Tourism is a tough industry and there is fierce competition for the visitor's pound (or Euro). It is interesting, therefore, to study how some of our rivals handle it.

Earlier this week, I was fascinated to hear an interview on the radio with the tourist boss of Venice explaining why that city has just imposed a tourist tax on every visitor who arrives in that ancient city - as, indeed, have the local authorities in Majorca and several other Balearic islands.

The simple reason for their new tax, said Mr Venice, was that accountants had shown that the citizens of that ancient city were actually paying out more to support local amenities than the tourists: i.e., the locals were actually subsidising the tourists, which is not how it is supposed to work at all.

Now the Yorkshire Dales are not Venice: we are not likely to disappear below the sea in the next few years and, thankfully, our road system is cheaper to maintain, mile by mile (or kilometre by kilometre) than six hundred year old canals.

But North Yorkshire is still the largest county in England and also one of the least populated so, mile by mile, we locals have to pay more per head than most Brits for their maintenance. This also applies for other services like water, the ambulance service, the police force etc - all of which are in place should tourists need them.

Some 12 years ago, the Lake District National Park caused a national outcry by trying to impose a local "bed tax" of a few pence a night for visitors staying in local hotels. The idea was that they should shoulder some of the load of paying for local services - but the idea was laughed out of court by national government.

Yet throughout the world, from South East Asia to the USA, individual states, cities and towns are allowed to put a small charge of visitors' bills (and I mean small: say 2 or 3%) so that non-business locals get some financial benefit from the tourist trade which pumps millions into hotels, restaurants, pubs and the like.

When the Lake District officials did their sums a decade or so ago, they found that if each visitor contributed a mere 35p in local taxes - even then less than the price of a cup of coffee - the national park could do all the conservation work necessary in its huge area without charging the locals a penny more.

I can't imagine that the costs in the Yorkshire Dales would be much different today.

However, here we run into politics and, in particular, the politics of the Iron Chancellor Gordon Brown. National governments have always kept tax-raising powers close to the chest.

Mr Brown, as this week's so-called "countryside summit" at 10 Downing Street suggests, will keep his powers to raid our pockets inside a suit of bullet proof armour.

Shame, really, because I am pretty sure that even the most tight-fisted visitor would agree that a day in the Dales was worth the price of a cup of coffee. The question is: how could we collect it and make sure it went into Dales pockets rather the black hole of Whitehall?

Now here is a way of really giving local democracy a chance to work. It won't happen this year, of course. Or next, for that matter, but it might be a thought for the future. Happy Easter.