Parking Crime Watch

150 150 Rob McGibbon

Please be careful of the steam coming from my head…

It’s late, it’s dark, half the residents’ parking is closed off. You’ve had a long day. You make a mistake and park in the wrong bay. It turns out that there is a Disabled Only sign up somewhere high, out of immediate sight.

While you sleep, the Morlocks go to work. They give the car a ticket. Then a clamp. Then they tow the bloody thing.

The next day you get a shock, a pang of worry – Has it been nicked by the benefit funded vermin you help keep warm? – then the bitter bile of realisation begins to rise. You have had the idiocy to let your guard down in this unforgiving city.

Then you get the happy snaps of the Morlocks’ fine work – and the £260 bill. TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY BLOODY POUNDS.

Where is that loot going? Who gets what from that swag bag of 21st century highway robbery?

The thing is, this didn’t even happen to me, just to someone dear to me, but I am still steaming mad with the absurdity, the blatant theft of this system.

The upside is, I have come up with an idea to beat the clampers and tow merchants of this world. I will invite you all in very soon and we can win…

Until then: Don’t you dare relax. Keep ’em peeled. Parking Warden crime affects every driver sometime. Don’t sleep tight.

London. I love it.