COMMENT: Gimme Gimme Gimme

10.55.00am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 29th Sep 2008

Watch out! Labour's About. And they're after your money.

Labour politicians are busily preparing for the May 2009 budget and finding new and exciting ways to extract anything left in your wallet that Gordon Brown may have overlooked.

Buried deep in a recent report to the Lambeth Labour Cabinet was an intriguing item entitled Invest To Save. Given recent concerns from the Labour Leadership about the Credit Crunch and their hastily set-up Working Party to look into ways to help those on limited incomes from falling even more into debt we thought this must be a novel way that Labour politicians would invest in the community to help residents save some of their hard-earned cash.

Silly us. Invest to Save in Labour-speak is all about spending a few million quid of money the Council says it doesn't have for really important things and spending it on setting-up new Controlled Parking Zones.

The reasoning in the report is as blatant as it is obvious. The 'investment' in new CPZ's will be repaid (in parking fines) within a couple of years and will then continue to be a cash cow for the Council.

This rather belies the well-worn Labour line that its 'fairer' parking regime is not there to generate income. Perish the thought.