SIR Oh dear, poor old Waitrose! They must be very hard up, charging people for car parking. All large supermarkets provide car parks for their customers, which is very nice of them, but they pay no business rates on them. This gives them a huge competitive advantage over small high street shops, who are unable to provide parking – in fact, they are usually in areas where there are parking restrictions frightening shoppers away because of the danger of getting a parking ticket. So why do they need to charge for parking when they pay no rates on the car park? It is too complicated to go into the detail here, but small shops also pay punitive business rates compared to those paid by the large supermarkets, giving the big boys a further competitive advantage. Yet small shops have to compete on price or they would not survive commercially. But then, small shopkeepers don't have boards of directors who require to be paid gigantic salaries. It would be possible to sympathise with Waitrose if they had to recover the cost of the business rates, but instead the parking charges just fill the Waitrose coffers. Lucky Waitrose! Tom Innes (Monmouth)