Car Parking

It's been a while since I waxed about car parking, but it continues to be a particular passion of mine. Councils seeking to use car parking charges as a form of taxation are a blight on their region and the profitability of businesses. Indeed, it is a potent symbol of the break in understanding between a corporate approach and the mindset of a state body.

I heard of a private clinic where the car parking was free (and the service efficient, facilities clean etc) that was being closed, as the facility was being moved to the local, state run hospital, where the parking charges are £1.50 an hour. This unashamed leeching off sick people and their relatives is an indication of the detached and careless thinking of over-paid apparatchiks in government sinecures. (Actually, over-paid is not quite right as being employed at all makes them over paid, if it was a penny).

Councils, like central government should of course have a fairly narrow focus and where they stray from that focus it should be exclusively to help smooth the working lives of citizens. Your local council should empty bins, pay for emergency services and libraries. It should maintain the infrastructure and environment. These are costly activities and mean a lot of employment.

However, all the political projects, such as drugs, sexual and fashionable projects (diversity, race etc), collectively falling under an 'outreach' banner, are none of the councils' business. If they feel they should engage in such activity, beyond the remit accorded them by ratepayers, then they should ask for permission.

These objections do not penetrate to the stupidity that is applied to jobs they should be doing, where waste and over complication are a way of life for people who know exactly where the next penny is coming from and that it will never end. The incentive to do things properly just doesn't exist.

The much talked about desire of local government to tax companies for providing parking spaces, is outrageous. It is absolutely none of the council's business what the company does. It may, in a way no council moron could understand, use parking as a tactic to attract the best candidates to work for them.

The reason we get these taxes is entirely due to the inhibited abilities of local government employees. It is so far beyond their intellect to find a way to stimulate growth that then provides increased tax revenue, that the idea might as well exist on Mars.

Every penny your council spends on 'environmental issues' and every 'green' tax they impose is an abuse. If they said that they were using the money to keep the dead from rising up and slaughtering us all, or to save pixies from becoming extinct, it would at least be more honest of them. Taxing and spending to support something almost entirely made up is part of the modern fashion, to believe what the Left says without thinking, but is is a key aspect of our nations poverty.

Car parking charges and the (illegal) fines they so dearly love to impose are a key aspect of local government fund raising. It should stop and they should be ordered to go back to just doing what we asked them to and to live within their means. In a spare moment, they might want to consider why they are referred to as 'public servants'.