We pay for parking every time we put fuel in the tank

I RARELY find myself disagreeing with the Comment column of the Press, but today's (Thursday 5 December) worries me. It gives support to Deputy Yvonne Burford, who is attempting to raise the cancer of paid parking yet again.

Can it be that both are unaware that, as of February 2009, the people of Guernsey already subscribe to paid parking?

Amazingly, in an all-too-rare attack of common sense, the States in January 2008 put 14p per litre on petrol as a replacement for motor tax (the old road fund licence) and in February 2009 the States agreed to charge an extra 1.2p per litre in place of paid parking as a means of subsidising cheap bus fares, which I'm sure our tourists really appreciated when their fares doubled last year.

The decision to put the road fund licence and paid parking onto the cost of fuel was disliked by some at the time but it was one of the smartest moves the States has ever made.

It prevents people from avoiding paying road tax and every car driver pays for parking, not just those unfortunate enough to work or shop in Town. It demands the display of insurance (surely more important, if you get bashed, to know that the other driver is carrying insurance), it costs nothing to administer (because the collection process for petrol excise duty already existed), it is eminently fairer in that it costs those with fuel-hungry vehicles, and/or those who drive a lot, proportionately more in tax and, as a bonus, it also encourages the use of more fuel efficient cars.

So, I don't ever frown on the Chelsea tractor owners – those fools are subsidising our taxes.

It has been shown in England and elsewhere that paid parking reduces rather than increases the number of parking spaces available and never earns the money that is projected by those proposing its use. Paid parking achieves no net tax earnings at all in most towns, with only those like London, where exorbitant rates are charged and parking wardens are paid a bonus not to improve traffic flow, but to uselessly earn more tax that will be squandered, not on subsidising buses or anything useful but on the administration costs of – er – paid parking. This is because those who have the imaginations of hairy caterpillars never take into account the costs of extra parking wardens policing it, the police and court cost in administrating and prosecuting it, the cost in drafting the laws for it, or the cost of parking payment machines themselves, together with their installation, depreciation and maintenance.

All these costs pale into insignificance, however, compared to horrendous cost in both monetary and human terms. The loss of spending in the town centre shops and businesses, the concomitant losses to their landlords, managers and workers (our Town is already starting to look like a graveyard in parts) as more and more people are driven (no pun intended) to the free parking provided by out-of-town supermarkets.

English towns are now starting to provide free town-centre parking to persuade people back and to try to reverse their 'town centre blight' with boarded up shops and no-go areas. These blights can be seen in many English towns whose local government/civil servant caterpillars thought they had found an easy way to raise tax income with paid parking. Even hairy caterpillars should see that paid parking would be a disastrous idea for Guernsey.

When paid parking starts in an area, like, for example, our Town piers, what do you think the poor workers and shoppers are going to do? That's right. They are going to go slightly further away to areas where they don't have to pay. You don't need a degree in human psychology to figure that out. This in turn clogs up the surrounding streets with patrolling motorists searching for a free, free parking space. What do you think our hairy caterpillars will think up to prevent the roads clogging up? That's right again. You're getting good at this. They will ever increasingly expand the paid parking area to stop people trying to avoid paying. See now why I called paid parking a cancer?

Of course the States members, civil servants and top-floor dwellers of the banks and businesses will be all right Jack because they have free parking spaces provided for them (see States members parking at Lukis House, Custard Castle, etc. harbour staff on the White Rock, hospital staff at the PEH, banks' bosses underground parking etc). With all due respect to the pillars – should that be caterpillars? – of our society, they are usually rich enough to not feel the slightest pain from having to pay for their parking, though they won't pay, but the poorer minions on the lower floors, the shoppers and those with a tight spendable income margin, will feel great pain. That is without mentioning the pain and even hatred that will be felt by the diminishing numbers of our treasured tourists. The States, admirably helped by the bus, pardon my laughter, service, the outrageous landing fees or the ha, ha, ha, VAT-free prices (that cost our visitors more than they pay back home with VAT) shows that, while the banks and almost all limited companies, whether local or overseas-owned, can be gifted millions of our taxpayers' money through the disastrous (to locals) zero-10, taxpayers, tourism, locally owned non-limited companies can go fish for caterpillars (or subsidise the rich businesses and our spendthrift States – as it's known).

As I said at the top – we are already paying a parking tax in our petrol costs so our States should concentrate on reducing their squandering and stop forever wasting their time (which is our money) on paid parking.

NICK MACPHAIL.