Hey, City Council, Kiss my A$$.

I'm not gonna lie to you.

This is bullsh*t. On multiple levels.  Is the government so lazy now that it's going to rely on CCTV, which has completely rid the country of the crime and anti-social behavior problem, to parse out parking justice?  For those of you just tuning in, the City Council is going to start using CCTV to police the roads, looking for parking infractions.  In addition to it's 32 'civil enforcement officers' (read 'meter maids'), the eyes of the CCTV will now be pulled off serious crime and onto checking to make sure you're up to date at your Pay and Display at Norfolk  Hospital (Side tangent--which dumb b*stards idea was it to put Pay and Display at a Hospital?  Someone should be brought before a Tribunal for this.  'Sorry I couldn't be here for the last few minutes of your life, Nan, I was having trouble getting the ticket to come out the machine. You have to put the coin in just right, see, and....SHE'S FLATLINING!).  And the most beautiful part of the whole thing--they say it's not about the money.

C'mon, guys, if you're going to fleece us, at least be honest about it. It is about the money.  Was that so hard to say?  Now we can move forward, together.  It's about the money, and the control, and being able to cover a larger revenue-raising area with the same number of civil enforcement officers, who, if you've ever tried to hold down a conversation with one, are ironically uncivil--but then, life has dealt them a harsh blow, being on roughly the same branch of the social food chain as football referees and Hitler.

Apart from the sinister Orwellian undertones running through the whole 'society caught on camera' thing, the devil of this law is in the details.  In order to appeal your case, you're going to have to go before the Traffic Penalty Tribunal (I'm picturing stern looking meter maids in safety orange robes dispensing dour trafficky one-liners as they mete out penalties). If you own a car, you're probably aware of this, but you have to park it--a lot.  And unless you're willing to record the specific details of your situation EVERY TIME YOU PARK, you're not going to remember what the specifics were three months ago when you over-ran two minutes at the Pay and Display by the Toys R Us.   But unless you want the hassle and cost, and there's sure to be some cost, of going before the tribunal, you'll pay it and move on.  The onus then becomes on the citizen to prove they're innocent, rather than the government to prove the citizen's guilt, in a system where we no clue how the process works.  The city probably won't make any money, as they'll now have to pay the tribunal's wages and support the cost of dealing with the huge influx of penalties, and we will have added a whole new layer of government which will have the grand sum effect of achieving nothing but costing car owners more.

I hate the parking department in this city.  I hate it because parking is badly marked, permitted areas are confusingly signposted,  Pay and Display machines are kept in constant disrepair, and the Frequently Asked Questions on the ticket you get are snide ('If you have received this ticket, and believe it to be in error, you are wrong.' I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but only a little).  Add to this the fact that they could start just showing up in the post at random, and the whole thing goes from 'Typical Annoying Bureaucracy One Sort of Learns to Put Up With Because, Hey, It's England' to "We Just Stepped Into a Terry Gilliam Film."

Also, they can now serve tickets after the motorist has driven off, so Rita can start a bunch of tickets, not worry about completing them, and then finish them off at the end of the day, long after the offending car has hit the road.  One of the reasons for this was that back in 2006, the Council had to write off thousands of pounds of tickets because they were incorrectly printed.  Rather than admit they'd messed up and correct the problem, the response is typical of local authority--change the law so they'll have more opportunities to make the same mistake over and over again.  So it goes.  I'm off to check on my car, and see what it's done wrong now.

Lates,

Me