Ticketing Travesties
Right – Funnily enough, this department is somewhat sparce this time around. If we included all the various bits and snippets from Page Four, they would fill an entire issue! – but bear in mind that those Couldn’t-make-it-ups that we usually run on Page Four may or may not be trade-related... usually not, if you count ladies from the WI who were told they could no longer tend the garden on a round- about because of the dangers of crossing the road, or the lady who couldn’t buy a fly swatter until she could prove she was over 18.
But we digress... We’ve had a couple of drivers who were fined for being kind to their passengers: in April it happened in Wrexham, when a driver was dropping off a mother and her two children at a multi-storey car park and pulled up for two minutes to get her pram out of the boot. Then in our May edition we featured a Birmingham driver who received a parking ticket while assisting a blind and dis- abled pensioner to get out of his vehicle. His ‘sin’ was not stopping on double yellows – where he would have been OK dropping off - but rather stopping within an area with a loading restriction. Being a Good Guy just doesn’t pay these days...
Now then, we’ve got an ongoing situation here: in our November issue we re- ported about the Teignbridge driver, Denise Said, who has been banned by her council from displaying a St George’s Cross sticker in her cab. She has been told by the council’s licensing department that they will refuse to re-license the vehicle in February unless she removes the sticker, which they believe that “it could discriminate against foreigners”. As we said at the time, the fact that a St George Cross was displayed is not at the heart of the issue; it is the words “Local Driver” on the same sticker about which a com- plaint was laid. We shall see... OK, so the runner-up in this category we believe should be the Plymouth taxi driver from the Decem- ber issue whose taxi broke down when the fan belt went, so he quite sensibly parked it on the road outside his repair garage at 5am – and promptly got a ticket at 5.57am. The driver and over 2,000 trade colleagues, who shared the news on Facebook, were especially up in arms because a council-run camera vehicle was parked up on double yellows in almost identical circumstances, and yet was not ticketed.
The driver was refusing to pay the fine on the basis of one rule for them, another for us... the usual. Without a shadow of a doubt the outright, hands-down winner for 2013 has got to be the driver from Bexleyheath, who claimed (in our April edition) that he’d been clobbered over the head with the ticketing machine being used by the local traffic warden. Would- n’t mind, but the driver was collecting an elderly passenger from their doctor’s surgery at the time... in other words, doing yet an- other good turn. When the passenger was late, the driver went inside to find her, at which point a ticket was issued to his PHV. In fact his injury was serious enough for him to be taken to hospital, and subsequently be signed off work for ten days; we don’t know what happened to the assailant. Unbelievable – but totally possible in this crazy industry of ours.
BEXLEYHEATH DRIVER CLAIMS WARDEN HIT HIM WITH TICKET MACHINE
A cabbie claims an angry traffic warden thumped him on the head with his ticket- ing machine in Bexleyheath. Forty-two-year-old Alieu Bah, a driver for Broadway Express, was collecting an eld- erly passenger from Albion Surgery, in Pin- cott Road, when he says the warden attacked him.
According to Mr Bah, the traffic warden was issuing him with the second £110 parking ticket in consecutive days when he was stopped outside the surgery on Feb 15.
With no sign of his 11am pick-up outside, Mr Bah says he went inside to find her and by the time he came out, a ticket was being issued to his blue Vauxhall minicab. Mr Bah, from Gravesend, told News Shopper: “I said why are you doing this to me?
“I was pleading to him, saying ‘don’t do that’ but he said I have already issued it. “I was pleading, say- ing please, please, please. We started to argue and then with the machine he was using to issue the
ticket, he just whacked me on my head.
“When he whacked me I fell down.” Mr Bah says a passer- by then intervened before police were called.
While en-route to Bex- leyheath police station to give a state- ment, Mr Bah says he started to feel dizzy. He explained: “They called me an ambu- lance and I went to hospital. They gave me some tablets and said I don’t need to work at the minute and should stay at home.”
Mr Bah, who serves passengers across north Kent and Bex- ley, was later signed off work for ten days by doctors.
A Bexley Police spokesman confirmed officers “are dealing with an allegation of two assaults” and that “it is currently an ongoing investiga- tion.”
A Bexley Council spokeswoman added: “There was an incident which is cur- rently subject to a police investigation, so it is not appropri- ate to comment further.”
Left is the story we reported on in April’s edition on page 52.
1
Wrexham driver fined for drop-off
Cabbie hit with ticket machine
Brum driver ticketed helping OAP
Teignbridge driver banned for display- ing St. George
INDEX TO HIGHLIGHTED STORIES p. 52
APRIL APRIL WINNER MAY p. 50 NOVEMBER p. 54
phtm.co.uk/archive (1) p. 52
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