15 April - Ripped off ticket. Rip off Britain
I
acquired a parking ticket at the weekend - blown into the garden by the wind.
The registration number indicated that it was issued to a neighbour, a neighbour
who gets at least one ticket every week, sometimes one every day.
I never report him because his parking predicament only arises because Bexley
Council failed to predict the coming of the Elizabeth line.
It was always reasonable to assume that he never paid any of the
tickets and my front garden litter would appear to confirm it.
Two years ago Bexley Council
wrote off £661,475 in uncollected parking fine revenue and foreign
registered vehicles formed a major component of it.
I have managed to avoid parking tickets but in 1958 my father was fined ten
shillings (50 pence) for parking on the wrong side of the road where the correct side
alternated day by day. The Bank of England’s inflation calculator says that
equates to a few pennies over ten pounds now. How did the penalty ever get to
rise to £140? Best part of a week’s income for someone on a state pension.
In Abbey Road a month or two ago a CEO told me that a wheel on a kerb is not an
offence because kerbs are regarded as part of the road, not the footpath, Last
week, and coincidentally in exactly the same place, another CEO took a different view.