Results tagged “car parking” from Birmingham Mail - Is It Just Me

Having come back from Dusseldorf over the weekend to find my car hidden in a canyon of 4x4s towering on three sides, which meant that boot and passenger side doors could not be reached let alone opened, the time has come for a rethink on car parks.

Accountants, who seem to control everything these days, see the ideal car park as one which crams in as many cars as possible, with people leaving and entering their vehicle through the sun roof, and with charges that rival a night's stay in a hotel. So there is not a lot of room for an ordinary car, let alone a Tonka truck.

So may I offer the simple solution that 4x4s are provided with a special section with wider bays which will make life easier for their drivers and for the rest of us - and charge them extra for the privilege.

Back from a few days off - didn't go anywhere in case you ask - and it is as if I have never been away. The banks - who, let us not forget, caused the credit crisis - are still moaning, Government figures on anything are still works of fiction and there are still more new ways to squeeze yet more money out of us.

Latest wheeze it appears is parking more than 50cm from a kerb will carry a £70 fine and I am sure local councils and the cowboy outfits who crack the whip on traffic wardens in this age of outsourcing will have their rulers ready sharpened as we speak.

Forget any notion that this is to stop nuisance parking, it will be turned into yet another money maker if the proposals go ahead. Give it less than a week before enterprising wardens are seen pushing some car parked close to the limit or measuring where kerb stones are broken or missing. It is a whole new area for fulfilling quotas. Common sense, like the idea of public service, will go out of the window.

It seems officialdom will not be happy until everyone has a criminal record and has been fined for something or other.