A lot of people in the busier UK cities already pay to park outside their houses, for example in Bath where I used to live it's now £60 a year for a permit. The idea was to prevent commuters from out of the city from taking up all of the available street parking spaces (which they did). It was a pain to pay the extra, but at least you had a fighting chance of parking within half a mile of your house.
The main effect is now that when you drive into the city you see all of the commuter's cars parked on the outskirts of the city, very amusing in a city like Bath which is in a valley between 2 steep hills :O)
The latest row is about increasing the charge for cars which create more pollution, part of the current environmental push. My attitude is pretty much that if you want to live in the city and drive a gas guzzler then that's your choice - pay the extra fee. If you can afford a 4WD or high performance car for fashion or street-cred then you can afford to pay an extra couple of hundred quid a year to park it.
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DOLPHIN 38
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