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11th September 2013: The world's gone mad and I'm the only one who knows
13th August 2013: Black is white. Fact. End of.
11th August 2013: Electric cars, not as green as they're painted?
18th June 2013: Wrinklies unite, you have nothing to lose but your walking frames!
17th May 2013: Some actual FACTS about climate change (for a change) from actual scientists ...
10th May 2013: An article about that poison gas, carbon dioxide, and other scientific facts (not) ...
10th May 2013: We need to see past the sex and look at the crimes: is justice being served?
8th May 2013: So, who would you trust to treat your haemorrhoids, Theresa May?
8th May 2013: Why should citizens in the 21st Century fear the law so much?
30th April 2013: What the GOS says today, the rest of the world realises tomorrow ...
30th April 2013: You couldn't make it up, could you? Luckily you don't need to ...
29th April 2013: a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE, because THE ABOVE are crap ...
28th April 2013: what goes around, comes around?
19th April 2013: everyone's a victim these days ...
10th April 2013: Thatcher is dead; long live Thatcher!
8th April 2013: Poor people are such a nuisance. Just give them loads of money and they'll go away ...
26th March 2013: Censorship is alive and well and coming for you ...
25th March 2013: Just do your job properly, is that too much to ask?
25th March 2013: So, what do you think caused your heterosexuality?
20th March 2013: Feminists - puritans, hypocrites or just plain stupid?
18th March 2013: How Nazi Germany paved the way for modern governance?
13th March 2013: Time we all grew up and lived in the real world ...
12th March 2013: Hindenburg crash mystery solved? - don't you believe it!
6th March 2013: Is this the real GOS?
5th March 2013: All that's wrong with taxes
25th February 2013: The self-seeking MP who is trying to bring Britain down ...
24th February 2013: Why can't newspapers just tell the truth?
22nd February 2013: Trial by jury - a radical proposal
13th February 2013: A little verse for two very old people ...
6th February 2013: It's not us after all, it's worms
6th February 2013: Now here's a powerful argument FOR gay marriage ...
4th February 2013: There's no such thing as equality because we're not all the same ...
28th January 2013: Global Warming isn't over - IT'S HIDING!
25th January 2013: Global Warmers: mad, bad and dangerous to know ...
25th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
19th January 2013: We STILL haven't got our heads straight about gays ...
16th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
11th January 2013: What it's like being English ...
7th January 2013: Bleat, bleat, if it saves the life of just one child ...
7th January 2013: How best to put it? 'Up yours, Argentina'?
7th January 2013: Chucking even more of other people's money around ...
6th January 2013: Chucking other people's money around ...
30th December 2012: The BBC is just crap, basically ...
30th December 2012: We mourn the passing of a genuine Grumpy Old Sod ...
30th December 2012: How an official body sets out to ruin Christmas ...
16th December 2012: Why should we pardon Alan Turing when he did nothing wrong?
15th December 2012: When will social workers face up to their REAL responsibility?
15th December 2012: Unfair trading by a firm in Bognor Regis ...
14th December 2012: Now the company that sells your data is pretending to act as watchdog ...
7th December 2012: There's a war between cars and bikes, apparently, and  most of us never noticed!
26th November 2012: The bottom line - social workers are just plain stupid ...
20th November 2012: So, David Eyke was right all along, then?
15th November 2012: MPs don't mind dishing it out, but when it's them in the firing line ...
14th November 2012: The BBC has a policy, it seems, about which truths it wants to tell ...
12th November 2012: Big Brother, coming to a school near you ...
9th November 2012: Yet another celebrity who thinks, like Jimmy Saville, that he can behave just as he likes because he's famous ...
5th November 2012: Whose roads are they, anyway? After all, we paid for them ...
7th May 2012: How politicians could end droughts at a stroke if they chose ...
6th May 2012: The BBC, still determined to keep us in a fog of ignorance ...
2nd May 2012: A sense of proportion lacking?
24th April 2012: Told you so, told you so, told you so ...
15th April 2012: Aah, sweet ickle polar bears in danger, aah ...
15th April 2012: An open letter to Anglian Water ...
30th March 2012: Now they want to cure us if we don't believe their lies ...
28th February 2012: Just how useful is a degree? Not very.
27th February 2012: ... so many ways to die ...
15th February 2012: DO go to Jamaica because you definitely WON'T get murdered with a machete. Ms Fox says so ...
31st January 2012: We don't make anything any more
27th January 2012: There's always a word for it, they say, and if there isn't we'll invent one
26th January 2012: Literary criticism on GOS? How posh!
12th December 2011: Plain speaking by a scientist about the global warming fraud
9th December 2011: Who trusts scientists? Apart from the BBC, of course?
7th December 2011: All in all, not a good week for British justice ...
9th November 2011: Well what d'you know, the law really IS a bit of an ass ...

 

 
Captain Grumpy's bedtime reading. You can buy them too, if you think you're grumpy enough!
More Grumpy Old Sods on the net

 

 
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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.
 

 

 

 
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