The Ten Craziest Parking Tickets of All Time

Think that you’ve been hard done to by the parking authorities? Well, wait until you have read these extraordinary tales…

1. Trucking ridiculous

It was a normal day for truck driver Michael Collins, who was on his way to collect a skip in London’s Belsize Park. But then, without warning, his truck lurched as the road beneath him collapsed. Unbeknown to Michael, a burst water main had caused the road to give way, creating a deep hole where the front wheels of his 17-tonne truck became stuck.

While he was waiting for his lorry to be rescued, a passing parking attendant appeared. To the astonishment of nearby residents and despite Michael’s protests, she stood on tiptoe and whacked a parking ticket on the trucks windscreen, uttering the immortal words, “You can appeal”. (See picture above).

2. Bad news comes in trees

If a tree fell on your car and you escaped death by mere inches, you might think that you would get some sympathy from your local council. Sadly, no such compassion was forthcoming when one family suffered just such a fate under the parking Taliban of Wychavon District Council

Nicky Clegg from Stoulton, near Pershore, was driving along the Bromwich Road with her 82-year-old mother and her 11-year-old son when without warning a tree crashed on her car. Miraculously they escaped death but the car ended up with a crushed bonnet, smashed windscreen and broken wing mirrors.

Police dragged the wrecked car to the side of the road and told Nicky that it was fine to leave it there and she could pick it up the following day. But when Nicky came back the next day, she was astonished to find a parking ticket on the window.

3. Feeling run down?

Think that being badly injured is an excuse to park illegally? Think again. When Nadhim Zahawi of South London was thrown from his scooter and left lying in the road with a broken leg, a heartless warden from Lambeth Council slapped a £100 ticket on his bike.

4. Horse play

You leave your horse in the street and what do you expect to find when you get back? A small pile of manure perhaps, but not a parking ticket. Amazingly, however, this is exactly what happened to Robert McFarland, a retired blacksmith from Yorkshire when he left his trusty steed, Charlie Boy, for a few brief moments. On the ticket, the over-zealous warden had written the vehicle description as “brown horse”.

5. Daylight robbery

It started off just like any other day for Fred Holt when he went to his local bank. But the ordinary day turned extraordinary when two masked men burst into the bank brandishing an axe and a machete. In the terrifying raid, the robbers held a young cashier hostage with an axe to her throat. Customers were forced to lie on the floor as staff were made to hand over cash.

If being a victim of this horrifying event wasn’t bad enough, 77 year old Mr Holt had parked his car nearby, and by the time he had given a statement to police officers, his car had been there for 20 minutes longer than allowed.

Mr. Holt was not worried because the police officers who interviewed him said that traffic wardens had been told about the raid and asked not to issue tickets. But when Mr Holt got back to his car he was astounded to find a £30 parking ticket pinned to his windscreen – the reason: overstaying his allowed time in the street.

6. Bloody ridiculous

“Do Something Amazing Today” runs the slogan of the National Blood Service. In Sutton, a traffic warden did just that, though not along the lines of “Save a life. Give Blood” that the advert intended.

For four years, a mobile National Blood Service truck has visited Sutton, parking at the same spot outside a group of offices, so volunteers can give blood. But seeing the good citizens of the town turn up and exchange a pint of the red stuff in return for a cup of tea and a biscuit was too much of a temptation for one parking attendant. Whilst those inside were giving blood, the parking attendant gave in his own unique way – in the form of a parking ticket.

Sutton council eventually waived the fine, saying the parking attendant had made a simple error of judgment. Or to put it more aptly, a rush of blood to the head.

7. Bus(ted)

Picture the situation. You’re a bus driver. You’re driving your bus. You see a queue of people waiting for you at a bus stop. You pull over to pick them up. So far, so good. But wait, not everyone wants to buy a ticket. This chap in the queue wants to give you one instead…

This was the extraordinary scene that greeted Manchester bus driver Chris O’Mahony, when he stopped his number 77 bus to let people on. He and his passengers looked on in absolute disbelief as the Manchester City Council parking attendant joined the queue to prepare the parking ticket, deposited the £40 notice and then walked away. The bus driver’s crime? Parking in a restricted area.

The attendant said he'd been told to issue tickets to buses that park. Manchester City Council bosses cancelled the ticket and ordered the warden to be retrained. Hopefully, as something other than a warden.

8. Heart attack

Whilst David Holmes was driving along he felt chest pains. So he immediately drove himself to hospital. When he arrived he was forced to park on the road and was treated for a heart attack. A kind nurse left a note on the windscreen saying it was an emergency and that David's daughter would pick the car up later. Despite the note, a pitiless parking attendant slapped a parking ticket on David’s car.

Despite an appeal to the local council, the £40 fine was not cancelled.

9. Welcome to Warwickshire

Warwick is a beautiful part of England but it had no appeal for one man who received a parking ticket from the local Council.

Krister Nylander was dismayed to receive a parking ticket in the post for parking in Warwick. But he knew the parking ticket was wrong because he lives in Sweden and had not visited England since he was 16. The offending vehicle was his 20-ton snowmobile which had barely ever left his barn, let alone Sweden.

How did it get the ticket? We’ve absolutely no Ikea.

10. Driving you crazy

Driving instructors are used to the trials and tribulations of teaching people to drive. Three point turns, as we all know, can be very tricky to learn. So spare a thought for the driving instructor who got a CCTV parking ticket when his pupil stalled whilst attempting a three-point turn and could not restart the car. The offence? Parking more than 50 centimetres from the kerb.

