If you own a car, be warned, midnight on March 31 marks the latest salvo in the authorities' continuing war against motorists.

This is when new parking laws come into effect that are likely to trigger a huge increase in the amount of cash that councils will extort from drivers. As we report on pages 6-7, the new rules, which include allowing councils to use CCTV for enforcement, will also increase the number of unfair or invalid tickets. The plan to split fines into two categories - a more expensive one for supposedly more serious offences and a cheaper one for less serious offences - is particularly devious.

The Department for Transport claims that this distinction is being introduced in response to public pressure for a fairer system. But the majority of offences fall into the more serious category. In most cases, drivers will have to pay more than before and the councils will actually increase their revenue.

Of course, it is the legitimate right of local authorities to force motorists to pay more if they are prepared to face the electoral consequences. But to use parking fines as a backdoor method of raising revenue is underhand, arbitrary and regressive. The apologists who say that motorists merely need to follow the rules are either naive or have never had the misfortune of a run-in with the parking authorities. Councils wilfully make the rules as confusing as possible to catch as many people as they can. At the same time, millions of tickets are issued unfairly, with wardens knowing that most motorists do not have the time, inclination or ability to appeal.

It is an indictment of a broken system that two thirds of appeals that make it to the Parking Adjudicator are won by drivers. Instead of giving councils more powers to deal with errant drivers, the new rules should have given the adjudicator more powers to deal with errant councils. If the adjudicator could fine councils for every appeal they lost, it would encourage more responsible ticketing.

Fines should also be cut so that they are more proportionate to the offence. It is ludicrous that you can be fined more for parking on a single yellow line than for assaulting a police officer. Confidence in parking enforcement is already at a record low and these changes will make matters worse.

More generous tax breaks would not bring wedded bliss

Marriage, it seems, is no longer the institution of choice for many couples. Official statistics this week show that the number of people tying the knot fell 4 per cent last year, to the lowest level since records began in 1862.

In response, the Conservatives immediately accused the Government of undermining marriage and “penalising families” through the tax system. But does the Tory rhetoric stand up to cold, hard analysis? Well, Times Money's investigation indicates that while there are few tax breaks left for married couples, the ones that do exist are potentially quite generous - but, crucially, only for the better-off.

Married couples can benefit from the ability to transfer unlimited assets between each other to make best use of each spouse's capital gains tax allowance and income tax bands. They can also transfer any unused element of their inheritance tax allowance upon death. However, to benefit from these incentives, couples would need to be making significant capital gains each year, own income-producing assets or have an estate worth more than £600,000. Not exactly the sort of incentives that might encourage a feckless absent father on a sink estate to enter into the bliss that is holy matrimony.

So, on balance, the Conservatives are probably correct to assert that the tax system does not encourage marriage. But whether Tory proposals to introduce tax breaks for married couples will be significant enough to reverse the downward trend or have any meaningful impact on Britain's many social problems is doubtful.

There may be a high correlation between social delinquency and cohabitation, but it is not cohabitation that causes social delinquency. Encouraging couples to wed or stay wed in unhappy or dysfunctional relationships is not suddenly going to transform Britain's antisocial families into upstanding citizens. Nor will making the children of broken families relatively worse off help to deal with social exclusion or poverty.

Find out whether you know your APRs from your elbow

Think that you know your APR from your AER? Confident that you could not be fooled by the complexity of most credit card statements? Well, perhaps you should take our test on how to calculate interest on page 21. (Unless you are very clever indeed, you will need a calculator or a spreadsheet.)

If you manage to get all five answers correct, congratulations. You are either a mathematician or very particular about your finances. If you get at least three of the five right, you are still doing pretty well. You have at least a sound grasp of how finance works. But if you failed to answer any of the questions correctly, then it should be back to school, I'm afraid.

With financial services companies becoming increasingly sophisticated in the way that they hide the true cost of products, such as upfront mortgage fees being added to loans, it is more important than ever to be a savvy consumer. But if you are a real no-hoper with maths, don't worry, there are many mortgage, loan and savings calculators available online to do the hard work for you.