Britain's punishment culture is a one-way parking ticket to hell
Daily Mail
BY RICHARD LITTLEJOHN,
23 June 2006
A committee of MPs has woken up to the fact that Britain's motorists are being screwed into the Tarmac.
Parking fines topped £1.2billion last year and enforcement ranges from merely over-zealous to demanding money with menaces.
In some areas, drivers are 400 times more likely to be punished for a minor parking infringement than they were when Labour came in to power.
That's right — four hundred times. And the amount extorted in fines and clamping charges has doubled.
Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem transport spokesman, said: "The Government clearly sees motorists simply as a cash cow."
Let's ignore for a moment that if the Lib Dems had their way we'd still be travelling round in oxcarts and that the councils Mr Carmichael's party controls are among the most deranged and vindictive of the anti-car warriors.
Ever since the Tories stripped the police of responsibility for parking enforcement and handed it over to local authorities, the number of tickets issued has gone through the sunroof.
This was done in the name of 'decriminalising' minor parking offences. Decriminalisation? It certainly doesn't feel like it. If paedophiles were pursued with the same ruthlessness as drivers who pull up on a double-yellow for 30 seconds, there wouldn't be a child-sex offender left on the streets.
Councils have recruited ruthless private firms to issue penalty notices and collect the cash by the vanload.
Dubious methods, deception and downright illegality are the order of the day.
One in five tickets has to be cancelled because of 'irregularities' by traffic wardens — in other words, handing out tickets which should never have been issued in the first place and hoping that the mug motorist won't have the time or inclination to appeal.
Is it any wonder, when wardens are offered incentives from flat-screen televisions to foreign holidays to ticket every car in Christendom?
We'd be outraged if we thought the police were being bribed to frame certain types of criminals (although most of us wouldn't object to the odd iPod or plasma TV if we thought it might persuade the Old Bill to take burglary and car theft seriously).
Yet councils have colluded in this semi-criminal enterprise. As long as the Town Hall gets a fat slice, they'll turn a blind eye to the widespread abuse. They will also make parking restrictions as arcane and perverse as possible to maximise revenues.
No two yellow-lines are ever the same. The time of day you can park, the side of the road you can park: it changes from week to week, with the expressed intention of tricking motorists. It is entrapment, pure and simple. And if these weren't crimes of limited liability, a court would throw them out.
Red routes, temporary parking bays, cameras. As soon as we get behind the wheel, we put ourselves on offer. And the penalties bear no relation to the so-called 'crime'.
Fines of £60 are commonplace for infringements which cause absolutely no obstruction to anyone, merely for stopping in a 'restricted' area drawn up on a whim by a bored council official with a box of crayons, simply to justify his miserable existence.
Cowboy clampers demand up to £350 — more than a week's take-home pay for many people — to release confiscated (ie stolen) cars.
And, of course, none of this money goes towards mending the roads or making journeys any easier. It's frittered away on humps, chicanes, little red bricks, barriers and bare-metal road-width 'restrictors' designed to rip the paintwork and wing-mirrors off anything wider than a bubble-car.
Most of it goes on wages. Town Hall traffic departments are stuffed with scruffy cycling enthusiasts, sexual inadequates, otherwise unemployable polytechnic graduates and certifiable, tree-hugging 'environmentalists'. Their policies are dictated by misanthropic megalomaniacs such as Red Ken and madwomen who believe everything they read in The Guardian.
They have turned the streets of Britain into a giant crazy golf course, specifically designed to milk motorists and cause the maximum possible inconvenience to people trying to go about their lawful daily business.
Some people complain that all this is 'un-British'. Sorry to shatter your illusions, but this is very British indeed. Very New Labour British. As British as shopping your neighbours for breaking the hosepipe ban and as British as Eastbourne Council fining shopkeepers £75 if a seagull tears open their rubbish bags.
It wouldn't occur to the council to provide more dustbins. Punishment is always the weapon of first resort. It's about showing us who's boss.
Since the collapse of socialism, all those who once thought they could rule us through nationalisation and trades union bullying have decamped into local government, the health service, 'safety camera partnerships' and dozens of other agencies which they manipulate to control our lives by other means.
We now live in a punishment culture, established to feed the voracious appetite of politicians and public sector employees for power and privilege.
"The Government clearly sees motorists simply as a cash cow."
Wrong. This Government sees everyone as a cash cow.
