I AM well aware that a well planned and balanced scheme is necessary to manage the traffic problems of the Bolton town centre. Any plan should include parking facilities, particularly for the disabled and elderly.

Several letters on this matter have recently been published in the BEN, the most recent one being on Wednesday, November 15, after several blue badge owners received fixed penalties for alleged parking offences in the Town Hall area.

As a recent victim of a fixed penalty for allegedly incorrectly displaying my wife's blue badge, I feel that the New Labour Bolton Metro are letting matters slip by rubber stamping punitive, unjust and immoral parking regulations, specifically targeted at disabled drivers and passengers.

We also have had the recent fiasco regarding the parking concession for the vehicles used by staff responsible for the training of dogs for blind people. I suspect many more letters of complaint are already in the post.

Surely the councillors responsible for these petty and frivolous parking regulations must heed the warnings of all those people who are threatening to do their shopping elsewhere -- and they must also remember that a General Election is not so far away.

Mr J Holding

Victoria Court,

Stocks Park Drive,

Horwich, Bolton.