10 April (Part 1) - Scamera hunting - (The NoToMob call it ‘$chunting’
After
finding no scamera cars in Bexleyheath or Welling over three hours yesterday I
wondered if they had been scared away from two of their most profitable areas.
Later my NoToMob contact told me one had been in Welling until about 08:30 but
that was before he got on the scene. I think there is a network of helpful
contacts living or working close to favoured scamera sites (the NoToMob jargon
is ‘honeypots’) but all of them reported a blank, even
Blackfen Road. They were still reporting “no cars” when I spotted the three
motorcyclists who had decided to tour the lesser known honeypots after finding
three cars missing from the pigpen (more NoToMob jargon). They got lucky in Long
Lane but the scamera operator immediately radio’d
NSL
for instructions and then went on a slow
time-wasting tour of residential streets which eventually led to
Walnut Tree Road, outside the old Erith Town Hall where there is a bus stop to
be watched. (See picture.) At 2:30 they escorted the gestapo wagon back to base
and NoToMob left for an appointment in Medway. NSL
knew that schunting was to finish at 2:30 and a gestapo wagon went to park outside
KFC in Welling immediately afterwards.
There have been more strange anti-motorist activities in other parts of town.
Tomorrow Bexley council is increasing parking charges and extending charging
periods to all night and Sundays in most car parks. All of that is documented in
official documents, but I am told that street parking signs that used to say
‘08.30 to 17:30’ have been augmented by more that say ‘08:30 to 18:30’ - and
then a few days later the new signs, but not their poles, were taken away. Such
a time extension is not listed in any of the council’s recent price hiking documents so I
have no idea why new signs should have gone up and then disappeared. Maybe Craske is due another
FOI.