Think that you can beat any of these tales of woe? Post your stories of parking misery using the form below

List compiled with the help of Barrie Segal, founder of AppealNow.com and author of the book, The Parking Ticket Awards: Crazy Councils, Meter Madness and Traffic Warden Hell

To buy a copy of Barrie’s Book, visit appealnow.com/book.html

Comments

[John Bald]

The parking war is part of the far left's campaign to make life difficult for the class enemy, drivers. Pig ignorance, stupidity and intolerance are their stock in trade. My own experience, a small error in filling in a prepaid parking ticket - in Hackney - that anyone with a brain would have ignored, is less striking than these, but perhaps more typical. If something of British give and take has been lost in the proces, Red Ken and his cronies will be the happier for it.

[PityTheFool]

Islington Council has to be one of the worst offenders...

[Richard Newman]

Populist nonsense. It would be interesting to see how many of these have actually resulted in fines, rather than just tickets that were subsequently rescinded. Expecting low-paid workers on outsourced contracts to exercise their discretion or "give and take" when the terms of their contract specifically forbid it seems to go against the "flexible labour markets" orthodoxy that the right wing ideologues expound so heartily when it doesn't actually affect them. Finally, arguing from such absurd extremes doesn't take away from the fact that driving on the UK's roads has become more-and-more of a crowded nightmare for at least the last 15 years. It is bizarre that any attempt to address this issue are often as some kind of left-wing conspiracy by people who don't seem to be able to work themselves up over far more important issues.

[Laura Roberts]

Whilst there is some hilarity to these stories, there is also a serious point. These wardens are not "over zealous", or just lacking compassion etc.

They are mentally deficient imbeciles who should not be in their jobs.

Any person who, for example, has a level of judgement in their minute brains to give a ticket to a van sunk in a collapsed road, does not possess the most basic level of intelligence to hold any job involving any decision making whatsoever, let alone be a traffic warden.

These traffic wardens don't need "retraining", they need sacking along with the person who hired them in the first place, who is clearly not doing *their* job sufficiently well either.

[James C]

@ Richard Newman. I fear you are missing the point with your highfaluting analysis. Parking is not, or at least should not, be a political issue. After all, people of every political persuasion drive cars, even George Monbiot, the arch environmentalist.
What blogs like this demonstrates is that in many cases, parking enforcement is completely out of control. Tickets are too-often issued without regard to common sense, fairness or reason. It is frankly risible to suggest that anyone, whether they are a “low-paid worker on an outsourced contract” or not, is incapable of realising that issuing a parking ticket to horse or a lorry stuck in hole is anything but completely absurd.

[Drivel Detective]

Richard Newman – you embarrass yourself with your utter drivel. Whether a ticket is eventually cancelled or not is irrelevant. Nobody should expect to be unfairly treated at the hands of their local council and have to go through the rigmarole the appeals process.
Often parking attendants issue what are known as “ghost” tickets where no offence has been committed just because they want to fill their quota. Most people who receive these tickets just pay up even though they have committed no offence because they are unwilling or unable to fight the intimidating bureaucracy of a local council.
Often the victims who don’t know how to fight these tickets are people on low incomes but who need their cars for their livelihoods.
The system needs radical reform.

[David Christie]

What the hell is Richard Newman talking about? Can anyone actually understand his jargon? What has "flexible labour markets" orthodoxy got to do with parking tickets? I'm baffled.

[M Khan]

Richard Newman - I don't want to burst your bubble or anything but in law, Local Authorities are actually encouraged to show discretion on parking tickets.

In most cases wardens are now judged on the number of correct tickets they issue. Sensible "give and take" as you put it, is expedted but sadly, it is often ignored.

[Chris]

"...he left his trusty stead, Charlie Boy, for a few brief moments."

Would that be a steed, perhaps?

[John Willis]

I hate parking wardens, or "civil enforcement officers" as they are about to be called...

[Anon]

I was once waiting at a RED traffic light on my bike on Brent Street, Hendon (behind the white line) when a traffic warden slapped a ticket on the handle bars of my bike. Reason cited: blocking a pedestrian crossing.

[Pete Ireland]

Richard Newman - what a load of pompous rubbish!

[Simon]

I don't really dislike parking wardens - if we all parked where we liked the roads would be jammed completely and even when I have ticketed I don't really mind if it is valid. I am glad that the wardens seem to be so badly trained though, half the tickets I have received have been cancelled due to administrative errors with very little work on my part. Keep up the good work...

[M.T.Liddiard]

It is perhaps a pity that Mr Newman does not recognise that employing the lowest level of intellect to perform effectively punitive tasks is the reason for a lack of "give and take", not the employers prohibition. Discretion is not one of their intellectual tools.
Perhaps, when such employees become Civil Enforcement Officers they could be given Brown Shirts to wear and we can see whether history will automatically repeat itself.

[Hannah Josiah]

About 8 years ago, when there were still free parking spaces in Milton Keynes city centre, a colleague popped to the bank parking his car in one of the free spaces. He returned 20 minutes later to find that in the time he had been gone the council had turned that parking area from free parking to pay and display. In fact the workman putting up the notices was still there with the traffic warden following behind!

[SK]

If you really do park over your limit or some other such offense, you may be interested to know that some traffic wardens accept cash in exchange for waiving your ticket. Just a handy hint ;-) haha!

