Last week’s letter from Liberal Democrat councillor Jon Hubbard sees him clinging to the popular free car parking cause but complaining when prospective Conservative MP Michelle Donelan also expressed support for changes to parking charges.

We all like the idea that something is free, but somebody else has to pay for your “free”.

Supermarkets are well aware of this and happily cover the cost of free parking in pricing their goods. Wiltshire Council does not have goods to sell; it cannot increase the council tax or rob other services, so it has to cover the cost of car parks through charges.

Last year, Jon Hubbard persuaded Melksham Town Council to introduce a parking charge redemption scheme where traders reimburse motorist’s parking costs and reclaim this subsidy from the town council.

The scheme’s cost to the town council started at a high of only £5 per month to the recent low of less than £1 per month. This hardly indicates any shopper’s concern for parking charges and costs much more to administer than it refunds. If Jon were concerned for the cost of council staff time, he should stop this nonsense, unless of course he intends to support another 25 per cent hike in town council rate as he did last year.

One very simple and popular parking system was operated by the Conservative Kennet District Council for several years. Motorists had a paper disc to display which allowed short stay parking without the irritation of wasting time collecting a ticket and machine cost in printing a ticket; the machines only issued tickets for longer stays.

With the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives in coalition government, Jon Hubbard will know of the huge problems of the last few years in coping with the previous Labour administration’s massive deficit, and its effect on local authority spending.

Instead of accusing Michelle Donelan of hypocrisy and carping over his council’s stance on parking, why not have a go at UKIP’s hypocrisy and their absurd policies instead?

For instance, it has just emerged that Nigel Farage has done a deal with Polish MEP Robert Iwaszkiewiez, of the far-right KNP party, to form a cross-parliamentary grouping that would earn UKIP an additional £1 million a year in EU funding.

The KNP’s leader, Janus Korwin-Mikke is a notorious Euro extremist, whose pronouncements include the belief that Hitler was not responsible for the Holocaust. Also the far right Raheem Kassam is to be their election strategist.

Other views expressed by UKIP members include: handguns should be legitimised in Britain; disabled babies should be aborted; schools should bring back the cane; the NHS should spend money on helping homosexuals to become straight.

Richard Wiltshire, Conservative Melksham town councillor.