Britain's first parking ticket was issued to Dr Thomas Creighton on September 19 1960 when he parked his Ford Popular outside a London hotel to attend a patient suffering a heart attack. There was a public outcry and Creighton was let off the £2 fine. And nothing much has changed since then - except, of course, these days no amount of public outcry will achieve anything. I suppose when you've been a traffic warden issuing ridiculous tickets for years and years, a bit of public outcry just rolls off your back …
Michael Collins was driving his lorry in north London when a burst water main caused the road to give way. While he was waiting to be rescued a warden slapped a ticket on the windscreen.
Robert McFarland, a tour guide in the Yorkshire Dales, left his horse Charlie Boy in the street. He returned to find a ticket stuck to it. Under vehicle description the warden had written "brown horse".
Traffic warden Damien Smethurst handed out the most tickets in a single shift when he managed to nail 101 cars, totalling £8,080 in fines. The problem was that he issued them on a bank holiday, which meant 84 were invalid. "This is what gives parking attendants a bad name," said his employer.
Peter Stapleton a disabled driver, was hopping mad when his leg fell off mid journey forcing him to pull over to reattach it - and got a ticket.
When a tree fell on Nicky Clegg's car while driving near Pershore she thought she had had a lucky escape. But when she returned to the wreck with police the following day a traffic warden had got there first to pin a ticket to the shattered windscreen.
Fred Holt, a pensioner who was held hostage in his local bank during a robbery, received a ticket despite wardens being told not to issue any by police at the scene.
A young mother who pulled into a motorcycle bay when her baby started choking assumed the approaching traffic warden was to offer assistance. Instead he gave her an £80 ticket.
A hearse was given a ticket while parked outside the funeral directors. When challenged Edinburgh city council claimed the ticket was correct because the coffin was not yet in the car.
You might be forgiven for wondering just what traffic wardens and, more to the point, their bosses, have between their ears instead of brains. Paperwork, probably. Just what vicious mental aberration prevents local councillors from thinking "Oh, I see that all our constituents have cars now, and we seem to have provided them with roads to drive on. Perhaps we ought to provide them with enough spaces to park in, too"?
Actually, that's a stupid question, isn't it? We all know what's behind the persecution of motorists. It's greed - councils made £1.16 billion from parking charges and fines in 2005, up from £638m in 1997, and the revenue is still increasing
Which makes a nonsense of transport secretary Ruth Kelly's new guidelines suggesting that councils be more "motorist friendly". The new document makes it clear that councils should not use parking fines to raise money. "Raising revenue should not be an objective of parking enforcement, nor should targets be set for raising revenue or the number of penalty notices to be issued," the document says.
The changes will discourage councils from offering incentives such as free televisions and holidays to wardens who hand out the most tickets, as well as deterring the setting of targets for wardens. Rosie Winterton, the transport minister, said: "There is a perception that motorists are often unfairly penalised by parking attendants who are only interested in issuing as many tickets as possible. We want to ensure the penalties are fair and justified."
Huh! Fat chance! Now they've got used to this constant flow of free money from parking fines, councils are going to take about as much notice as they do about the government guidelines on speed limits - b*gg*r all.
The stories above all come from a new book by Barrie Segal, called The Parking Ticket Awards: crazy councils, meter madness and traffic warden hell
, published by Portico Books.
Barrie runs a website, Appeal Now!, aimed at helping motorists beat unfair parking tickets. He has dedicated a large part of his life to exposing parking fine madness, and claims to have helped more than a million motorists get tickets cancelled.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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