Following the gathering of some 4,000 signatures in the recent petition on parking, I do hope that Wiltshire Council will be launching a counter petition in order that those who favour their proposed measures can have their say.

I am copying this letter to the leader of the council, in the hope that she might welcome such an exercise in democracy, and see that it be arranged.

I seem to remember being told by a market researcher that, as a rule of thumb, for every person who actively demonstrates/writes letters/signs petitions, some ten others can be assumed to share his/her view. If that estimate is correct, some 40,000 people oppose the council’s proposal. I would think, therefore, that just about everybody with an SN10 postcode is of the same mind as those who signed.

Mrs D Paris, Eastcott.