A very good letter was published in the Review (February 10, 2012) written by Peter Jones of Clearwell, a letter to which he had obviously given much thought, and his efforts would most certainly be appreciated by a large number of Forest residents about to be burdened with car parking charges.

Peter Jones identifies the facts that there are 47 elected district councillors, and that they have annual (expense?) allowances in the region of £10,000 plus – a very large and questionable expenditure on the part of council tax payers.

It wasn't too long ago when it was considered that elected councillors should not be given any such funding. They did the job as proud citizens.

From the figures quoted by Peter Jones, I get the impression that our elected councillors have racked up their allowances two-fold, or perhaps three-fold, in the past decade, and that they are incurring a totally outrageous expense for the tax payers, especially so when they proceed to do what the heck they like, when they like, without any consideration whatsoever.

Just for example, their total expense bill appears to annually total in the region of 47 times £10,000, say around £470,000. Being a little more conservative (no pun intended!) let us assume that the five members of the cabinet who seem to make all the decisions draw the full £10,000 each, and the rest who don't appear to participate in the decision-making process, or hide up in the ivory tower at Coleford when they do, only draw around £6,000 each. I make this to be a grand total of £300,000 plus of council tax wastage (my opinion).

When Marion Winship was cabinet leader she told me that she intended to introduce car parking charges to cover the cost of maintaining the car parks, and if I remember correctly she said that cost was somewhere in the region of £40,000 to £60,000.

When Peter Jones' letter was published in the Review it was accompanied by another letter written by Dennis Phillips, also complaining about car parking charges. In this letter it was identified that the cabinet had decided to introduce car parking charges to cover a maintenance cost of £163,000. How quickly our councillors can escalate these numbers to support their feeble arguments to introduce a stealth tax of unlimited consequence to the motorists of the Forest. If you believe that they will not jack up the parking fees in the following years, I would like to introduce you to a pink pig that flies regularly over the Taj Mahal in Coleford.

The conclusion to this study is thus, our councillors appear to have joined the rich bankers and are taking out cash from our tax chest to the tune of at least twice, possibly three times, as much as it costs to maintain our car parks!

Now you know. Our elected representatives place more importance on their expense accounts than our right to park freely. The above numbers may not be totally accurate, but accuracy could easily be achieved if all councillors published the allowances that they have drawn.

I would remind readers, following my letter in the Review (February 17, 2012), of the councillors who voted at the last council meeting to implement car parking charges without delay – Norman Stephens, Roger Yeates, Jim Connell, Gethyn Davies, Brian Jones, Brian Edwards, James Bevan, Judy Davis, Frankie Evans, Carole Alloway Martin, Marilyn Smart, Len Lawton, Peter Eade, Marion Winship, Arthur Thomas, Terry Glastonbury, Terry Hale, Diana Edwards, Martin Quaile, Patrick Moly­neux, Brian Robinson, and Jane Horne. Philip Burton abstained, thus not revealing his position.

I would point out to Lydney residents that our ex-mayor and town councillor, Terry Glastonbury, is on this list agreeing with car parking charges. Did you all know that? Terry never told me!

– Ralph Perry, Lydney.