[paul corrigan]

trigger happy tv dom jolly did the best warden sketches probably fact based

[JAMES]

THEY DO IT DIFFERENTLY IN GERMANY. I PARKED IN A MUNICIPAL PARKING LOT WHICH GAVE 1 HOUR FREE: I DID NOT APPRECIATE YOU HAD TO GET A TICKET (AT NO COST) TO PROVE THIS. I OVERSTAYED AND GOT A TICKET WHICH INCLUDES A BANK PAYING SLIP FOR EURO 3. I DULY WENT TO THE BANK ACROSS THE ROAD AND PAID THE FINE. I FELT IT ALL VERY CIVILISED AND FELT NO AGRIEVMENT.

[Don]

Richard Newman I entirely agree with every word you said and would like to send you a personal note of thanks perhaps you could post your adress and vehicle description / registration number so that if any of my friends bump into you they may extend my wishes. I would be very happy for you to spend all your spare time excercising your considerable way with words with the local authorities on an indefinite basis with your appeals. i know you would relish showing us how to deal with this and woudl not get fed up or bored at all! Up for it?

[Alice in Dubai]

Richard Newman- this article is supposed to be amusing. Such a sorry day it is when people like you take the high road. Just read and laugh...

[Graham]

A friend told me about this article. I've just spent 15 minutes trying to find it. No - put in "craziest" and "parking" in your search engine, nothing is returned. Look everywhere in driving, where it's bound to be, and it's not there. Maybe in travel? Nope, not there either.

Where have you put it?? Money Central????

Come on, your website is getting more difficult to navigate every day!

[Mary York]

Jesus wept! Mr Newman, what planet are you from?

[Frank Upton]

If everyone parked sensibly and legally we wouldn't need traffic wardens and none of the incidents listed above would have happened. The fault lies with selfish drivers who are too lazy to walk a few yards and too tight to pay for a parking space.

[D]

Another incompetent and inconsiderate low life traffic warden slapped a parking ticket on my car, South London, when the parking sign clearly displayed parking was free after 20.30 hours on a Saturday! I appealed and won my case!!!

R Newman, what 'la la' land are you on?!

[Dave]

I was parked in Bromley, Kent some time ago in a residential street containing pay & display meters. None of them worked so I approached a warden and told him the problem, I then asked was it ok to stay or should I park elsewhere - he told me it was fine to stay and it would not be ticketed. When I got back...yes you've guessed it a ticket on my car. I appealed and apparently the warden denied all knowledge and so the fine was upheld...these people are sick!

[Jon Giddy]

I once had to skip breakfast at a London B&B to move my car at 8am. Got over the road to find the car had been booked at 8.01. The nearby warden even gave me a demonstration of how they use GPS for accurate time. I pointed out that the rest of us don't use GPS time, to no avail. However, since I now had the ticket, I figured I was safe for another hour, so went back inside for my breakfast. And eventually got the fine overturned.

Almost got booked last weekend while picking up some pregnant and elderly guests at a wedding, but kudos to the St Albans warden who exercised discretion rather than pedantry.

[Galahad]

Will Richard Newman please step forward and receive a new life.

[kerry]

This happened in Atlanta, GA.

A couple years ago, I saw a truck start smoking while driving through my school's campus. The driver stopped in a spot right across the street from where I was, and his truck caught on fire. Well, once the fire was out, the man had to wait a couple hours for a tow truck, so he walked down the street to go sit inside. Not 20 minutes after he walked away, one of the school's parking attendant put a ticket on his truck. Mind you, the whole front of the truck was burned up and there was no more windshield.

[Mike G]

My car was parked in front of my house when an ice storm hit. A car skid and hit my car. My car was destroyed. I had insurance coverage for my loss. However it took the insurance company about four days to send a tow truck to pick up the car. My wrecked car was ticketed three times because I didn't move it on days designated for street cleaning. I went to a hearing and the judge gave me a "3 for 1". In other words, I had to pay one ticket and the other two were dismissed. That's parking ticket justice in NYC.

[Jim]

At the time of my contact with the amoeba brained parking control clerk I was a Police Detective working on a forgery case. I had to go to the bank in a neighboring city, Denver, to get bank records. I parked my unmarked police vehicle, with a placard that said Official Police Business on the dashboard, in a metered zone. I came back and found the Denver parking control clerk just walking away from putting a summons on my police car. I told him that he had just written a ticket on a police vehicle. I asked him if he did not see the placard stating that this was a police vehicle and that I was on official business. His response? I don't look, I just write them....

[PA Manchester]

Reference example 7 and the bus.
The instruction to issue was given by a council employee who is in charge of Parking Attendants. Manchester City Council went into total denial and blamed the PA. The PA never was retrained but neither was the Council Officer actually at fault

[random]

"The parking war is part of the far left's campaign to make life difficult for the class enemy, drivers."

Never assume a conspiracy when incompetence is a more likely answer. The reverse assumption makes one sound downright foolish.

[Peter]

What a lot of humourless respondents who don't realise that Mr Newman's comment was a spoof. Did they really think that anyone could seriously write such jargon-laden piffle? Come on, lighten up!

Or .. dreadful as it may be to contemplate ..could he be serious?

No... no way.

[Richard Newman]

Obviously these actual parking tickets were ludicrous, and an example of a system that is broken. My point is to illustrate that by attacking the wardens, the majority of contributors have the wrong target. By moving the responsibility of revenue collection to private companies whose stated aim is to maximise profits, the councils have created a situation where this was inevitable. As to the rabid Thatcherite buffoons that responded to my post, thank you for illustrating my other point so well.

[Asbjoern Gabrielsen]

It's not just i the UK you get parking tickets.
Here is my little story, from Norway.

