I received a parking ticket the other day. If you have a car in the UK, it does happen from time to time and 99.9% of these occurrences will likely be happening because the rules are either misleading or unclear. This is where the council can step and rub their hands together, because parking fines are a a very lucrative racket.
But, before getting on one's high horse about all the injustice in the world and how you've been paying your taxes, yardy, yardy... stop and compose yourself. Realise this fact: the rules are rigged against you with any justice or reason. These government institutions won't listen to your pleas of how it's not fair. There has to be a good reason why you would deliberately break the rules risking a fine with the attentive parking attendants these days. So, unless you are in the minority of those who deliberately flaunt the parking regulations, there won't be a single person bucking rules at the risk of throwing away £60.
So, to convince the council that we aren't so rich we can afford to chuck money away on fines, we have to justify to them why their rules are defunct. And this takes time and patience. The people working for the council do not care about your gripes, but they do have a job to to and they aren't going to help the angry person on the phone. Their job is to work for the people of the borough to make the places we live in function well. It's our right to question their ability because we pay for their services. If they are not upholding their side of the bargain, we are legally within our rights to withhold paying our council taxes.
Blindly Corrupted Power
In order to properly defend against the council, you have to showcase where their negligence has resulted in the PCN being issued in the first place. They are very quick to take our money, because it is easy. And this kind of systematic money-taking activity needs to be addressed more if we are to stop them doing it. Unfortunately, too many are quick to part with their money for a quiet life. However, there are now many educated and knowledgable people eloquently standing up to corruption found rife in high places and uncovering the fraudulent behaviour occurring in government which has in turn trickled down to our local councils. This corruption is upheld through our courts and by our blindly obedient police force. Interestingly, all of this activity is being contested and displayed to the world via social media channels. This is not just a UK phenomena either but happening all over the world.
A global tide is changing very slowly and although it's tiring, stressful and inconvenient - making a small stand against an incorrect parking infringement - as insignificant as it may seem at the time, form the first steps for standing up against the harassment and heavy-handed behaviour of our money-grabbing establishment. Without us standing up to these people and the problems within our crumbling society, just as a spoilt child with over-lenient parent eventually become an out of control monster, our system falls down without the proper monitoring and restraint.
We just need to speak up more in a way that highlights just how far wrong these people in power have gone, show a mirror up to their faces and in the case of an erroneous parking ticket, ensure that a £60 parking fine is dropped.
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