Our borough decided to up car-parking charges on the January 6 whilst many forecast a recession and the number of profit warnings increase in this country.

This sublime move will earn (the usually nicely rounded figure of) £400,000 a year and do our towns a bit of harm - shoppers will go elsewhere to the Trafford Centre or Wilmslow.

Do our borough officials know something we don't know?

In New York on Saturdays, the parking meters charge $2 an hour (equivalent to £1) on streets parallel to Fifth Avenue.

On similar streets in Altrincham it is now £2 or £2.50.

The size of problems and costs in these two places can be imagined realistically. So, which urban authority is more enlightened?

It must be supposed that our borough has the welfare and health of every one and every activity in mind when filching even more from us out here.

Or is the majority of the increase urgently needed for higher salaries and all types of expenses, or for keeping a now rare non-contributory pension scheme afloat for our borough employees or, in case they should be overlooked, contractors for "parking services" who will want a bigger rake-off for their profits and productivity bonuses for wardens programmed to ever so sensibly slap tickets on virtually anything that hasn't moved for two minutes?

We could vote these seemingly insensitive people out of office. But we shall forget, and they know it.

And any other party is unlikely to kill this parking goose before even more shops and libraries close.

Our borough could at least explain their theories behind this and other thinking on taxes so that crotchety idiots like me out here will be consoled. There will be claims that our council tax is the lowest but we never see the total income from taxes - and parking is a tax on wealth creation at every level.

Total income and expenditure on services, with salaries and pensions highlighted, is never reduced to what we pay and receive per head, which might show something interesting. Granted most schools are performing very well but, uncharitably, this is often achieved in spite of councils.

Yours faithfully, Michael Sargent, address supplied