I used to work as a taxi driver in a small town outside the city of Narvik in northern norway. We had a contract with the local hospitals to carry pasients to and from appointments.

At one occasion I was about to leave Narvik with a pasient from an eye clinic and another from the hospital in my car. The hospital had already given me instructions to leave, but reached me in the last minute. I was called back by the hospital to pick up yet another pasient before I left the city.

Whilst going inside to find and notify the pasient I had arrived and to carry her bag out to the car, I got a ticket. The fact that had I two more passengers and a collegue outside trying to explain the situation, didn't matter. The warden turned her back on me and told me i had to appeal, while hurrying away.

Hospital entrance, summonnot in anybodys way and fw moments stop. This should have been an easy appeal, you might think. No.

The local council did not waive the 500 NOK ticket, so I had to take it to court if I wanted justice. So I did, and won.

My expenses for an attorney alone cost them close to 11.000 NOK, and of course they had to waive the ticket.

Asbjoern Gabrielsen
Bergen, Norway

[warren sherwin]

While renovating a local historic pub in Bolton Town Centre " The Swan Hotel", the building contractors had a special dispensation to park outside. This did not prevent over zealous Traffic warden's issuing tickets.

Initially the building supervisor would go to the town hall & get the tickets annulled. However in the end it was taking to much of his time & more cost effective to pay up.

When the bar reopened photo's of the offending wardens were to be placed over the bar with the words "Your barred underneath"

[ANNA]

RICHARD NEWMAN I HAVE ONE QUESTION "ARE YOU A TRAFFIC WARDEN?"

[Laura Roberts]

The fault lies with selfish drivers who are too lazy to walk a few yards and too tight to pay for a parking space.

POSTED BY: FRANK UPTON | 6 MAR 2008 14:54:28

And pray tell Frank, how I was at fault when I moved into a ticket space in Camden at 8.50am, immediately purchased a ticket and displayed it (all watched by a traffic warden) and walked off (with a slightly uncomfortable feeling about the traffic warden), only to return later to find a ticket which falsely claimed my car had been in that space for 20 minutes before I actually ever got there (I had validly been parked further up the road at that time in a residents bay). I was fined for parking in a pay and display space without a valid ticket. The charge was a complete and utter lie. I appealed. My appeal was rejected with the explanation "our wardens cannot make tickets up".

Oh yes they damn well can. I was NOT there. The warden watched me, and no doubt prepared her ticket as I was buying my pay and display ticket. They are con men and women and it is a sheer money making scam.

[Gill]

I'd have put money on Richard Newman being a Labour supporter, just from the pompously puritanical tone of his first post. Happily, his most recent comment about the reponses from "Thatcherite buffoons" proves my point.

[Laura Roberts]

"My point is to illustrate that by attacking the wardens, the majority of contributors have the wrong target." - Richard Newman

No you are wrong. They exchange their labour for a wage. For that trade, they hold the responsibility to execute their job to the standards required, and using their brains to make the decisions they are hired to make.

If they are incapable/too unintelligent/corrupt/seemingly wholly deficient in every human way possible to make such correct decisions or behave to the standard required, they should not be in the role. If the individual is not upholding the terms of the trade into which they voluntarily entered, they should be sacked.

[Dominic]

Several years ago I was given a ticket by a policeman. My crime was to park in a close which served nothing but a school on a Saturday when the school was closed and no-one there. I and several others were playing a football match in the park next to it. At 3.01pm we were ticketed!

Getting things the wrong way round I paid and then wrote to the Chief Constable of Dorset - he clearly took the same dim view that I did, apologised for what had happened, said that those responsible would be spoken with, but pointed out that once I had paid there was nothing that could then be done about it.

[R. Levene]

Richard Newman, you sanctimonious fool. Never have I heard such nonsense in my life.

[J.Bell]

I think I agree with Mr Newman, if only I could understand what he was on about...

[tcordrey]

There was a story in the Ham and High about a year ago. A chap with a false leg stopped his car after his false leg fell off while driving. He pulled over to the side on a yellow line to re-attach his leg. And yes, in those few minutes he got a parking ticket despite explaining the situation to the traffic warden.

[saedlebaebe]

OMG! It all sounds horrendous!
We only have weirdo driver's who park on both sides of the road, effectively narrowing the road to one lane -no lines- and totally disobey the rules and park on the edge of road turnings etc, and the local police do NOTHING!

Fortunately for them, we don't have traffic wardens near us...

[Elizabeth]

Come on, Richard Newman, admit which one of the ten parking tickets referred to you wrote. (That's the only sensible explanation for the lack of common sense your message shows.)

[Ann]

If Richard Newman exercised his own brain for a second, instead of indulging in mouth-foaming left-wing drivel as he did, he might (I am not saying he would, but he might) just see what a load of pathetic nonsense his post is. Anyone who slaps a ticket on a bus stopped to take on passengers is too stupid to get out of the house, never mind be entrusted with council tax payers' money.

[Ann]

I would rather ask: is the rabid Richard Newman really old enough to use his mummy's computer?

[Vanessa]

Laura, I had the exact same experience with Camden Council. They claimed we hadn't paid and displayed and gave us a link to see our 'offending' parked car. It was quite hilarious to see (in their photo) a clear parking meter 'sticky' above our steering column, on the windscreen. The letter from Camden said as it was our first offence they would waive it, with no mention made to THEIR photo that proved THEM wrong. They also suggested the next time that we stick the parking meter ticket to the window. HUH?

