A festive freebie in Salisbury car parks? Not likely!

SO Wiltshire Council has very graciously consented to free use of its car parks on Sundays to encourage shoppers into Salisbury during the run-up to Christmas and the New Year sales.
Free? Wiltshire? Pull the other one, it’s got sleigh bells on!
I don’t know how you define ‘free’, but in my dictionary it doesn’t include the words ‘pay later’.
Conservative members of our city council have gone cap in hand to Trowbridge and offered to make up the £17,000 in income that Wiltshire might otherwise forfeit by accepting their proposal.
Apparently their overlords Up North were ‘receptive’ to this novel idea. I bet they were. It’s a no-brainer. Heads they win, tails they can’t lose. And ‘free parking’ has such a lovely headliney ring about it at this time of year, doesn’t it?
Chief cheerleader for the festive so-called freebie appears to be city councillor Sven Hocking, who says his group of Santa’s little helpers are “aware of the issues around parking charges” but would rather “work with” their “colleagues” than “antagonise” them.
I think that roughly translated into everyday English that means “They’ve got us right where they want us, lads, so we’ll just have to put on a brave face and make the best of it.”
Presumably, political opponents who object to this wizard wheeze will be branded ‘bah humbugs’ who don’t care about giving the city’s struggling traders a little Christmas cheer.
But hold your horses – or maybe that should be reindeer. Who will really be footing the bill?
Why, the city council, through its reserves, silly. They told you so.
The same city council that’s expected to be £160,000 overspent this year because of the cost of doing up the Market Place and crematorium and that was warned last month that it could face a £164,000 cut in funding?
Yes, but it doesn’t matter, because they’re going to recoup this little extra via your 2014-15 council tax bill and by that time you’ll have forgotten all about it.
After all, it’ll only amount to £1.30 for the average Band D muggins, whether he or she actually used the car parks or not.
See? Clever, isn’t it? It’s called bribing us with our own money.
And it’s the only wriggle room our unitary authority has left them.
Please, please, do support our city traders. Just don’t be fooled by politicians and their bogus giveaways.