And everyone is so much the bigger man/woman for taking their punishment on the chin eh?
I wonder if people would be so smug if they ever got ticketed? And where’s the sense in being a big man and paying your parking fine like an upstanding citizen? Big bad government does things I don’t like, or consider illegal. Do I get to fine them? What tosh.
And no, I’ve never been ticketed. I’m one of those muppets who hunts around for a solo m/c bay rather than just park anywhere. One warden the other day told me it was fine to park on the little glass things on the pavement. What a pile of arse. If one of his chums ticketed me, I’d have no recourse to action.
This whole parking issue in London is all about revenue. You deserve a ticket if you were parked and obstructing something or blocking traffic flow but if you’ve parked safely and sensibly then live and let live. Unfortunately Traffic Wardens aren’t just doing a job, they are raising revenue from unfair and sometimes downright illegal practices.
That’s the road I got my ticket on. There are always LOADS of wardens around there.
I lost my appeal on that btw, despite the fact you blatantly couldn’t see the lines of the bay under all the water, and the bike park sign was outside the bay.
Ya know that if your appeal is turned down, you can reappeal (which goes to an independent adjudicator), but if you lose you have to pay the full amount?
Somehow I can’t quite see the point in actually taking the time out in a day to bother writing a letter. I’m now firmly of the opinion that it’s a brilliant money-making scheme, it’s f*ck all to do with safety. I’m just hoping that the ludicrous amounts of money made on parking tix actually get ploughed back into making more parking bays because there clearly aren’t enough.
How is it that in most continental European countries, bikes can park anywhere - and DO - without causing problems? Seems to me we’ve got it the wrong way round. We wanna reduce the number of cars in London, so we have loads of car bays, but comparatively few bike bays.
The councils nearly always reject the 1st appeal because they know full well that the time and effort it costs most people to keep writing letters and then have to trek to the West End to see an adjudicator comes to much more than the £50 for paying the ticket in the 1st place - daylight robbery in my opinion. I did go the whole hog with one ticket. The bay I was parked in had a sign that said ‘maximun stay (blank) hours’, whilst the signs on the other bays said ‘maximum stay 2 hours’. I ‘fed’ the meter and got a ticket. I wrote endless letters to Camden Council and they replied to each and every one with an objection, sometimes 5 pages long with photocopies of the payment machine instructions, complete with highlighted sections, saying that I should have read the payment machine rather than relying on the sign post!! They even wrote that the parking attendent had noted the position of my wheels and the bit where you put air in so was sure the car had not moved!!The adjudicator agreed that I hadn’t parked illegally intentionally and that the sign was misleading. Eventually the ticket got cancelled. Cost me much more that £50 in time from work and time writing letters but it was worth it.
FFS i think there was plenty of parking for bikes at brighton for people not to park on the walkway/pavement. if people are too lazy just cos they might have to ride a little way down and walk back then they deserve a ticket.
