HERSELF and I recently spent almost a week in England – not through choice on my part, for as far as this bolshie little crapaud is concerned, holidays are invariably spelt vacances and, by definition, are taken to the east of this small rock rather than due north – but because of a family (Herself’s) occasion that I was told it would be impolite not to attend.

I mention it not to provide an appropriate descriptive verbal photograph album of places visited – sitting through that would be worse than viewing someone else’s holiday snaps, and that’s bad enough – but simply to relate one experience.

We went to the north of England and stayed in a town of a similar population to that of Jersey. I have not travelled extensively in that part of the world – counting the Calvados trees in Normandy is more my scene – but was told that the place is typical of what a couple of generations ago was an area dominated by the coal industry.

However, what really shook us – although we’d been told to expect it – was the cost of town centre parking. Like the centre of St Helier, much of this place was pedestrianised and while it was very nice, to park anywhere near there cost three quid an hour with a maximum stay of two hours.

The further from the centre we parked, the cheaper it became, but even a distance which I’d say was about the same as from Springfield to the Royal Square it was a pound an hour.
We were staying in a village about three miles from the town itself and virtually no one to whom I spoke took their car into town – they all got on the bus. As Herself’s family pointed out, even two of them travelling by bus was cheaper than parking anywhere in the town for an hour.

I have no doubt that there will be moans galore from motorists here now that we’ve been told that there’ll be big hikes in parking charges between now and 2012, at which time they’ll have gone up to 72p an hour – an increase of very nearly 25 per cent.

I and many others have said for years now that parking charges in Jersey are ridiculously cheap, particularly given how affluent the place is and the sheer number of cars there are, both on the roads and per household.

Furthermore, it has long been contended that the best way to minimise the cost to the overall economy caused by people driving round and round, either looking for street parking or waiting for a multi-storey space to become available, is to make bringing cars into town much less attractive than travelling by bus.

While I applaud the decision of the Transport and Technical Services department (or minister, who knows?) to increase parking charges, I emphatically condemn the fact that the department’s intention is to get in as much money as possible to ‘recoup more money for the services they provide’.

Linked to all that is a plan to add ten pence to bus fares to generate another £250,000 a year, all because this department decided that instead of making the savings they were asked to make for the 2010 Business Plan, they would instead table proposals to increase their income.

Surely someone in that department can see that increasing bus fares and parking charges at the same time is totally counterproductive  and serves only to prove once and for all they’ve never had any more intention than their predecessors to implement proposals (contained in their Sustainable Traffic Plan) to encourage drivers to change their modes of transport.

In addition to these being dead in the water, the decision to increase income rather than making savings is not only taking the easy and very lazy way out of a situation where the necessity for savings is blindingly obvious, but it also sticks two fingers in the air at a private sector which, if it did the same, would be out of business in about 20 minutes flat.

As I’ve said very often, I’m all in favour of increasing parking charges as a means of reducing car use but I am totally against doing it simply to raise revenue (or tax, call it what you will, it comes out of the public’s pockets) so that a lazy department doesn’t have to face up to the spending (and service) cuts currently being addressed by health, social services and education.

Still, what can you expect from a department with a historic claim to fame of presiding over expensive cock-ups?

The legal opinion offered by former Magistrate, now Home Affairs Minister, Ian Le Marquand to himself stating that the insidious practice of wheel clamping is illegal is interesting, as is the news that his ministerial colleague in charge of the biscuit tin under the bed, Philip Ozouf, hasn’t received any revenue from the States-owned clamping hotspot opposite the former Odeon cinema.

All this goes a long way towards confirming a suspicion I’ve held for a while – that the ‘fee’ paid by landowners to clampers for keeping their land clear of vehicles (or penalising those who don’t pay often exorbitant parking charges) is in fact all the cash they can manage to extort in exchange for reuniting car owners with their own property.

As I’ve mentioned when this ugly practice has been in the news before, we should adopt the Guernsey system where, after due notice has been published in the official Gazette, the Royal Court can declare that certain areas of private land are prohibited parking areas (unless permission is given) and car owners are liable to a £50 fine for parking there.

And finally. Now that we have a Rue de Funchal, can I make a plea that the section of Hilgrove Street between Halkett Place and Halkett Street be belatedly renamed either French Lane or Rue des Bretons to mark the very considerable contribution made to Island life by natives of that corner of France?