Free parking? You must be joking!

My neighbour had a good moan to me yesterday about the state of the nation. Actually, he was more concerned with the state of parking, parking tickets and apparent peremptory council land-grabbing.

Turns out he has what he called a 'static' - a permanent caravan, if that's the right word - up at Dobbs Weir, alongside the Lea river. He bought the static a year ago, on the understanding that there were no plans to abandon the site in the near future. Cost him £20K, he says. Presume that means site and trailer.

Last week, the council gave the lessee of the land (the trailer park operator) notice to move out - which was passed onto the tenants - because they wanted the land back so that some company or other can dig the whole lot out to get to the gravel beneath, just in time for construction work on the London 2012 Olympics.

He was totally miffed by this, as it is an area of considerable charm and beauty (his words, I have not visited the site) alongside the river, which will be destroyed for the sake of commercial gain. Not to mention the fact that the neighbour - and all the other 'residents' are having to move out post-haste and relocate their trailers.

Although the company involved (and probably the council) evidently have the right to do this, it does seem a shame to destroy naturally beautiful parts of the capital for a few bucks.

Or is it that the local council can see a few bucks for them - an astonishingly prevalent attitude around here - and just pushed the permits through?

We had something similar in my area recently, with the council trying to justify the implementation of a CPZ (Controlled Parking Zone) on a few roads around the local railway station. Happily they were obliged to take public consultations on this, and our local residents rebelled.

They dropped the scheme in our immediate area, but a couple of other areas where it was vaunted did not object strongly enough, and are stuck with something they didn't really want. The council think it's wonderful, though - all those permits to sell!

And now that it has been introduced, but not yet implemented - at a promised low permit price of roughly 25 quid a year, they're considering the permits should be a minimum of double that, and up to 400 quid for 4WD gas-guzzlers.

I've no objection to larger cars paying more if they take up more space, but they do seem to have gone overboard this time. Sometimes I wish they would literally go overboard, whilst far out to sea.

And I won't even mention the consideration being given countrywide for measuring the amount of rubbish in your bins - they've put the council (local) taxes up consistently, yet fail to provide consistent improvements in the services provided; well, not here, anyway.

Enough.