[Ann]

Laura, they have a system of incentives. Of course they make them up. But regardless of the incentives, most of them are too dumb to get out of a wet paper bag. Even ambulances are ticketed. The blame for employing such people lies strictly with the greedy and useless politicians who run local councils.

[L.Elliott]

One New Year's Eve I parked my car on a residential street in London and bought a ticket which expired at 6.29pm. Rather than put another pound into the machine, I thought I'd risk 60 seconds of illegality. Sure enough when I returned to my car there was a parking ticket on it, issued at 6.29pm. The warden must have been hovering around until he or she could issue it!

[tony webb]

I have managed to get a parking ticket indicating that my car was parked, illegally, 5 mins into the future. I even managed to drive to the local police station in under 5mins & get the officer on duty to check his watch & verify that the car parked outside the police station was, according to the local traffic warden, still illegally parked in the High St. I still had to pay the fine though. That was in Britain.
By way of contrast, I recently had to pay & disply in Germany & as the wretched machine only tkes a maximum of 1€uro 50 (for 2 hours parking) & I only had a 2 €uro coin I needed to get some change which the parking warden on the bike just down the road was only to happy to give me.
I suspect the difference is that in Britain they are under-paid, under-trianed barely literate imbeciles & in Germany they aren't.
But as the German Govt is basically a bunch of evil Socialists the British system is clearly the better eh?

[peter fossey]

If parking wardens had anything going on in the top storey they wouldn,t be traffic wardens.

[peter fossey]

Cannot stoop low enough to comment.

[F Williams]

After a weekend away I parked my car a couple of streets away from my flat in Wandsworth. I had a permit for that area and it was within the parking bay. I returned a couple of days later to find a ticket on my car, frowning I picked up the ticket wondering why I had one. 'Vehicle was parked out of the parking bay' or words to that affect. The lines indicating the end of the parking bay had been deleted and had [very obviously] been painted under my car [they were only a foot in]. Not having the time or money to fight the case I paid the fine, however, I did go to the bank, got £40 out in coppers and then empty them all into a bag,and emptied them all over the lovely Wandsworth council's counter, dropping the ticket on top. 'Have a nice day,' I said as I
walked out grinning. Childish, I know, but it did feel like a minor victory.

[Justine]

Check this one out from my hometown,Stirling,Scotland:

UPSIDE DOWN TICKET LEADS TO FINE.

A motorist has been fined £35 for displaying her parking ticket upside down.
Stirling Council said that although the £3.50 ticket was displayed, wardens could not read it.

They claim Marie McGrath was fined because she broke the car park conditions.

Ms McGrath, of Tullibody near Stirling, was fined in January after parking at the temporary railway station car park at Forthside.

She said: "I found the fine on my windscreen and noticed the ticket was upside down.

"I thought it was clear I had made an attempt to display a ticket but when I contacted the council with evidence about it they ignored it and then ended my appeal process.

"I think the council could show a bit of common sense. I've got the ticket to prove I had bought one. It's not like I was intending to defraud them or looking to deliberately park illegally."

A Stirling Council spokeswoman said: "The conditions of use of our car parks, clearly displayed at each car park entrance, indicate that a valid ticket must be displayed within the vehicle.

"In this case a ticket was displayed but it was not possible for the car park attendants to determine whether or not it was valid so an excess charge notice was correctly served.

"It is the responsibility of the vehicle owner to comply with the conditions of use."

[MikeL]

I work in Manchester city centre and have noticed a red mondeo that regularly parks on a section of double yellows that have been tarred or painted over, just about the length of the car. I have also noticed that the very same car has had numerous tickets posted on it. The point is that this driver is obviously a 'Savvy' customer for he must know that legally the tickets are void, so the moral of this story is get yourself wised up and carry a tin of black paint in your boot!

[Alex Caldin]

My Nan and her friend parked in a disabled bay in town. They both have the blue badge a duly placed one in the windscreen.
When they came back from shopping they had a parking ticket. The reason? The blue badge was upside down- that is the symbol was on it's head, not that the back was showing. I guess the traffic warden couldn't turn their head!?! She had to pay the fine.

[D Hart]

F Williams - genius! I have been so frustrated at the brick wall that greeted me as I was trying to sort out a fine for £180 because I never received the initial penalty notice, that when I do finally have to pay my fine (be it the original £60, or the inflated £180), I will almost certainly follow your lead!

The most annoying thing about this, is the sense of how unfair it all is. Most of us are honest, law-abiding folk who either make a small mistake or are treated totally unfairly. By contrast, the police caught a kid red-handed with my scooter that he had nicked and totally trashed. What was his fine? Nothing. Instead I lost my no-claims bonus and was charged a £200 excess. The whole system is disproportionate.

[John Grove]

When called into the intensive care unit at Sheffield Childrens hospital to attend the death of our 3 year old son. A hospital with no parking facilities. We were taken home after the death however when a relative went to pick up the car he found a parking ticket for overstaying. We were just too shattered to do anything but pay up

[John the wardens friend]

Intereting that Mike G (6th March)felt that it was OK to park his car illegaly in Denver because he was collecting some bank records on 'official police business'. What is the difference between him going about his non emergency work and anybody else who needs to park their car. People who think that signs stating 'Working in such and such building' stuck in their van windows lets them off paying for parking are the same. When I have to collect bank records,or I am working in my office, or anybody else's, I have to abide by the parking rules. The police use the 'official police business' excuse and think that there is one rule for them and another for everybody else.

[Rob]

Strange that none of them show up at all on a Google search.

