the Transport Investment Fund (and Congestion Charge) scheme is a source of great debate all around the town, on the trains, in the coffee places, in the papers wherever. Frankly for me it's a no-brainer as I live in town, don't have a car and use the public transport all the time. Even if the cash is not spent as wisely as it should be, even if the infrastructure improvements don't quite live up to the plans, even if it ends up costing us a load of extra cash one way or another in the long term it's way better to have improvements over no improvements. Oh and it's probably a rather good idea that a big wodge of money comes in from somewhere to keep the local economy propped up.

I have changed my profile picture on various social networking sites to this (I think rather fetching) happy smiley congestion charge symbol. You are all welcome to lift it and do likewise! It kinda characterises my feelings about the debate and how it seems to be operating: The NO campaign seems entirely bothered about the charge and how it's horrible and is going to eat small babies, their symbol being a C with teeth. The YES campaign defensively downplays the charge reminding us of how it won't actually affect anyone, their symbol being a very boring black and white VOTE YES. Let's get happy about the charge and say it's a good thing okay!

So you can tell I feel strongly about this! Strongly enough to have made sure I had registered to vote well in time for last month's deadline. Strongly enough to have checked when the ballot papers would be sent out. Strongly enough to be incredibly pissed off when instead of ballot papers I got a peculiar envelope, address written in red pen, from electoral services containing faxed copies of the identity documents I had sent them and an internal memo from the Manchester office to the Salford office saying "we think this address is in your area", dated November 5th, which was the deadline for registrations.

I phone them up... Why have you sent me this and where is my ballot paper?

"Oh yes we can sort-of find you in the system (though the postcode search doesn't work) and you'll be on the register in January, end of story. But we don't know why they've sent that to you."

I phone the referendum helpline... "No we can't do anything unless you're on the electoral role - you need to talk to electoral services"

3rd phone call now... But listen this is your mistake. I had the paperwork in by the deadline and you cocked it up because you couldn't find my address on your computer. I care deeply about this and your error has left me disenfranchised. What are you going to do about it?

And with that, suddenly a ray of light shone down and the issue was passed to someone more senior who phoned back within 10 minutes, apologised, gave me a reference number and the phone number of the returning officer who in turn promised that my ballot papers would be in the post tonight.

So even if we lose the popular vote I can at least claim a minor victory in the battle against bureaucracy.