Letters: Parking ‘politico speak’ - raising parking charges

Published: 29 January 2010

THE High Court established that using parking charges to raise revenue is illegal in a judgment made in 1995. 
Money raised “incidentally” in the context of avoiding a loss can be allowable but only if it is a genuinely incidental outcome from a policy measure or change. The plans to charge until midnight will clearly, and undeniably raise more money for the council without any plausible evidence that extra charges will deliver any other benefit than extra revenue.
Does Councillor Danny Chalkley of Westminster honestly believe that if he keeps repeating “it’s not revenue raising” in people’s faces that they will believe him?
When motorcycle parking charges were introduced he claimed that it was not about revenue. One of his arguments was the pressure on “limited kerbside space”, space that he then went on to allocate to his new car club, citing “under-utilised old-style meter bays”.
Now he is planning to charge drivers until midnight, ban parking on yellow lines until midnight, and punish residents by hiking their charges well over the rate of inflation. Again, he has claimed that it is not about revenue at all, not in the slightest, it is all about demand management, or as he phrased it with regard to motorcycles, a “restraint mechanism”. 
Politico speak if I have ever heard it.
I would recommend that residents and businesses alike take the promise to make a decision “in a manner totally transparent” and with a pinch of salt. 
Furthermore, I would recommend that they join us in our campaign and end this cycle of ever-increasing and more draconian charges.
When the public are treated like idiots, they do not take kindly to it, and it is about time that these public servants recognised that the public can see through their spurious arguments for expanding revenues just as clearly as the council is looking through the windscreens of the drivers they are planning to fleece.

Charlie Lort-Phillips
Spokesman No To Bike Parking Tax Campaign