[Tom Fotheringham]

I had a parking ticket from this Wychavon District Council they speak of. I refuted the ticket but ended up paying £500 in fines, including a bill for bailiffs turning up to my previous address! If you absolutely have to go to Pershore, make sure you travel by train, then forget to get off.

[Ian]

Picking up dry cleaning, we parked in the loading bay outside the dry cleaners. When we returned to the car with the dry cleaned goods minutes later, we had received a ticket. We appealed using as evidence the timed till receipt showing that we were in the dry cleaners paying for the dry cleaning at the time the ticket was issued. The authority replied that we were indeed legally parked while carrying the goods from the dry cleaners to the car but that since loading does not include paying we were illegally parked during the time that we were handing money to the dry cleaner. The dry cleaner has gone out of business.

[christine marshall]

I am just waiting for the car to be invented that will just fold up like a handbag when I pull up and I'll take it with me.

[Peter Fordham, Spain]

OK Guy's you have the solution in your own hands, in May you will have the Local elections, just make a point of voting out every sitting Council member and tell the local paper why. I moved to Spain to escape the totalitarian British political system, they park anywhere here but life carries on, and the sun shines.

[Susan]

Idiocy is, unfortunately, international. I live in a major city in Australia and have several times been ticketed for parking on my own property!
I have an off-street park in a lane behind the flats. The building next door's parks are "Permit" zones, whereas ours are not. Ours are clearly marked as "Private Property", yet I still have had tickets for "Parking without a permit" and have had to go through a full written submission process to get them overturned.
These same wardens however, won't ticket people who take our private car parks because they are too lazy or too cheap to find one on the street. The reason? "It's private property. There's nothing we can do!" Grrr...

[Anne]

My 80 year old mother in law bought a ticket in a pay and display car park and stuck it on the windscreen. When she got back, she'd got a fine, quite hefty, because the ticket had fallen off the windscreen. She showed the parking ticket to the council and explained it had fallen off. They still made her pay the fine.

[Tim Bartlett]

It is pretty self-evident that parking attendants issue huge numbers of bogus parking tickets, on the basis that many or most people will pay up rather than go through the biased "appeals" procedure.If anyone else did it, it would be called fraud. (Oh, no, hang on, the police do much the same thing to drivers - and they get away with it, too)

[carl]

I live in Bristol. After 6 it is £1.60 to park for over 2 hours. I arrived at 5:50 so put in 50p for the 10 mins to 6, then got another ticket for £1.60 on the wardens advice (as it paid the required fees). I noted his name as he was so helpful, only to come back 3 hours later to find he had put a ticket on my car. Needless to say I got the ticket cancelled after about 6 calls to the council.

All I can say is that his parents must not have been married....

[Andrew]

For: Susan ((12 Mar 2008 22:09:30))

Surley, if you have the pay and display ticket, and the parkin fine, they should see the 2 times will overrun..?
e.g:
Pay And Display Ticket: 18:00pm - 20:00pm (2Hrs)
Fine Issued: 19:37pm??

_Regards, Andrew.

[Hugh E Winthrop]

Reading all the stories from around the world about the quality people policing parking explains why in San Diego, California, USA, we refer to them as "The Parking Gestapo"

[Henry]

Don't use a car, go by bike and you won't get parking tickets

[David Peters]

A man with 2 young children parks in a bay. A warden is standing nearby. The man takes the children from the car and walks with them to the ticket machinea few yards away. The warden issues a parking fine ... because the time stamp on the ticket is a few seconds over the three minutes allowed.

[steve]

I got a parking ticket addresed to me and I don't even drive or own a car?

[Guy]

A few weeks ago during a dark evening I observed a Redbridge local authority vehicle driving along the road and stopping occasionally to issue tickets to illegally parked cars.
They were obviously more concerned about revenue than road safety because they carried on their task even after I had pointed out that one of their headlights wasn't working.

[AnneMarie]

I've just spent the last 1/2 hour reading various examples of inept ticket officers harassing people by issuing tickets. And after reading David's last entry, I now know that these people should be referred to from now on as "the dream police".

Too difficult to believe!!!!

TTFN

[Andrew Johnson]

Civil Enforcement Officers ?? So they think they are CEOs ? Who died and made them CEO's ?

[John]

Bikes aren't an option for journeys of more than about 10 miles. Councils do seem to think that the answer to parking is to limit the parking available, not increase it to match the cars. Net effect - ghost towns, and large out of town shopping centres
with free parking, owned by private companies, who charge the shops not the customers. That way they get more people just browsing.

[jon sang]

Recent Television news confirmed that nearly 80% of appeals against tickets issued by westminster council are successful! How can local government can be allowed to go wrong in 80% of times? This clearly shows that they want to raise money betting that most people wont appeal and thos who do- no harm if they are successful.
Also council give contracts to private companies with whom council has targets. You can ask parking attendents working in Ealing area how they are treated by thier private employer if they have managed less than 6 tickets on that day? Ealing council has asked them to do nearly 600 tickets a day.That is not the case in case of Hammersmith where parking attendents are employed directly by council.

[Graham]

In Perth Western Australia, a ticket was given to an unmarked police vehicle for parking on the pavement. Fair enough you might say, even the police should park their vehicles appropriately. What the parking warden failed to take into account was the fact the police were responding to an armed robbery at a nearby bank. Of course the fact the engine was still running, the blue light was still flashing and the police were in fact wrestling with the offender only a few metres away might have offered some clues. Fortunately the local council exercised common sense and withdrew the ticket.

Obviously parking wardens are the same the world over.

