Council chiefs have warned motorists they should pay to park when traffic wardens in Southampton strike for seven days next week.At last, a strike that the whole country can get behind!
They said there will be no parking enforcement or parking meter repairs as a result of the industrial action.Maybe you’d like to put on a uniform and help out, Royston..?
But council leader Royston Smith said last night that drivers should continue to feed the city’s meters, which collected nearly £7m last year.
“We charge for parking. We expect people to pay for it,” he said, adding that the council was looking into ways to continue enforcement if legally possible.
I suspect that it has completely escaped the limited intelligence of Mr Smith that if there are no Traffic Wardens, or Meter repairs/maintenance .. that Meters will quickly become full & aren't likely to be emptied ..
ReplyDeleteTherefore by dint of industrial action by Council Staff, the general public are actually being prevented from paying for parking ..
I'd like to see 'em try to stand that one up in Court ..
Christ on a bike, Mr Smith's single brain cell must be awfully lonely in there ..
I'm actualy one of those people who probably would pay because.
ReplyDeletethe council was looking into ways to continue enforcement if legally possible.
I wouldn't put it past the slimy money grubbing useless little bastards
@ Pavlov's Cat ..
ReplyDeleteFair play to you .. and I would advise caution too ..
But what do you do when physically prevented from paying ?
In the past, whenever I've found a car park ticket machine out of order, I've rung the Council phone number displayed at the Pay Station & informed them .. Ensuring that I obtained the name of the person to whom I spoke ..
Then, left a note on the dashboard, detailing my actions & reason for not displaying a ticket, together with the relevant time & date ..
They can hardly "enforce" non-payment, if their actions have made it impossible to pay ..
The trouble with old age is that you remember things how they were. In the city where I was born you used to be able to more or less park anywhere.
ReplyDeleteAnd then 'they' (the people increasingly paid and praised to make their fellow citizen's life hell) discovered yellow paint and parking meters. Slowly the meters multiplied, spare land was cordoned off to prevent 'illegal' parking, wardens hired, laws imposed, and above all the ring of yellow lines crept outwards to make the no parking areas larger and larger.
Now, given that so many 'council workers' apparently support AGW vagueness including a passion to reduce carbon emissions, it was odd that motorists in particular were forced to keep driving around via short term parking meters. More traffic, more fumes.
And no, not every place had a reliable bus service, despite subsidies and 'bus only' lanes and closed off roads.
But the march of the meters also slowly strangled the commercial heart of the city. You couldn't go there easily, so you didn't shop there. Out of town malls sprang up (hey look, no yellow lines, no meters) and the city centre became a wasteland of charity shops, building societies and boarded up piss-stained doorways.
But, in Southampton currently as well as in other places, the fear is that all this cannot continue.
Hard times for the wise councillors and officials indeed...
"Therefore by dint of industrial action by Council Staff, the general public are actually being prevented from paying for parking .."
ReplyDeletePresumably this will hasten the introduction of debit-card machines..?
"But the march of the meters also slowly strangled the commercial heart of the city. You couldn't go there easily, so you didn't shop there."
Yes, this only ever gets raised as a contributing factor in all those anguished 'Tesco is destroying small shops!' columns in the 'Indy' and 'Guardian' by the commenters...