of 19 Conservative, 17 Labour, one Liberal, and nine (plus one) independent councillors.

The cabinet is composed of five councillors, four men and a woman. All five cabinet members are Conservatives. This handful of people is responsible for driving through their ideas for charging for parking in council car parks, due to take effect this July.

The car parking charges issue is perhaps the most contentious that the Forest of Dean District Council has had to consider in the recent times, not just because personal money is involved but because it has the potential to wreak havoc on local businesses and the social life of our towns and those who regularly use the services and facilities that have become established over many years. One would reasonably expect that a decision on such an important issue would be taken by people who are representative of the people they have been elected to serve.

Unfortunately I am struggling to find any compelling evidence that cabinet members are in fact qualified to satisfy this basic criterion. In fact, contrariwise, it is their unrepresentativeness that stands out.

Fact one: None of the Cabinet members has been elected by or represents a town community.

Fact two: Despite the political make-up of the district council (19 Con, 17 Lab) there is no Labour councillor in the cabinet. At the very least one would expect a 3:2 allocation to mirror the 19:17 ratio overall.

Fact three: The cabinet has only one woman member. Or, to put it another way, it is male dominated and, of course, we males know all about the stress of shopping to a tight time deadline, don't we!

In summary we have five unrepresentative people who have free parking in Coleford and expenses paid elsewhere and, of course, their annual allowances of £10,000 plus. I just wonder what collective experience these people can call upon to show they understand the day-to day business of how our towns actually function, how businesses juggle with deliveries, etc., and how ordinary people do their shopping and socialise and generally do their bit to nurture the social fabric of their lives and those of other town folk. Specifically, how many times a month do cabinet members drive into a public car park, find a parking space, make their way to the shops, select their goods (from perhaps three different shops), stand in the queues to be served and then carry their bags to the car? Now imagine doing this while using a stick, perhaps having to go back to the car to retrieve the shopping list, perhaps having to take a short rest to get their breath.

An unrealistic scenario? I don't think so. I see examples like this whenever I am in Coleford. So how long might such a visit take – one hour, two hours? No, sorry, I forgot the visit to the library, or the doctor, or the chemist (perhaps to pick up a neighbour' medication) – or, perhaps, even to the Forest of Dean District Council's offices! And God forbid if you get back to the car five minutes over time. We all know what will happen then!

Truly, if these draconian car parking charges are forced upon us all our lives be changed for ever, and in my view not for the better. In future, shopping visits to our towns will be much more stressful. Perhaps even more worrying is that the Forest of Dean area will lose a major element of what makes it different for visiting tourists (a rural, welcoming mix of nature and small towns) – and drive them away from town centres. We are already seeing signs of this in out-of-town 'hotspots' such as Go Ape and Beechenhurst. And, of course, the cabinet proposals are actually the reverse of what is happening elsewhere, where charging for parking is now accepted as being counter-productive in creating sustainable and flourishing town centres. The description 'Deano Dinosaurs' comes to mind!

Doubtless Cabinet members consider they have exercised due diligence and followed due process. Perhaps they have. But they have ridden roughshod over the wishes of local business communities and the 7,000 signature petition from concerned tax-paying members of the society the Cabinet claims to represent. I note that an e-petition with 100,000 signatories (about 0.2 per cent of the UK population) is deemed to warrant a Commons debate. So what should our local council/cabinet be doing when 10 per cent of the Forest of Dean have voted against these proposals? How perverse can it get? But perhaps this is a forerunner of what Mr Cameron refers to as the Big (caring/sharing) Society, and what the Localism legislation is going to impose on us? If so, count me out. I am reminded that in 1651 Thomas Hobbes made the case that society's governors can only rule with the consent of the governed. I challenge the Cabinet to demonstrate that they have this consent on the car parking charges issue.

So much for principles (or lack of them). Now some personalised examples of how it could affect Forest of Dean tax payers. In round figures, the district council tax for a typical house is about £150 p.a. Suppose you visit your local town twice a week. That is 100 visits a year. (In practice probably an underestimate for many people.) You pay £1 each time to give yourself three hours. So your additional, compulsory 'tax' is £100 p.a. or more. So, at a stroke our caring, sharing cabinet has doubled your tax bill. The fact that for many people they will be helping out a neighbour by doing some shopping for them, or returning their book to the library, etc. (localism in action) will go completely unacknowledged by the powers-that-be.

Can it get any worse? Oh yes. Some people, who may not strictly qualify as disabled, may have to drive from one car park to another in order to make it physically possible for them to get to different shops. So I wonder, will our caring sharing cabinet allow this on one parking ticket?

Doubtless some readers will be thinking what an unconstructive, whinging tirade all this is. But wait, I have actually put some positive and practical ideas to the Cabinet to mitigate the worst of the disaster that they are about to impose on us. In order of personal preference these are:

1. Before committing the Forest to economic hara-kiri, why not try using what I refer to as 'Honesty Boxes', where each car driver donates according to his/her means and length of stay.

2. For all the reasons given above there must be some days when parking is free for all. This could be Monday to Wednesday; or all even-numbered days of the month. Perhaps Thursday should be a free day because this is traditionally when many older people are in town. This is not rocket science. It is simple common sense.

3. I would support a realistically priced parking disc, similar to the £20 'Discovery Pass' full-year parking scheme run by the Forestry. However I note that the current cabinet proposal is £320 p.a. for an annual town parking permit. Wow! And I wonder if this would allow parking in all Forest of Dean car parks, similar to the Forestry scheme? I doubt it.

I have yet to receive a considered response from any cabinet member to these positive, practical, and low-cost suggestions. I had to smile at two quotations from the full Council meeting held on October 6, 2011, as follows: "Charging could stimulate trade" and "modest charging could actually stimulate usage."

Note the use of the word 'could', which means anything and nothing. The fact is that there is no hard evidence that the cabinet's scheme will create a positive income stream. Given this uncertainty, as compared with the self-evident detrimental implications for town-centre traders, who in their right mind would choose now as a time to start up a new business in one of our towns? And which bank would lend them the money – especially with more supermarkets planned and in these austere times. Madness does not begin to describe it.

One final example of how out of touch some senior councillors are. I understand that one Councillor has suggested, in all seriousness, that local shopkeepers can see this as an opportunity, by offering to pay for their customers' parking tickets. So, let's take one shop with, say, 400 customers a day, at 70p each. This amounts to a total of nearly £300 per week on top of overheads like business rates, etc. Just what planet are some of these Councillors from – or have the aliens landed unnoticed. I despair.

I can make one promise. I can guarantee that after 18 years of loyalty to Coleford traders I am now exploring what Monmouth (and Lidl) has to offer – where I can park reliably, and freely, for two hours at a time, if needs be. I have to make my own preparations for the July launch of the Forest of Dean district council self-destruct rocket.

Now, I am off to renew my annual £20 Forestry pass.

– Peter Jones,?Clearwell.