22 June (Part 1) - It’s all about the money
The
indefatigable Mr. Mustard from Barnet in North London monitors and where
necessary fights unfair parking penalties. It’s his hobby which constantly threatens to become a full time job.
A case he noticed and has written about on his blog concerns 81 year
old Bexley resident Charles Devine. He was given a ticket after
paying £4·90 to leave his car in Bexleyheath’s Cinema car park.
Octogenarian he may be but is not the sort of man who takes such things lying down.
Ideally you should read
for the full story on Mr. Mustard’s blog but Google analytics tells me that BiB readers do
not usually follow links so I hope he will excuse me for providing the basics here.
Like me, Mr. Devine is less than confident with Smartphone apps and prefers to
use the phone for what the things were designed for. He called Ringo and spoke
to them in the old fashioned way, quoting the number plate in front of his eyeballs
at the time, but an F was recorded as an S.
My employment on International telephony at a time when most calls were
connected by operators impressed on me that those two letters are a bit of a
nightmare. Hence F for Frederick and S for Sugar. (Other industries used different codes.)
Bexley Council accepted that a fee was paid and at exactly the time that Mr. Devine
parked but was too stupid, vindictive, short of cash (take your pick) to
recognise the obvious. That their operator recorded Mr. Devine’s number incorrectly.
What other plausible explanation could there be?
But so stupid is Bexley Council that they allowed the case to go to the Adjudicator and deservedly lost.
Will someone in management at Bexley Council be shown the door for a proven lack
of commons sense and for wasting taxpayer’s money on adjudication fees? Of course not.