[mike sanders]

Shame on all of you especially Mr. Newman I have wasted the last 40 minutes reading these hilarious stories, now my day is totally out of whack but a good laugh is so good for the system. Power to the People as Wolfie used to say.
Things are just as bad here in Hong Kong, if there is not a parking sign then you cannot park, easy eh??

[Davey]

I live in Cornwall where parking in council car parks used to be free after 6pm and free all of Sunday. On a Saturday night I would drive down to town, park and have a few beers at half price during Happy Hour. Afterwards I would walk home. On Sundays I would walk back to the car then drive to a car boot sale. All perfectly legal and very economical - well it was until the thieving council made the car park not free on Sundays and ticketed me for £40. Worst of all the ONLY notification was a two inch square label on the ticket machine which you don't go to if you know it is free. The same stunt was pulled in nearby Holsworthy where a large number of churchgoers were targetted. Money grabbing council little hitlers deserve to be shot at dawn. No wonder so many shops are boarded up but the council idiots just cannot grasp the fact that cars bring people who spend money. Of course the council officials index linked pensions are guaranteed even if towns become ghost towns.
On much the same theme, a Plymouth scoundrel made up a sign "Bonfire Night, Free Parking For Firework Display" and placed it in the old Charles Cross multi story car park. Caught hundreds with this scam. Do car park attendants get bonuses for issuing tickets?

[Ignatz Horowitz]

Dang...some o' ya'll sound like 'Mericans.

[Don Simpson]

My car got stolen. The thief parked it in someone's driveway while they stole another car. My car was ticketed. I never received a copy of the ticket, when I went to register my car 8 months later, I could not, because of the outstanding ticket. 5 HOURS on the phone with various cops later, I unloaded on a Captain, and the ticket disappeared.

[Jersey Jerry]

Can't you see? Its just another tax!!

[shripad sathe]

wonderful.
we need parking attendants who have some brains in them and possibl educated to GSCE's...or get some attendants who dont have targets and some humanity in them!

[Andy]

For what it's worth, Richard, amongst all the venom being expressed by the carparking brigade, I agree with every word in your first post.

And to the rest of you: how many of you indulge in my pet hate - parking on the pavement ? My bet would be the vast majority, and most of you will be using the well-worn excuse that it frees up the road for other drivers. Pillocks, the whole lot of you.

[Jon R]

I fear that Richard Newman must be on speed. What a load of absolute tosh. You cannot defend a warden slapping a ticket on a bloody horse, it's blatant lunacy. Especially not in that pompous manner.

"the 'flexible labour markets' orthodoxy that the right wing ideologues expound so heartily" ... WHAT THE HELL DO YOU TAKE, MAN?! (and can I have some?!)

[mr shifter]

do people really wonder why these little hitlers are faced with violence when they give tickets such as the above?
another example of what is wrong with this country

[Andy Barnes]

And it's train ticket inspectors too! I was lynched by two of them while I was at an excess fares window, making good my fare before leaving the station! His name was John Hailey and he should be ashamed of himself.

[Albert Ang]

Sometimes ago in Melbourne, the parking inspector made into the news headline because he fined a man who died inside the car in local shopping center.

Read the complete story at:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/dead-parked-and-fined-and-no-one-noticed/2005/10/21/1129775962019.html

[Pete Collins]

Newman, you miss the whole point of the free market. Thing is, its entirely based on logic, which I understand that you and your kin have difficulty making sense of, poor things.

Outsourced services like parking enforcement under the free market system do not need to be broken. The free market frees the employer from the difficulties of the detail of management. This suits most businesses, even councils, since it becomes someone elses problem to hire and fire employees in these modern times of the 'empowered' employee who to be frank is a pain in the butt to be legally tied to. Its best if youre a businessman (or council) to not directly employ - you can change staff and lay staff off much easier under this model allowing you to quickly adjust to the seasonal variations in demand and resources and retain high value for money for your customers (borough residents).

This is however no excuse to then forget to manage your contracts once youve outsourced them. These councils are in a perfect position to strictly manage the outsourced services with little effort, simply by reevaluating the contracts periodically. Changing supplier from time to time to demonstrate youre serious about performance, specifying the quality of service you require and specifying the 'rules' (in this case the rules of ticketing) means the company who holds on to your trade is the one that regularly QAs their services themselves and stays on top of their business.

Its really very simple, and its why you are able to buy all of the high quality services you as a British consumer undoubtedly do. Its a matter of value for money, and that comes from strong competent management, which has to come from the top. Sadly the one link in this chain that fails with respect to council outsourced services is the top link, the relationship between the council and the service provider company. This is not the fault of the private service provider, its the fault of the next step up, the individual in the council who, probably due to lack of exposure to real business, has no idea of how to run a contract.

[Pecos Bill in Denver CO USA]

And people in the UK wonder why we are lawsuit happy????? Interesting note: the Denver Boot was invented here. Don't know if you use them in the UK but they securely immobilise one wheel thus the car. Done to cars that failed to pay their fines. Not too long ago the city stopped using them as too many required repairs from people trying to get them off. It seems we have very lax parking enforcement here and our finds are not nearly so outrageous.

@Mike G of NYC: Bill your insurance corp.

[william tapley]

Oh dear.

I can only agree that Richard Newman and his witless sidekick - Frank Upton - are both Labour supporters and therefore do not bear listening to. Nor are their opinions of any relevance to the daily life in the UK.

As to Parking Attendants...the scourge of our age. Apart from the few who do have brain cells that work and the discretion that follows. These 'good' PAs have usually lived in the UK for a few or more years and therefore have some affinity with the country and the people. I cannot stand getting tickets from people who can barely speak English.

