It's a lovely idea. So the aim, over the course of time, would be to be "penalty neutral" - ie for the credits earned from obeying the law to match the debits incurred by breaking it.
All those years I haven't committed burglary or murder will eventually stand me in good stead. Or I could pass the points on to someone with a greater need at the time.
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many hospital car parks are on private premises i.e.not subject to Road Traffic Act etc, so the pay and display is in effect voluntary.........
you have to be careful if they say they will clamp offenders, which some are now doing, but other than that if you fail to pay what are they going to do about it.
Look for any penalty on the pay and display machine, if it doesn't mention it anywhere, there isn't one.
I have done this for a number of years at my local hospital, but they have just started clamping, so will have to stop.
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When I was a lad one didn't have to pay for hospital parking. I thought in my stupid way that all that was included through the exorbitant national insurance contributions we all part with. How naive of me.......................Stupid boy!
vbr...........................MD.
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It's a lovely idea. So the aim, over the course of time, would be to be "penalty neutral" - ie for the credits earned from obeying the law to match the debits incurred by breaking it.
Exactly!
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On my local car park, it says that the ticket isn't transferable. Why, I have no idea, is the idea of helping someone else so alien to today's values?
I ALWAYS give the ticket to someone if I can, if only to get a warm glow at breaking what I see as a petty and stupid rule!
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On my local car park, it says that the ticket isn't transferable. Why, I have no idea, is the idea of helping someone else so alien to today's values? I ALWAYS give the ticket to someone if I can, if only to get a warm glow at breaking what I see as a petty and stupid rule!
I agree wholeheartedly. Sad reflection on the state of modern society that minor infringements of stupid laws/rules can actually be considered as GOOD behaviour in every other sense.
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Works for me - my car spends approx 22 hrs a day stationary - if I drive at 360 mph fr the remaining 2 hours I cover 720 miles - 720/24 = 30MPH average speed. Perhaps I need to buy that rocket car!
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Many car parks now use machines where digits of the number plate have to be entered, so swapping aint so easy. Not too bad on the new cars with only two digits for the year, but on older cars it's impossible to swap.
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Here in Bury St Edmunds, where the council is renowned for its meanness, they charge £1.20 to park all day on the Ram Meadow car park. However, if you want to nip into town and use the car park in the morning, go home for lunch and return later in the afternoon - using the same car - you have to pay again!
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Ok, Ok lets get all the daft variations on the theme out of the way, i.e. if you drive home drunk one night and stone cold sober the next on average you would only be half cut ........................
Seriously the concept is tenuous enough when it comes to parking however I might just write to the council and see how they respond.
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"Perhaps I need to buy that rocket car!"
Nah! They will deduct hospital bills .........
_______
IanS
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Ok, Ok lets get all the daft variations on the theme out of the way, i.e. if you drive home drunk one night and stone cold sober the next on average you would only be half cut ........................
Once heard the argument that only 25% of accidents involved drink driving, therefore you were more likely to have an accident sober - so we should all drive drunk to avoid accidents!!!! Having said that the same person also said he always took a bomb on a plane with him, reason being there is a 1 billion to 1 chance of having a bomb on a plane but there is a 300 billion to 1 chance of there being two on the same plane, so by taking one himself he was cutting the odds - amazing what drivel you can discuss over a couple of pints!!!!!
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and your average fuel consumption is nil?
JH
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In the local hospital car parks with pay and display machines it is now common for tickets with time left on them to be handed to cars entering the car park and/or stuck on the machine. It feels strange seeing these people stood at the entrance, waiting for cars to come in so that they can give them their tickets. Nice.
At our local hospital, they like to ensure that no good deed goes unpunished!
tinyurl.com/qmxvw
Andrew
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... good deed ...
>>
so it should be ok to give your one-day travelcard, or season ticket, on the london transport to someone else to use? etc. etc.
as for cheddar's original question, i have noticed that many car parks are now intorducing a scale of charges such that the rate per hour for the first two or three hours is linear, but then after that the rate per hour increases exponentially.
the principle apparently is to deter, and penalise heavily, anyone staying for more than one or two hours in car parks that are designed to cater for short-term parking for passing trade, rather than the 8 to 6 long term employee parking needs.
so in a car park with such a policy, the council could tell cheddar that his cumulative time is going to cost him dearly.
as for equity in charges for anything, imo everything should be metered and everyone should pay according to their consumption/use (all other government and council services come to mind).
