IT is Christmas Eve, with hundreds of people cramming into town to do their last bit of shopping. I only need to get a few things from ASDA and am lucky enough to find a space on the car park.

As parking has been free for the previous two weekends I assume that our caring council will have extended this gesture of goodwill to this day, probably the busiest shopping day of the year, but no - I find that I have to pay.

Only one of the two ticket machines is working and there is a queue of 43 people waiting to get their parking tickets.

The new system whereby we have to punch in our car registration number (just in case we might consider the heinous crime of handing our unexpired ticket to someone else) now takes twice as long as the old system and so the queue begins to grow.

One or two people drift away from the queue and risk being prosecuted, others grumble and one lady telephones the council office to voice her complaint but the office is closed ... they are probably at Merry Hill where parking is free!

Being British, we queue, we moan, but we do nothing about it. We accept whatever is thrown at us. If this was France there would be a blockade at the car park entrance until the council got their act together and did what the people who elected them want.

Petitions achieve very little, 'people power' may be the only answer.

Peter Dawson

Stourbridge Road

Bromsgrove