Top Up Ticketing - What's the Problem?
Do The Right Thing: A lady with a doctor's appointment parks her car in a public car park. Understandably thinking that she won't be too long, she buys a one hour car park ticket from the ticket machine and places it on her dashboard. When she gets to the surgery she then finds out that the appointments are in fact running significantly late. As the hour passes by she realizes that she will run over her allotted ticket time. Consequently she rushes back to the car park, before her ticket runs out, and buys another one hour ticket, which she puts on her windscreen next to the previous one.
Perverse Logic: Believing that she has done the right thing in paying for the time she is using, she then carries on with her appointment at the doctors. However, on returning to her car she finds that she has acquired a parking penalty notice. Why? Because apparently it is an offence to do this. If she had bought a two, three or four hour ticket to begin with, she would have been ok. If she had removed the old ticket, nobody would have been any the wiser, but because she innocently left her first ticket on the windscreen next to the old one, she was penalised. Penalised, not for trying to avoid paying, but for being honest and trying to do the right thing. How perverse is that?
Beggars Belief: This guilty council in this instance is Dartford Council, and I must say, it beggars belief that the people who supervise and run our infrastructure at a local level see fit to behave in such a manner. How can it possibly be seen that this is a fair and just way to operate? Fair enough if there was a time limit in the car park. Perhaps you wouldn't park there in the first place. However, as this was not the case, and as the time used by the driver was conscientiously paid for in full, what exactly was the problem and why did the driver have to pay a fine of fifty pounds? A money grabbing insult to honesty and fair play! Dartford Council - CORRUPT!