Mike Rutherford's column

	Soon 'cyberwardens' - hi-tech surveillance device - will catch offenders and issue tickets through the post!

Congestion charging, exhaust emissions, toll roads, speed cameras, 4x4s and fuel taxes have been the hottest motoring subjects in recent years. But parking is poised to take over as the big, bad, burning issue of 2008. The politicians have already decided they can help pay for their extravagances by mugging motorists while we are on the move. Trouble is, that form of highway robbery has its limitations. Drivers can be ‘done’ for only an hour or two per day – the sort of period most are on the move.

Consequently, ministers have worked out that their greatest opportunity,
in time terms at least, is to monitor more closely what our cars are doing during the 20-odd hours a day when they’re parked up. Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott started the ball rolling when he publicly floated the idea of workplace parking taxes. I was with him at the time, and was horrified at his suggestion that workers should pay an additional ‘tax’ if their employers had the temerity to buy or lease private land, then provide their valued employees with safe, secure, off-road parking bays outside their workplaces.

But why would the politicians set their greedy sights only on the car-using workers? Pensioners, students, the unemployed, the idle rich and others not
in work drive, too. So, it’s the workers plus the non-workers who are now being targeted with extraordinary greed and vigour. From April, Labour will allow local authorities to use ‘cyber wardens’... hi-tech surveillance devices that will spot and focus on alleged motoring misdemeanours from a distance, then use the postal service (rather than wardens and attendants) to issue tickets to the accused.

Although the current system of slapping crude parking tickets on windscreens has its faults, it at least tells a driver he’s been ‘done’ and enables him to instantly prepare the case for his defence BEFORE he drives away from the scene of the supposed crime. Armed with his mobile or a proper camera, he can photograph his vehicle, inadequate signs and yellow lines (if any) prior to driving off – and that can be valuable evidence when he appeals against his ticket.

Can he gather this sort of proof when the ticket arrives in the post days, weeks or months after the crime was allegedly committed? Difficult. If he had reason to stop on a yellow line and got permission from a local cop or warden, how can this be proved long after the event? It can’t. Did he park ‘illegally’ because he broke down? Or perhaps he stopped to help a pedestrian in distress or a sick child on the back seat? Such things can at least be explained to and noted by on-foot parking officers at the time alleged misdemeanours take place. Mention them months later at the appeal stage and you’ll have no proof and be ordered to pay up.

It’s also the case that drivers occasionally HAVE to breach parking rules and regulations simply in order to conduct their decent, honest, everyday lives.
The road outside my current, city-centre home, for example, has double yellow lines. So do neighbouring streets. Therefore, when I’m unloading suitcases, groceries, furniture or logs for the fire, I have no alternative but to park ‘illegally’ – and under the new system would presumably be ticketed every time.

A few days ago, I saw a local paper that got it spot on when its front page screamed: PARK BADLY AND WE WILL CATCH YOU. If your local rag hasn’t already done so, I fear it will be running the same sort of headline soon. Parking hell is only a matter of weeks away. The authorities will get richer. Inevitably we, the motorists, will become poorer.