28 February (Part 2) - Pay to park by phone. Oh dear! Bexley Tories are lying again
I’m not sure who Tweedledum and Tweedledee are alluding to this time. It
can't be me, not only because of my fairly regular criticism of Labour
nationally, but also because the term ‘deeply unpopular’ has only been used
three times on Bonkers. Two occasions predated phone parking and the third was
about something else entirely.
Phone parking
came to Bexley in August 2011 when mobiles were not as ubiquitous as now. I
certainly didn’t own one.
In nine years of blogging the word unpopular, unqualified with deeply, has been used 22 times. Only
one of them referred to phone parking after Bexley's own parking
report had acknowledged that take up was poor and the News Shopper repeated the story.
Councillor Craske himself
acknowledged that take up was slow. At the then rate of progress it was
going to take 15 years for all of Bexley’s drivers to register. Fortunately
people gradually gained confidence in phone Apps. Even I have one on my phone, but only the one!
The Tweedle Brothers appear to have forgotten that in its infancy the mobile
phone payment system was failing to the extent Bexley Council had to change the contractor from
Bemrose to Ringo. The Labour supporter may have been right, the original phone scheme was very unpopular.
The News Shopper’s reporter certainly thought so.