Nuxx:3ec3651b-2c93-465b-8cd3-60b1c01d76a6@s50g2000hsb.googlegroups.com

Path: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!s50g2000hsb.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3ec3651b-2c93-465b-8cd3-60b1c01d76a6@s50g2000hsb.googlegroups.com> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Disabled woman fined for permit slip-up: DISGUSTING Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 17:44:45 -0700 (PDT) Lines: 119 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.105.236.138 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1256 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1209775485 8120 127.0.0.1 (3 May 2008 00:44:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 3 May 2008 00:44:45 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: s50g2000hsb.googlegroups.com; posting-host=88.105.236.138; posting-account=7_6kYAkAAABD6HrjM0VxehwvZOKMxm4g User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008032620 Firefox/3.0b5,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Bytes: 7052 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:826481

DISGUSTING. It may be "just one incident", but it is a DIRECT result of the greedy, anti-motorist, "decriminalised" parking enforcement that we have now been lumbered with in so many areas. This would never happen under police enforcement, which is a decent, honest system where keeping traffic moving is the main aim and discretion is applied in cases like this. But under the "decriminalised" system, where revenue and motorist persecution are the aims, and ticket targets are set, we have a constant torrent of DISGUSTING incidents like this one.

That poor woman. Think about how difficult things must be for her already, without this sort of nonsense. Something tells me that the trolls, who were so keen to have a go at Paul Smith for supposedly discriminating against disabled people, won't be so sympathetic to this woman. "The nerve of her," think the trolls, "choosing to drive when she should be cycling and using buses. She, like every other motorist, deserves to get huge fines for effectively nothing, as a punishment for daring to drive at all." Callous, hateful, ridiculous bastards.

For most people, the myriad of anti-motorist measures that we are subjected to are simply inconvenient (albeit very inconvenient in some cases), not that that makes it remotely OK. For some, they are financially ruinous, which is pretty bad. But for this poor, helpless woman, they are nothing short of criminally inhumane. It's DISGUSTING, and those trolls who support the systematic persecution of motorists (whether old or young, disabled or fit) are DISGUSTING as well.

It's all very well saying or thinking "The anti-motorist stuff should only apply to able-bodied people", but while we have this automated, conveyer belt, uncaring, unforgiving, heartless, motorist-persecuting, revenue-raising system which is deliberately designed to catch people out for the tiniest mistakes (and often not even that), disabled people, old people, vulnerable people and everyone else (except those with unregistered cars...that's fair) will ALWAYS get caught up in it. The only way to stop it is to stop treating motorists like shit. Because the way that this defenceless, hapless woman (who has quite enough problems to deal with already, and who society should be helping rather than punishing) was bullied is DISGUSTING.

And even when they appealed to the council, their appeal was rejected, so the trolls can't even make the excuse that it was a "mistake" or an "overzealous parking attendant". Either the council automatically rejects appeals without looking at them, or they looked at the case and still rejected the appeal. Either way, I don't see how anyone can say decriminalised parking is not an anti-motorist system, and I don't see how anyone can say it's anything but DISGUSTING. It's cases like this which show that those trolls who claim that there are no anti- motorist measures are not only preposterous liars, but are also utterly heartless. As long as motorists are being fucked over, they couldn't care less about people like this poor, frail woman.

I think it's DISGUSTING.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1921639/Disabled-woman-fined-for-permit-slip= -up.html

A traffic warden issued a =A335 ticket to an 82-year-old sufferer of Parkinson's disease, who was asleep in a car, because her disabled parking badge was upside down.

The car was legally parked in a disabled parking bay when Jean Raine felt unwell and took a rest.

While she was sleeping a parking warden noticed that her disabled parking disc was the wrong way up but rather than wake her to explain he simply stuck the penalty notice on her windscreen.

"I cannot understand why the parking attendant didn't wake me up. I wouldn't have got a ticket then," said Miss Raine, of Burton-in- Kendal, who was on a shopping trip in Kendal, Cumbria. Article continues advertisement

"He must have been on tip toes =96 so quiet that he didn't disturb me."

Miss Raine, a retired nurse, and Martin Westgarth, 88, her companion of 30 years, had been driven to Kendal by a neighbour, Pauline Gibson, to do their weekly shop.

Mr Westgarth and Mrs Gibson went shopping for 45 minutes and when they came back they found that a traffic warden for South Lakeland council had issued the ticket.

Mr Westgarth said: "Why did she get a ticket while she was sitting in the car? Because the card in the window that shows she was disabled, it turns out, was upside down.

"The person who put the ticket on the window didn't talk to Jean. You would have thought that he would have said something to her. This is intolerable.

"She was legally entitled to park the car where she was. Why should her right be taken away from her just because the card was upside down?

"We were in a disabled space. The disabled badge was valid. If this idiot, who pinched her, had spoken to her and said that the card was the wrong way round that could have been it."

Mrs Gibson agreed to drive them into town because Miss Raine and Mr Westgarth were both too poorly to drive.

The couple appealed to South Lakeland council but their appeal was rejected. In the end they paid the fine but are considering whether to take the case to an independent tribunal.

A council spokesman said: "We do not comment on individual cases. If anyone feels they have reason to challenge a penalty charge notice then they can appeal to the council in the first instance, followed by an appeal to an independent tribunal if they choose.

"Guidance notes issued with the badge and parking disc clearly state that it should be clearly and correctly displayed at all times."

A South Lakeland council parking warden was soaked with two buckets of water recently when he put a ticket on a fishmonger's van while it was being loaded outside a store in Kendal town centre.