THERE’S a reason I don’t go shopping in town centres much.

And that’s because, a few years back – very unjustly in my view – I was slapped with a parking ticket. I actually HAD paid to park.

But apparently not enough, or so said the tiny writing on the sign which was so small that I and another person parking that evening had failed to notice it.

They got £25 out of me that time. And I hope they spent it well. And given the gargantuan amount I spend on clothes and crime novels and cashmere sweaters and skin cream which promises to erase time’s cruel ravage, I don’t think it was a very sensible move. Because town-centre retailers need people like me. You know - people who spend money. Because the money we spend goes, in part, to helping town centre businesses cough up for the enormous rates they are now forced to pay to the councils who need the money to pay for things like elderly social care and schools.

No money coming in = no money available to pay out. Which is why I don’t think it’s a very sensible move of Bournemouth Borough to start muttering on again about selling off their car-parks.

Isn’t anyone going to tell them that when they’ve spent the few million they’ll get for them, they’ll still need to find somewhere for all the people who have to drive to work, or use their car to go shopping, to park?

I’m guessing they’re hoping to force us drivers onto some kind of park-and-ride scheme.

Yay! Let’s pay to park, pay to get on a bus with a load of other people coughing and sneezing all over us and add yet another hour to our working day – as no one on God’s earth ever said.

Do these people think it through? Because unless they are running the city known as ‘London’, most people – shoppers and workers alike - visit towns in an object known as a ‘car’.

These cars are not mainly bought for fun but because the people who own them have to ‘get around’. And the reason they can’t get around is probably because they live nowhere near the thing known as a ‘railway line’ or ‘bus’ or, in my case, ‘civilisation’.

We HAVE to drive if we are to earn our living. Yet the way car drivers are treated is as if we’d taken a conscious decision to gas people’s children with the fumes belching from the diesel engines that, a few years back, Tony Blair’s government had assured us were better for the environment.

You’d think we were deliberately looking for cyclists to knock off their bikes or roads we could create a traffic jam in. You’d certainly think we were all millionaires, the way we are continually fleeced for cash.

We pay fuel duty and road tax to be on the road. Then we are forced to pay again to park on the same road.

If we dare to stray into a bus lane with a camera, or have the misfortune to get stranded in a box junction, or go 1mph over the speed limit (which itself can change four or five times on a short city road) we can be fleeced yet again.

If we’re confused enough to inadvertently enter London’s congestion zone we are charged for that, too.

Which brings me back to Bournemouth. On Saturday we saw the closure of the town centre’s flagship M&S.

In Old Christchurch Road we’ve seen up to 20 stores or units lying empty. It’s not all down to business rates and the borough but is now really the time to make it any less enticing for people to jump in their car and drive to this town?

I know the council will probably cite the report in Property Week which named Bournemouth as one of the highest growth areas in the UK, and the town with the third most construction activity outside London in 2016.

But, if that really is true, why do we have such high store closures? Where are all the newcomers buying all their stuff?

I know times are tough for councils. But it’s up to councillors to get onto the men and women their hard work helped put into government and let them know they need more money from them. Because selling off car parks won’t solve anything.