Lifeboat given parking ticket: can it be fair?

My understanding is that legally, parking enforcement is there to ensure the free movement of traffic and make sure that hazards to drivers are reduced. Somewhere along the line it moved from this to a way of generating income, Councils ignore their responsibilities to only use this to ensure a free flow of vehicles and simply try to grab more cash off the public. The proof of this is the success rate of appeals against parking offences. The best way to beat this is to only allow councils to receive sufficient to cover the cost of the parking officer and no more. The rest of the cash would be paid to central government. Watch how soon the numbers of wardens would reduce to the figure required to meet their responsibilities in law.

Just provses, inteligents are not required for the job of traffic warden, and what clown employed him, ... assuming he was first interviewed for the position.

Reminds you of the old one - why do traffic wardens hats have a a yellow line round them - to stop you parking on them.

Like the nazi's said at the Nuremburg trials' "we were only following orders".

I have a friend who is an undertaker who went to a funeral in a village where there is a pub opposite the church entrance. There were cones out to reserve the spot for the hearse but inconsiderate pub users had taken them and in the few minutes he parked to off load the coffin he was ticketed and the moron responsible proceeded to argue and make an issue of it before the mourners.

Friends comment who is a registered embalmer was "I would like to meet the idiot again but next time on my table"

I bet everyone would be cheering if he had put a ticket on a police car for illegal parking!

Hopefully the Appledore warden lives locally and I'm sure members of the local community will give the warden their just reward - one dark night......

i wonder if the wardens are nasty or if they get bonuses for each ticket they give to people??

'an over-enthusiastic jobsworth ticket warden who has taken his eye off the bigger picture'

None of us likes getting parking tickets bu I'm baffled as to what is the bigger picture here.

It only takes a second for an accident to happen and it is a warden's job to ticket things that are parked illegaly, whether it be for 1, 10 or 100 minutes.

Also, he can hardly be called 'jobsworth' for doing what he is paid to do. Doubtless the council had set a quota too, which is why wardens are so keen to write tickets as soon as they see you these days rather than give 5 or so minutes leeway, and if he fell short of it he would be subject to some sort of penalty.

Any claim that he had let X, Y and Z off for some reason or other would get very short shrift, so better for him to do his job correctly and if the council wants to subsequently let people off, that is their business.

This reminds me yesterday when shopping at Morrisons I couldn't believe my eyes, I spotted one of those DVLA VOSA white vans cruising round all the aisles between the cars with a cameras on each corner of it's roof. At first I thought he had just come to get a butty but oh no, I asked a lady I know works on the Reception at Morrisons and she told me that they are here all the time looking for people who haven't got their cars taxed and if they find any they are taken away, I just couldn't believe it.

Now I know you will say that people who don't pay car tax and have their cars on the road and using them is wrong, but come on to go cruising round a supermarket car park that's just not on and causing the owners so much trouble. Imagine if this was an elderly person/or handicapped person just doing their weekly shopping at Morrisons and they are bad on their feet but fit to drive, how would they get home and with all that shopping also, absolute and total madness!

I also went on a coach holiday a few week's ago to the South Coast and one of the same vans followed us into the D Day Museum car park at Southsea in Portsmouth and our driver said he got a ticking off because the huge mirror on his passenger side had a very tiny crack in it and they gave the whole coach a good going over and he also got fined £80 for that small crack in his mirror. Absolute total madness.