Blogger Emma Suddaby writes:

Just when we thought it was safe to take a deep breath, relax and forget election fever . . .

Hands all over Britain have been given a firm but sincere shake, babies kissed, promises made and we, the people of this great nation, have made our choice, no matter how indecisive that choice turned out to be.

But will it all actually make any difference to our lives? Will we see the sort of changes at street level that we’ve been promised?

I think those in Shropshire could be forgiven a little cynicism, especially when you take the farcical nonsense local politics has descended into lately with the council’s recent gaffe over parking ticket revenue.

After making the decision in 2008 to halve the number of traffic wardens out on the street, bumbling council chiefs have finally realised their error as money earned from parking tickets issued in the last year fell by 50 per cent too.

Now, I’m no good at maths, as I think I’ve mentioned before, but even I could have predicted those figures. Can you imagine the chin-scratching, the shoe-gazing that went on in the council boardroom when that expensive penny finally dropped? Oh, to have been a fly on their wall . . .

Figures reveal that in the last year, 10,068 penalty notices were issued, making the authority £278,629. But in the previous year (before the oh-so-rash traffic warden cuts) 20,142 penalties were issued, bringing in £649,643.

It’s easy to see why council chiefs have leapt to plug this costly hole with hasty plans to bring back another eight parking wardens, despite the obvious transparency of their motives.

Councillor Martin Taylor-Smith said: “The council took over the enforcement and reduced the number of officers (and) relaxed the enforcement regime. We’ve reviewed this and we don’t see it as a cash cow but it is something that hopefully breaks even.”

A fine bit of back-pedalling by Mr Taylor-Smith there but surely, if there’s no cash cow involved then the council should be congratulating themselves on reducing illegal parking across the county so effectively?

Unfortunately, all the flannel in the world won’t stretch to cover this one. Let’s just hope that, after all the political wrangling is over, we end up with a Prime Minister who credits his constituents with a bit more sense than our own council seems to.