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My local hospital has been charging extortionate rates for the last two years. A few weeks ago it was discovered that the first half an hour is free. Hospital had conviniently 'forgotton' to mention this on the signs.
Thousands of people have consequently been overcharged an awful lot of money!
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My local hospital has a parking charge with a minimum of 2 hours, so popping in for a checkup even with a 30 minute wait still leaves lots of time on the parking ticket. I always hand over a partially unused ticket.....usually to the person who takes the space I am leaving. Many pensioners just popping in to pick up or drop off are very grateful. (No there are no short free period or even free spaces for dropping off).
StarGazer
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When does anything at a hospital ever take less than half an hour?
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I dont like paying for car parking at hospitals, but if the money went to NHS it would not hurt as much.
However the money raised from the car parks goes to an outside business (probably for a donation made to the hospital?) that charges NHS users (who pay NHS contributions etc) to park on NHS owned land to give to a seperate business to make a profit.
Thats why I ALWAYS hand my ticket to someone else even if I am told its not allowed.
However w hat also hurts is business users who park there all day leaving no parking space for the esssential people (visitors, patients etc). probably why parking charges got brought in for?
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Unfortunately for SWMBO and I, just after the outset of her pregnancy earlier this year the car park operator at John Radcliffe Hospital took out all the pay and display machines and replaced them with pay on departure equipment so the ticket handling ruse has been thwarted. On the plus side, at least we now don't have to worry about running outside to buy another ticket, but on the negative it causes mayhem at the barrieirs; so many people get in their car and drive up to the barrier before realising they should have paid before getting back in to the car. Signing is extremely clear, but it would appear that preoccupied thoughts come to play.
What took the biscuit at our last visit was the woman who got the hump at being made to move her car whilst she paid instead of abandoning it at the barrier and walking to the pay machine as she wished, trying to "ignore" the long queue behind her! Very amusing to watch and she copped a right old strop at the collective "oi" from behind that pricked her conscience. When she duly obliged and tried to reverse, I could see why she wanted to walk!
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Cant say I like car park charges at hospitals - I have to go about once every 3 months and it is the pay before exit type, a complete pain as the pay machine is quite a way from the entrance I use - that is assuming it is working!! Myself and SWMBO also had a not very nice visit to a maternity unit and we both came out very upset from it recently, and we very nearly forgot to pay at the machine as it was far from the first thing on our minds!!!!!!
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when you think a lot of modern or semi-modern hospitals are on the outskirts of towns now, so parking didn't ought to be a big issue
then you've paid for this privilege already in your taxes
some of us have to have or choose to have private medical insurance, which means a big reduction in the NHS usage
then getting me to pay for parking, on an out of town site, that i've already paid for and not likely to use very often, is taking the biscuit really isn't it
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I do. Our local Hospital is on the outskirts of a largish town, before they started charging cars were being left there all day (people working in the nearby offices) They've started charging visitors now and also beefed up security as a consequence, yesterday I called there and found the car park was half empty (or half full depending on your iew of the world). People take the proverbial, main reason being that there is a regular reliable public transport link to the nearby town centre and it wa scheaper to park up here hop on a bus than it was to park in the town centre. I for one don't blame them. Also as a direct result crime rates have gone down there.
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>>Once heard the argument that only 25% of accidents involved drink driving, therefore you were more likely to have an accident sober - so we
>>should all drive drunk to avoid accidents!!!! Having said that the same person also said he always took a bomb on a plane with him, reason
>>being there is a 1 billion to 1 chance of having a bomb on a plane but there is a 300 billion to 1 chance of there being two on the same
>>plane, so by taking one himself he was cutting the odds - amazing what drivel you can discuss over a couple of pints!!!!!
He's completely ignoring his conditional probabilities!! If those stats were true, if he takes a bomb on himself, there's only a 1 in 300 chance of another!
so it should be ok to give your one-day travelcard, or season ticket, on the london transport to someone else to use? etc. etc.
