Parking outside the House!

I cannot quite believe it but my daughter has received a letter from Andy Reed MP for Charnwood informing her that our battle to stop the traffic Taliban from issuing parking tickets to our friends, family and neighbours when they park outside the house has been won!!

Apparently the enforcement officer at Charnwood Borough Council has agreed that although the double yellow lines exist we are not in fact committing any actual offence. Our tickets have been cancelled and we can now go back to normal.

I am very grateful for the help and support that I received from my County Councillor Peter Lewis and my two Borough Councillors David Walker and Ron Jukes.
I would also like to thank Ian Selby from Andy Reed's constituency office who has also had an input. I do not know who said what to whom but obviously something has worked and I can only say a big thank you.

Parking outside the House!

Our struggle to confront the local street wardens who continue to ticket householders who park on a strip of tarmac they have used for 25 years continues. Yesterday my daughter and I met with MP Andy Reed and his aide Ian Selby and were given a fair hearing.

Yesterday I also received E-Mails from our local councillors and they are all being really supportive. This is a battle against 'Jobsworth' council officials who believe that can bully us into submission. We now have the support of two Borough Councillors, a County Councillor and our MP.

The problem is that if they fail then we know that any election is useless because if Councillors are overruled by officials then, even though there are legal precedents,then why do we vote?

If we succeed however, then I will write to the 'Loughborough Echo' and give credit where credit is due. I am now hopeful.

Parking outside the House!

On the 1st of October I blogged about the tyrranical approach to parking outside of my house by Charnwood Borough Council on behalf of Leicestershire County Council. Things took a strange turn last week when a local builder who was carrying out an extension for a neighbour had two of his vehicles ticketed on the same day!

Can you believe that? It means that seven households cannot improve their houses because if they do then their contractors will get their vehicles booked for parking on a strip of tarmac which was originally put down for parking purposes. We have parked on this strip of tarmac for 25 years without any recourse. It was only after the local council took over the responsibility for parking enforcement that the parking attendants arrived in force.

It is cheap! It is easy! We are revenue generators for a bullying local authority. On Friday my daughter and I meet with our local MP, Andy Reed, to seek his support. Oh dear, I used to know Andy when he was employed by Leicestershire County Council and I have to say that he was a really nice man. I was so pleased when he was elected in 1996...what have the years in between done? We will wait and see.

Parking outside the House!

I bought my house almost twenty five years ago because the mortgage runs out next year. In all of this time we have parked one car in the driveway and one on the frontage. Suddenly in July my daughter and my wife received a flurry (two each in two days) of tickets for parking outside of the house.

It has subsequently transpired that in March 2009 a notice was placed in the local paper that passed the enforcement of parking regulations from the police to the council. Seven households are affected by this change of enforcement because we are the houses who have double yellow lines outside the house. The rest of the road (200 yards) can still park on the extended tarmac surface off the road and infront of their houses. There is no obstruction to pedestrians, no obstruction of view and no danger to anyone but the council have decided to prosecute. Only seven households are affected but nobody informed us.

We got annoyed. This charge is unfair because we have conducted our lives in accordance with the police attitude to this strip of tarmac. We had our drive paved and if we had known that we could not park on the tarmac outside of the house then we would have created three parking spaces.

There is a legal precedent which supports the defence that if no problem has occurred despite the legal white lines then people should not be prosecuted. We are fortunate that we have, in our family, someone who is well versed in the law and he is advising us.

These penalties are unfair. These penalties are a ludicrous attempt by the local authority to revenue generate from seven families. The press will soon be involved if common sense does not prevail. The battle lines are drawn.

Hazel Blears

Is he really surprised that her car was vandalised? I am just surprised that her ego allows her to appear amongst the working class. She was so lucky that it was only her car. She is a major part of an organisation which has conned, ignored, abused and reneged on the British working class.

Little 'Chipmunk' seems to believe that she is immune to the link to Brown, Blair and Mandelsson. She is as part of their abuse, the racket designed to keep the British working class in their place. She was very lucky today, which is probably why she was cowering in her car, because some of the others who think that they have a 'connection' with a public may fair far worse.

They have created this culture of fear and violence because of their ignorance and their inability to recognise that most of the public don't want their policies (what policies).

I have just visited, Spain, France, Italy and Portugal and nowhere did I find the Soviet style authoritisation that we face in this country. The police in this country have become an arm of the state and even us at a local level face the problem. The Meldrew family are about to become embroiled in a legal battle against Council harrassment.

Watch this space!

Charnwood Borough Council

Well guess what? My local council has lost a computer and all of our personal details have been made public to anyone who wants them! Are we really surprised? The local government officials of today are a travesty of those from yesteryear. So now what should happen and what will happen?

What should happen is that the Chief Executive should resign. He/she is obviously not fit to hold the position. It is a national disgrace which brings dishonour to all of us. If we cannot trust the people at Southfields to guard our personal details then where do we go next? There is obviously nothing of integrity left in the people who survive purely on what we pay in Council Tax. They simply do not care.

What will happen is that the CEO will refuse to resign and will be backed up by all the councillors who we stupidly voted for at the last election. NONE of them will demand his/her resignation. Nobody will question his/her suitability for the job which he/she should have lost the minute this computer was discovered.

If they do not sack the ridiculously high earning official who was found out to be incompetent then what is the point of anything? After all our bank details are almost the most precious possession that we have. If the council officials are so incompetent that they allow this information to be auctioned off on EBay then hell where do we go from here?

Now we should all demand that the Chief Executive must resign. He is obviously (sorry) a total twat. The Head of the department who committed this atrocity should also go and so should anyone else in the chain of command down to this computer.

I mean for Gawd's sake how does a council computer come to be auctioned on EBay?!! Who authorised that and why?!

Yeah I know that the reality of local government in 2008 when they are all overpaid and protected means that nothing will happen. Nobody will be regarded as culpable and nobody will be sacked because if one goes then they all go!

I look forward to the letters column in the Loughborough Echo this week!