WBC You're joking!

[Confused52]

No Sid, No.

In Bill's case they are not rules at all. They are in fact contractual terms, applying to the implicit parking contract made by Bill when he entered upon the Private land owned by WBC for the purpose of parking. In that regard no person is responsible for enforcement in the way that you suggest as being a duty. Enforcement is not obligatory at all. Further it is not a fine that Bill was asked to pay (they are for on-street parking). The fee claimed is I believe in essence liquidated damages for the breach of contract. As such it represents the reasonable costs incurred as a loss by the council in losing an adjacent parking fee or fees and cost of recovery of the debt. That has been the position in the Supreme Court in similar cases.

This is no different to a supermarket charging for parking on a white line at 10pm on a Monday night at ASDA Westbrook. Would PJ then have considered it only proper that he should pay extra, which in that case would start at the value of the average shopping bill over the whole day at ASDA!!

Further the value of the car parking spaces is currently set at zero if you go to the market, therefore the recoverable damages are zero and the council should not be charging for recovering the zero cost. If ADSA or Tesco did this they would be accused of being Rip-Off merchants. The council has no special position here, WBC are being Rip-Off merchants. Indeed they are using assets which the public paid for to rip-the same public off, a situation that normally gets the usual suspects going when it applies to the railways or other privatised assets.

[Milky]

14 hours ago, Evil Sid said:

There is a difference between a law and a rule.

Laws tend to be set on a national basis and are enacted in parliament.

By laws are set on a local basis and are set by the local authorities.

Rules are set by whomever writes them and are usually guidelines and open to interpretation by anybody who wants to challenge them or enforce them.

That there is nobody around to enforce the rules at a certain time is irrelevant.(there is no reason why there could not be somebody on duty 24 hours a day enforcing the rules apart from financial ones), When there is somebody around to enforce them they must be seen by public and employers to be enforcing them.

My point was that IF the council or whomever was responsible for enforcement were seen not to be enforcing the rules they would be held up to account by the public. If they do enforce the rules to the letter then they get complaints that they are being over zealous and money grabbing if a fine is issued.

Bill the people in power have to back up their underlings when it comes to a decision made, unless it is a really obvious glaring idiotic decision. If they did not then said underlings would have no confidence in their superiors which would lead to the underlings basically sitting in a room drinking tea all day as their thinking would be "what is the point if everything i do is overturned by the boss."

So it is OK to flaunt the rules if the authorities are not there?

Trying to extort £60 from someone for parking outside the white lines in an empty car park is obvious glaring idiotic decision.

I guess you believe black cab drivers should be fined for not carrying straw for their horse, after all it is the law!

[Confused52]

Apologies for the Off-Topic post -----

 

About the black cab lark, well it never did require that the driver carried straw! The requirement was to feed the horse in the street only with food from the drivers hand..... it was intended to stop cabbies blocking others from picking up fares. It was ineffective it you had a horseless carriage unless you fed someone else's horse!

It was finally removed from the original (London Hackney Carriage Act 1831) Act in 1976 but they didn't change the heading of the section (51), perhaps for fun, which still says "Improperly standing with carriage, or feeding horses in the street; refusing to give way to or obstructing any other driver or depriving him of his fare; penalty 20s" . The rule (yes I mean rule here) about headings in Acts of Parliament is that they don't form part of the Act, so the requirement doesn't exist and is one of those urban myths.

[Milky]

12 hours ago, Confused52 said:

Apologies for the Off-Topic post -----

 

About the black cab lark, well it never did require that the driver carried straw! The requirement was to feed the horse in the street only with food from the drivers hand..... it was intended to stop cabbies blocking others from picking up fares. It was ineffective it you had a horseless carriage unless you fed someone else's horse!

It was finally removed from the original (London Hackney Carriage Act 1831) Act in 1976 but they didn't change the heading of the section (51), perhaps for fun, which still says "Improperly standing with carriage, or feeding horses in the street; refusing to give way to or obstructing any other driver or depriving him of his fare; penalty 20s" . The rule (yes I mean rule here) about headings in Acts of Parliament is that they don't form part of the Act, so the requirement doesn't exist and is one of those urban myths.

OH OK, it was something that was mentioned on TV a week or two ago, it was a clip about black cab drivers in Liverpool.

[P J]

Seems to me from the opening post that Bill is something of a parking dunce or a serial offender.  Instead of driving into town and parking wherever you deem fit, save yourself some money and stress and get a cab.