Quick on the draw Mr C. I bet you were waiting keyboard in hand like Usain Bolt was with his baton in the Olympics waiting to be the first blogging on the TIF result - only messing.
Right answers to your points - lets have a go

• How many of the No voters actually commute into Manchester?
• Quite a lot I reckon due to the turnout
• How short-sighted can people be?
• The people were only given 2 options - so they were only as short-sighted as the politicians who devised the vote itself
• Does Manchester like being remembered for it's Victorian history and it's quite clearly Victorian approach to transport infrastructure. When they get chance to modernise they shun it.
• They have shunned a chance to improve/modernise it's transport infrastructure
• People actually voted against the c-charge, not the TIF
• I agree, people actually voted against the C-Charge
• People voted against improving the transport infrastructure. Umm, that seems dumb to me.
• see above answer
• Did people realise that the C-Charge wouldn't happen until 80% of the TIF improvements were made, likely meaning that many, many more people would avoid paying the charge?
• It was clear in the literature that this was the case yet still voted against the c-charge
• The No campaign offered zero alternatives, yet people voted for it.
• The Yes campaign offered a carrot and a stick - it would appear that the stick seemed harsher than the sweetness of the carrot
• The Yes campaign failed miserably in getting it's message out
• I think the message was clear - the media concentrated on the C-charge from then there was only one winner
• People like sitting in their cars or squashed on trams and trains.
• People would rather sit still in their warm car than stand squashed on a bus or tram or train in the cold with the rest of the Mancunian public, coughing and spluttering their way to work, changing trams for buses, buses for trams, smelling of the rain and listening to the chatter of school youth, drowned out by MP3 hissI have 2 major concerns:
  Why is there no plan B?
  There is always alternatives and always other options. I'm sure if there was only one ring around the city centre the TIF would have gone through. Why are we not looking at the school run and how to reduce it's effect on traffic (this must be a major cause of local congestion). Major investment in home working, and flexible working may have the same desired effects of reducing traffic.
  These are just a couple of plan B's
  My 2nd concern is that Central and to some extent Local Government have for the past 50 years been encouraging us as individuals to adopt a Car lifestyle, closing branch railway lines, building out of town shopping centres, huge supermarkets and encouraging business parks - In Shudehill we have had a huge car park build to accompany the new Bus Shelter...sorry station which only seems to have 4 buses in it at one time.
  Having no plan B was exceptionally naive and makes it easy to blame the public the people they represent.
  

I haven't counted and we could not say that they are representative anyway, but here the people of the world seem to be applauding the Mancunian 'no.'

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=5804&edition=1&ttl=20081212213902

I am not taking sides as being a poor resident of Derbyshire, I had no vote. But I think (1) the 'yes' campaign relied on pre-Obama advertising strategies - deadly! (2) the people are savvier and savvier every year. If HM Govt can pay for t'Olympics, and if it can pay for t'Crossrail, and if it can pay for t'bankers, and as they all cost more than t'TIF, ... then govt can pay for t'TIF!

How many of the yes voters commute into Manchester?

How shortsighted can people be

in fact the no voters  understood the outcome, maybe you dont know that the public transport is not public owned and run but is a set of companies whose duty is to make money for their shareholders. So in fact the people of GM would have being paying twice to these companies, once as fares and again paying for their captial cost to improve the infrastructure. Remember 1.8 billion was a loan needed to be re-paid and who was going to do this, was it going to stagecoach etc or the people of GM

?

• Does Manchester like being remembered for it's Victorian history and it's quite clearly Victorian approach to transport infrastructure. When they get chance to modernise they shun it

No one was offering a modern infrastructure, no tubes, no cheap intergarted buses. Just a expension of the current system it lacked vision, our Victorian forefathers would have embarrassed by its lack of vision<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face

the TIF was poor se above

• People voted against improving the transport infrastructure. Umm, that seems dumb to me.

 again see above we would be paying two or three times for a poor proposed improvement

• Did people realise that the C-Charge wouldn't happen until 80% of the TIF improvements were made, likely meaning that many, many more people would avoid paying the charge?

How do you define 80% who makes the defination or let me guess it would be the same people with a vested interest in saying it was achivied
The only way more people whould have avoided paying is to stop coming into Manchester or taking public transport, and of course for the tif process to work you need a large number to continue to drive in to help pay off the loan

• The No campaign offered zero alternatives, yet people voted for it.

why should they. They did not have £30 million of funding the yes campaign did

• The Yes campaign failed miserably in getting it's message out

They did get their message out but I and many others could see through the vague promises

There are three ways of dealing with difference: domination, compromise, and integration.

By domination only one side gets what it wants;

by compromise neither side gets what it wants;

by integration we find a way by which both sides may get what they wish; Mary Parker Follet

The Yes or No vote simply invited you to reject domination, not paying more for living life as you want it. The advantages of YES were pie tommorrow against the certainty in NO of paying a quantified sum of money that was clearly to be yet another tax. And govenment is exceptionally good at taxing us and exceptionally bad at delivering anything that makes the world a better place. Just ask the press who always tell the truth.

But dont worry; The English never draw a line without blurring it. (Winston Churchill)