This sort of thing would be wrong, much like, say, an all-day parking pass that could get passed between several cars. But completely different to giving someone the unexpired hour of a limited time ticket.
A food analogy of the unexpired ticket is someone giving me their leftover dessert in a restaurant and me polishing it off. It has already been paid for and can be fully used. On the other hand, it's wrong for someone who is full-up to leave an all-you-can-eat buffet and let me take his place (assuming I've only just got there).
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At our local hospital, they like to ensure that no good deed goes unpunished! Andrew
This country has "Gone to hell in a hand cart."
Y.I.U.D. MD.
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Forgot to say that at North Devon District Hospital EVEN the staff have to pay.
Y.I.U.D. .....MD
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Cheddar,
It didn't work for me. Put £2 in a meter in Bath for 2 hours. Came back after 1hr 30 mins (£1.50 worth of parking). Had a parking ticket. What I hadn't realised was that my last 20p in the meter had not registered therefore only credited with 1 hour's parking (meter only dealt in whole hours). I appealed on the grounds that my ticket said I had paid £1.80, I had only used £1.50's worth of parking and therefore instead of me owing them £30 fine, they owed me 30p for the parking time I had not used. I got no joy and because I had not paid the fine within 14 days (the exchange of letters took that long) and because the "rules and regulations are clearly set out on signs and back of tickets" I had to pay £60!
My response was to tell them that I and SHMBO had booked a weekend in Bath (which we had) and would now cancel it and go elsewhere so their petty "sticking to the rules" would cost Bath far more than the fine they had gained. Response - "rules are rules". I won't go to Bath again - it's an awful place to find a place to park anyway.
--
Phil
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Hi Phil,
My wife had a similar thing in Wells which was at the back of my mind when I started this thread, not helped by the ticket showing the arrival time, we wrote saying that if the ticket showed the departure time she would surely have noticed that the ticket was not valid for the full time she needed to be there, all to no avail.
I might just write the above letter to the same dept, Mendip Council in Shepton Mallet IIRC, bit of fun if nothing else.
Regards.
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"bit of fun if nothing else"
"Mr Angry" letters may not have much effect but at least they are therapeutic! Good luck!
--
Phil
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I won't go to Bathagain - it's an awful place to find a place to park anyway. -- Phil
I live in Bath and have to agree. We shop in Frome or Keynsham.
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Keynsham.
Ha - Radio Luxenbourg - Horace Batchelor - Keynsham. Phew - that takes me back!!!
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Good God!
Keynsham!
Are there any decent pubs yet other than hippie ones in Bristol or Bath or, cough, anywhere in between?
I have to say I really, really doubt it, and I am no tyro in those parts.
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Keynsham! Are there any decent pubs yet other than hippie ones in Bristol or Bath or, cough, anywhere in between?
Dont know any pubs in Keynsham, to me it has always seemed a bit of a no-man's land between Bath's elegance, Bristol's industry and Somerset's hills, a place to pass through rather than to linger.
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That sounds like I dont like Keynsham, I dont mean that, it is just somewhere I go through on the way to somewhere else.
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Are there any decent pubs yet other than hippie ones in Bristol or Bath or, cough, anywhere in between?
Wheatsheaf in Corston on the A39. Cracking food and Butcombe
Riverside in Saltford (er... on the river)
Um, that's about it though. If you're ever in Bath though, New Inn in Monmouth Street does fantastic beer (Wadworth pub)
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Waino, check this out
www.longreach-apartments.co.uk/
Horace Batchelor's old house, recently converted. It was a hotel for some years.
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I did get a result from Bath council in my favour once. I parked overnight in car park, as the B&B was just round the corner and had no parking. I paid for 12 hours parking late in the evening and the amount I paid was duly noted on the ticket. What I didn't know was that at 9am, the day clicked over and any overpayment was wasted. I got a parking fine for 60 pounds. I scanned into the computer all the parking tickets I had puchased the weekend I stayed there, including the over-paid one and printed them out on a page. I wasn't going to send them the originals! After a delay and me having to resend it to the correct department, they cancelled the fine. I was surprised, but I had reminded them that over the weekend they had already extracted a considerable sum from me, and that I had done my utmost to be legally and properly parked. This was in 2001.
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