Friday, May 2

Dear Nap

Our neighbours in the nearby town of Kendal seem to be having problems with over enthusiastic traffic wardens, whoops sorry we have to call them “civil enforcement officers” nowadays. It seems that one eager beaver crept up on a pensioner who was actually asleep in her car and sneaked a ticket on it. Jean Raine, 82, was legally parked in a disabled bay, but was fined because her orange disabled parking disc had been inadvertently displayed upside down.
Miss Raine took a nap in her Vauxhall Corsa after feeling unwell on a shopping trip to Kendal.
”I cannot understand why the parking attendant didn’t wake me up. I wouldn’t have got a ticket then,” Miss Raine of nearby Burton-in-Kendal said.
”He must have been on tip toes, so quiet that he didn’t disturb me.”
Miss Raine, a retired nurse, and Martin Westgarth, 88, her companion of 30-years, had been driven to Kendal by a neighbour on their weekly shopping trip.
Mr Westgarth, also from Burton-in-Kendal, said: “I went in to do the shopping and when I got back to the car there was a ticket on it.
”Why did she get a ticket while she was sitting in the car? Because the card in the window that shows she was disabled, it turns out, was upside down.
”The person who put the ticket on the window didn’t talk to Jean. You would have thought that he would have said something to her. This is intolerable. She is legally entitled to park there car where she was, why should her right be taken away from her just because the card was upside down?”
”We were in a disabled space. The disabled badge was valid. If this idiot, who pinched her, had spoken to her and said that the card was the wrong way round that could have been it.”
He added: “Why on Earth didn’t this civil enforcement officer - a traffic warden when said and done - ask her to move her parking disc. Why did she get a ticket when she was sitting in the car?”
The couple appealed to South Lakeland Council but their appeal was rejected.
In the end they paid the fine, but are considering whether to take the case to an independent tribunal.
Recently, a South Lakeland Council parking warden was soaked with two buckets of water when he put a ticket on a fishmonger’s van while it was being loaded outside a store in Kendal town centre.

3 comments:

John said...

We had this kind of behavior in Galway a while back. It came to a head when a car was clamped outside a doctors surgery.The clamper refused to remove the clamp.
Even when a Garda told the clamper to remove the clamp so that the parent could take a sick child to hospital.
The Garda paid the fine and when the clamping company said they were only doing their job the shit hit the fan.
Galway council got together and removed the contract from the clamping company!!!
A victory for common sense.

Peggy said...

The civil enforcement officer didn't wake the woman up because he was being a chicken s**t. I really HOPE it was the same one that was doused with fishy water, but we're not that lucky.

bob mullen said...

John: That's what happen when you private firms with too much power. But of course common sense don't always come into it.

Peggy:Yep I hope so too.