That Ain't Right

< "Kowalski, why the hell were you illegally parked ?"

"I was handing out tickets..."

"In a strip club?"


The first month of questing comes to a close today, with a piece of red-hot info that made me tremble with the kind of silent-majority outrage I thought only cabbies and Mail readers experienced:


Traffic wardens are allowed to park in disabled parking bays, and also on double yellow lines.

This comes from a story in London Lite, everyone's third favourite London-based free paper, which explains how a Teddington-based traffic warden decided to try and boost their presumably rock-bottom local popularity by pulling up on double yellows outside a school in order to hand out tickets to parents, quite possibly whilst parking with their handbrake and flicking a lit fag into the playground, and also maybe even while being called Kowalski. A local resident by the frankly ludicrous name of Des Rock busted his punk ass to the council, but they claimed that wardens are in fact allowed to park on double yellow lines and in disabled spaces as long as they're giving out parking tickets, which loosely translates as "listen, my wardens get results, and they can park on yo' momma if it keeps the money comin' in".

So next time a stern, slightly patronising warden is looming over you, wanting to know what exactly was so important that you dared to park on a red route ten minutes too early, just remember that they can get away with parking in spaces designated for people who struggle to move around independently, so that they can charge other people for parking in places they shouldn't park, and see if you can withhold the howl of injustice that surges upward from your weary heart. But I'm going to close on a lighter note for the little people in this world, fighting against the oppressive squares who occasionally check that we're parking where we're supposed to. We had our car parked on our street for a whole week without a valid permit. How'd you like that, traffic pigs? Woo hah! Stick it to the Man!


P.S. We had a valid permit indoors. We'll pay any fine. Please don't send Kowalski round.