All that said, TfL surpassed themselves recently when awarding me with a parking fine, via a camera, when I was stopped in traffic! I had to waste far too much of my time 'appealing' - which they rejected ad nauseum. I have refused to pay and signed a Stutory Declaration to the effect that the PCN was a load of cobblers.

It's moronic government agencies like TfL that wantonly employ moronic brainless Parking Attendants.

And here lies the second problem of publicly financed spongers...

[Alex]

Richard Newman - you need a girlfriend.

[jane]

Is Richard Newman a traffic warden?

[God]

Correction, Alex. Richard Newman needs a friend.

[Abraham Goldburg]

The parking tickets are nonsense enough. After reading the drivel written by those who reacted to the stories, I'm beginning to understand the genetic implications of thousands of years of breeding... on an island.

[alex smith]

In one word -Incentive. If an organisation is given the power to (a) make the law, and (b) gain financial benefit from it. What else do you expect. The councils should retain either the power to make the parking rules or get revenue from parking tickets and not both. What would happen if local magistrates were incentivized with a percentage of the fines they impose? Its not done for a reason and the same reasoning must be applied to parking too!

[miles davis]

WHAT I LOVE ARE THOSE SPEEDING HUMPS IN PARKING BAYS AT THE SIDE OF THE ROAD - FOR ALL THOSE SPEEDING PARKED CARS/ NICE -GIVE THEM A TICKET FOR SPEEDING .

why are islands placed in the middle of the road / -so moms with prams can go and stand there and be knocked down - nicer

[Gayle]

In Liverpool my car was parked legally on the street, someone stole someone elses car and crashed it into mine, the police subsequently towed it - but not before putting a parking ticket on it for causing an obstruction!! This all happened overnight so I knew nothing about it until a month after where they were demanding payment - I appealed and was successful but even so...

[Big Paul]

Re : Parking Attendants - As Arnold Rimmer once said of the Inland Revenue (after receiving a past due notice) : "Three million years and the whole human race dead? That means nothing to these people".

I'm now moving along lest posting this comment takes too long and I receive a ticket....

[Alex]

What annoys me most is the attitude that it is fine to catch people out. Logic states that if parking is illegal in a certain place, it is because it causes an obstruction or menace. Therefore if a warden catches you red handed, they should instruct you not to park there and remove the obstruction you have caused. By letting the obstruction stay and then putting a ticket on it doesn't solve the problem and so they cannot be reasonably said to be doing their job. All these cases above show that parking fines are clearly just a tax and far from being thick, most of these wardens are actually just being cunning and enjoying their little power trip, knowing they will get away with it. The appeals system needs to be less biased in the wardens favour. If you have a good reason why the warden was wrong and have proof, why should you have to pay? I also suggest that if your appeal is successful, the warden who ticketed you should then be boiled

[Ivan Tan]

Judging by the invective that Richard Newman has attracted, I would surmise that he must be some sort of "manager".....

[Brian]

I own two motorbikes, which I left parked in a motorcycle bay in Westminster side by side (and chained together). I parked on Sunday evening, went to check on the bikes Monday evening, to find a ticket. Why? Parking had been suspended in that bay monday morning despite there being no notices Sunday evening when I parked there.

The kicker: I appealed both tickets, and WON ONE BUT LOST THE OTHER!

[John S]

Since the Victorian Govt (Australia) made councils more self sufficient, they have relied on Parking fines. One day, walking down Toorak Rd South Yarra, and small car parked legally was noticed by a parking inspector with the occupant asleep in the drivers seat. The inspector marked the tire, and walked over the street, and waited for 5 minutes. On his return, he put a Parking Ticket on the car, and wandered off. At the end of the day, the occupant was still asleep, and we decided to call the police, they discovered he had died some time during the day of a heroin overdose......

[jim]

The country's going to the dogs. We need a proper Prime Minister unlike those pillocks Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. I wonder if Jeremy Clarkson is interested.....

[ClarksonforPrimeMinister.co.uk]

Go on, let's get the man in...It couldn't possibly be worse. The real thieves are the MP's who won't tell us how they spend our taxes...No wonder Mugabe and co carry on like they do.....legitimised corruption by the white man in Westminster..."woo hoo , let's get some of it", theuy say to each other.

[Sara Haydon]

Having filled out all the forms and paid nearly £200 to Camden Council, the resident parking outside my previous house was blocked off for "the purpose of domestic removal" MINE. While my furniture was being loaded into a very large removal van (International size) the lorry was given several parking tickets and then a warden called the tow truck....the reason: the bay was suspended for Domestic Removal....on the side of the lorry: A1: DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL MOVERS. Perhaps it is time for councils to only employ wardens who can READ

[Keithw]

The above reports make me wonder what sort of selection process the parking wardens go through to become a parking warden ?
Do any candidates fail selection and judging by these successful candidates who passed, what criteria do they fail applicants on.

[michael reed]

I have watched the traffic wardens park opposite a fish and chip shop in Sandgate Kent then issue tickets while the hungry workers ordered their lunch. On yellow lines yes, but not right to lie in wait to earn their own meal ticket.

[Joseph]

My wife received a parking ticket for parking on a double red line. She demanded to see the photograph, whch showed her parked in a marked bay outside a shop. She spoke to Transport for London or whomever,pointing out there hadn't been red lines here for at least three years. TfL insisted there were red lines and told us to go to court. We went and won, but why should we have to go through that waste of our time?