Oi, you can't park there.
BY RICHARD LITTLEJOHN,
23 June 2006
A committee of MPs has woken up to the fact that Britain's motorists are being screwed into the Tarmac.
Parking fines topped £1.2billion last year and enforcement ranges from merely over-zealous to demanding money with menaces.
In some areas, drivers are 400 times more likely to be punished for a minor parking infringement than they were when Labour came in to power.
That's right — four hundred times. And the amount extorted in fines and clamping charges has doubled.
Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem transport spokesman, said: "The Government clearly sees motorists simply as a cash cow."
Let's ignore for a moment that if the Lib Dems had their way we'd still be travelling round in oxcarts and that the councils Mr Carmichael's party controls are among the most deranged and vindictive of the anti-car warriors.
Ever since the Tories stripped the police of responsibility for parking enforcement and handed it over to local authorities, the number of tickets issued has gone through the sunroof.
This was done in the name of 'decriminalising' minor parking offences. Decriminalisation? It certainly doesn't feel like it. If paedophiles were pursued with the same ruthlessness as drivers who pull up on a double-yellow for 30 seconds, there wouldn't be a child-sex offender left on the streets.
Councils have recruited ruthless private firms to issue penalty notices and collect the cash by the vanload.
Dubious methods, deception and downright illegality are the order of the day.
One in five tickets has to be cancelled because of 'irregularities' by traffic wardens — in other words, handing out tickets which should never have been issued in the first place and hoping that the mug motorist won't have the time or inclination to appeal.
Is it any wonder, when wardens are offered incentives from flat-screen televisions to foreign holidays to ticket every car in Christendom?
We'd be outraged if we thought the police were being bribed to frame certain types of criminals (although most of us wouldn't object to the odd iPod or plasma TV if we thought it might persuade the Old Bill to take burglary and car theft seriously).
Yet councils have colluded in this semi-criminal enterprise. As long as the Town Hall gets a fat slice, they'll turn a blind eye to the widespread abuse. They will also make parking restrictions as arcane and perverse as possible to maximise revenues.
No two yellow-lines are ever the same. The time of day you can park, the side of the road you can park: it changes from week to week, with the expressed intention of tricking motorists. It is entrapment, pure and simple. And if these weren't crimes of limited liability, a court would throw them out.
Red routes, temporary parking bays, cameras. As soon as we get behind the wheel, we put ourselves on offer. And the penalties bear no relation to the so-called 'crime'.
Fines of £60 are commonplace for infringements which cause absolutely no obstruction to anyone, merely for stopping in a 'restricted' area drawn up on a whim by a bored council official with a box of crayons, simply to justify his miserable existence.
Cowboy clampers demand up to £350 — more than a week's take-home pay for many people — to release confiscated (ie stolen) cars.
And, of course, none of this money goes towards mending the roads or making journeys any easier. It's frittered away on humps, chicanes, little red bricks, barriers and bare-metal road-width 'restrictors' designed to rip the paintwork and wing-mirrors off anything wider than a bubble-car.
Most of it goes on wages. Town Hall traffic departments are stuffed with scruffy cycling enthusiasts, sexual inadequates, otherwise unemployable polytechnic graduates and certifiable, tree-hugging 'environmentalists'. Their policies are dictated by misanthropic megalomaniacs such as Red Ken and madwomen who believe everything they read in The Guardian.
They have turned the streets of Britain into a giant crazy golf course, specifically designed to milk motorists and cause the maximum possible inconvenience to people trying to go about their lawful daily business.
Some people complain that all this is 'un-British'. Sorry to shatter your illusions, but this is very British indeed. Very New Labour British. As British as shopping your neighbours for breaking the hosepipe ban and as British as Eastbourne Council fining shopkeepers £75 if a seagull tears open their rubbish bags.
It wouldn't occur to the council to provide more dustbins. Punishment is always the weapon of first resort. It's about showing us who's boss.
Since the collapse of socialism, all those who once thought they could rule us through nationalisation and trades union bullying have decamped into local government, the health service, 'safety camera partnerships' and dozens of other agencies which they manipulate to control our lives by other means.
We now live in a punishment culture, established to feed the voracious appetite of politicians and public sector employees for power and privilege.
"The Government clearly sees motorists simply as a cash cow."
Wrong. This Government sees everyone as a cash cow.
Oi, you can't park there.
posted by Neil Herron at 10:39 AM
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