Increasing parking charges could kill off Hanley

I got angry the other day.
I was reading the Daily Mail at the time, so it's perhaps no surprise.
And the reason for my fury? A so-called 'think piece' by that condescending toff A N Wilson, who was writing about the sad demise of Wedgwood in Stoke-on-Trent.
It seems he spent part of his childhood living in the city because his dad worked for the former pottery giant when it was a big Staffordshire business. His memories and commentary were fine - until he got to the part of his ramblings in which he described Stoke as a 'dump'; a wasteland with a failing university; a city full of immigrants.
Now that got me mad. For what it's worth, Staffordshire University has had more than its fair share of successes (though perhaps gender-neutral toilets in its nightclub is not among them).
And Stoke-on-Trent might have its problems, but why does the national Press insist on continually describing it as a dump. That got me mad too.
In fact, I resolved never to buy the Mail. Again.
Then I went to Hanley. On the bus. The city centre on a wet Thursday morning...
And after trudging round the shops, I realised I perhaps shouldn't be so angry with A N Wilson. Because it seemed to me that he's right. Stoke-on-Trent is a dump.
I don't know why it hasn't dawned on me before, but Hanley is dismal. Derelict buildings everywhere; vast swathes of land on which factories once stood; the old Woolworths store standing empty.
It was depressing and in desperate need of some serious investment. Fast. Some movers and shakers in the world of regeneration reckon it can become a shopping destination to rival Manchester and the like. Yeah, right.
City councillors and quango bosses with vision and the determination to see plans through to fruition. New jobs. Big high street names. That's what's required.
So imagine my disbelief when I read that Stoke-on-Trent City Council is planning to increase parking charges in the city centre by 45 per cent.
It's part of a drive to bring in extra money to help tackle an overspend which has seen one department go £12m into the red.
This would be all well and good if Hanley was a thriving, bustling, successful city centre. But it's not. It's far from it.
And we're in the midst of a recession (yep, it's official now.) Will people whose credit has been severely crunched be prepared to pay over the odds to park in a depressing city centre with limited retail appeal? I doubt it.
And that can only mean bad news for those businesses already struggling to make ends meet and turn in a decent profit. The council must realise there's a serious risk of more Stoke-on-Trent redundancies if this strategy is pursued.
(There's also the added issue of the Potteries' remaining five towns - Stoke, Fenton, Longton, Burslem and Tunstall - all trying to pull in punters too.)
I just hope somebody on the council sees sense before this proposal is rubber-stamped. Otherwise, those who vote in favour of it could simply be hammering another nail into Hanley's coffin.