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Mike Brewer's column
Car park chaos caused by the council
Can you believe it? The New Year sales are warming up again, and the shops have bargains galore. However, there are no bargains up for grabs in our car parks. We're deep into the season of goodwill - the time of year when we should spread some seasonal spirit - but a Dickensian Scrooge has made a nasty comeback in our city council offices. As with many other local authorities, Cherwell District has added another level of complication to parking your motor by introducing meters that force you to enter your registration number before depositing your coins.
The machines have mysteriously appeared overnight across the Oxfordshire council boundaries, causing car park chaos. The buttons are too small and the keyboard is laid out vertically like London's congestion charge meters, rather than in a typewriter-like QWERTY format. So nobody seems able to work them out, and the queues at these miniature piggy banks have been building and building.
To make matters worse, the horrible devices don't even offer change, which means frequently shoving a quid in when you can't make up 60p in 10p and 20p pieces. But the real reason I've got a humbug issue with the council is the penny-pinching attitude towards us motorists. I have had a long conversation with the chap from the authority, and he informed me that it has been losing thousands of pounds each year to people passing their unexpired tickets on to the next motorist.
Well, if I paid £2 to park in a space for a couple of hours, but leave within half-an-hour and pass my ticket on, so what? I've coughed up to rent that patch of concrete and, for a couple of hours, I reckon I've every right to put a skip in the spot if I want. Or even my Nan on a pair of roller skates.
But now, councillors want to re-rent the space as they say people are selling the tickets on again. Selling them on? What? I've lived in the area for several years and nobody has ever offered to buy or sell me a ticket. Even if they did, such neighbourly behaviour should be applauded.
Not at district council level, though. The Scrooge said he lost £20,000 last year, but the machines probably cost that each, and all they've done is strip out the goodwill of offering a stranger your ticket.
And here's something else to chew on. Is putting your reg number into that machine solely about stamping out kind-hearted community spirit? After all, what you're actually doing is giving the authorities personal information about your vehicle and how long you're spending in that car park. Although they will probably deny it, are they collecting data on where you are, and when?
You might not think that matters considering how many times we're clocked by motorway and roadside cameras, but maybe this is some sinister scheme to monitor all those souls who avoid Big Brother's prying eyes by only ever nipping to the local shops once in a while. We're already the most spied-on nation in the world - it's reckoned we're caught on camera at least 300 times a day - yet now we Brits are actually having to pump our registration numbers into machines.
The only consolation is that as we tucked into our Christmas dinner, some bureaucrat was staring at those empty car parks crying over lost revenue. Happy days - and Happy New Year everyone!
Mike Brewer presents ITV's Wrecks to Riches and Revved Up, the British Rally on Channel 4 and Wheeler Dealers on the Discovery Channel
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| We're deep into the season of goodwill - the time of year when we should spread some seasonal spirit - but a Dickensian Scrooge has made a nasty comeback in our city council offices | |
 |
The machines have mysteriously appeared overnight across the Oxfordshire council boundaries, causing car park chaos. The buttons are too small and the keyboard is laid out vertically like London's congestion charge meters, rather than in a typewriter-like QWERTY format. So nobody seems able to work them out, and the queues at these miniature piggy banks have been building and building.
To make matters worse, the horrible devices don't even offer change, which means frequently shoving a quid in when you can't make up 60p in 10p and 20p pieces. But the real reason I've got a humbug issue with the council is the penny-pinching attitude towards us motorists. I have had a long conversation with the chap from the authority, and he informed me that it has been losing thousands of pounds each year to people passing their unexpired tickets on to the next motorist.
Well, if I paid £2 to park in a space for a couple of hours, but leave within half-an-hour and pass my ticket on, so what? I've coughed up to rent that patch of concrete and, for a couple of hours, I reckon I've every right to put a skip in the spot if I want. Or even my Nan on a pair of roller skates.
But now, councillors want to re-rent the space as they say people are selling the tickets on again. Selling them on? What? I've lived in the area for several years and nobody has ever offered to buy or sell me a ticket. Even if they did, such neighbourly behaviour should be applauded.
Not at district council level, though. The Scrooge said he lost £20,000 last year, but the machines probably cost that each, and all they've done is strip out the goodwill of offering a stranger your ticket.
And here's something else to chew on. Is putting your reg number into that machine solely about stamping out kind-hearted community spirit? After all, what you're actually doing is giving the authorities personal information about your vehicle and how long you're spending in that car park. Although they will probably deny it, are they collecting data on where you are, and when?
You might not think that matters considering how many times we're clocked by motorway and roadside cameras, but maybe this is some sinister scheme to monitor all those souls who avoid Big Brother's prying eyes by only ever nipping to the local shops once in a while. We're already the most spied-on nation in the world - it's reckoned we're caught on camera at least 300 times a day - yet now we Brits are actually having to pump our registration numbers into machines.
The only consolation is that as we tucked into our Christmas dinner, some bureaucrat was staring at those empty car parks crying over lost revenue. Happy days - and Happy New Year everyone!
Mike Brewer presents ITV's Wrecks to Riches and Revved Up, the British Rally on Channel 4 and Wheeler Dealers on the Discovery Channel
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