I've found the perfect solution. Moved out of the city into a nice little Scottish village where I have room to park 3 cars in the driveway. Shop at local supermarket at 7am on a Saturday (and top up with fuel) so parking not a problem. Do all other shopping on line.
When going to the city, park in the free station car park and get half-price rail thanks to my "over 60s free bus / reduced rail fare" card. So car never goes near city, never goes near any parking restrictions other than supermarket car parks where they can't enforce fines or clamp me either.
Sorted!
|
Since prisons are full and proper criminals are allowed out early so their life of crime can continue, the chances of going to jail are very high as motorists who park incorrectly are much worse than burglars...
:-)
Edited by madf on 27/01/2010 at 11:37
|
|
|
|
When I park in my City, there is a residential area inside the city with council flat accomodation. While the City centre is restricted by Parkies, Pay & Display notices: blah blah blah, up the road there is a small dead-end road where vehicles are allowed to park on-street on the left-hand side, the other side is double-yellow lines. You can park here for as long as you like, its a residentual area right in the heart of the city centre which has no restrictions or rules whatsoever. It sits right in the middle of the city centre's controlled zone - out of any restrictions, like its a beautiful sunny island in the middle of a stormy ocean full of man-eating sharks! You can actually see the parkies ticket slapping on cars right around the perimeter of the estate but they can't touch yours while its in the middle! ha ha
|
Just watched an episode of Police Camera Action, as usual you get some welfare-state sponsored scroat driving a stolen car at speed through an urban area putting the public at risk, the police finally catching him after he crashed - the result? 120 hours community service and an 18 month ban (like he's got a license) - that'll show 'em! Meanwhile drivers are locked up for speeding on a motorway in their own taxed, insured vehicle for which they hold a valid license.
The insidious creeping of the police state - allow widespread genuine criminality to justify their new laws and then criminalise normal everyday people for making a mistake, fining them heavily along the way to fill the old coffers.
|
>...welfare-state sponsored scrote...stolen car...urban area...community service and an 18 month ban...Meanwhile drivers are locked up for speeding on a motorway in their own taxed, insured vehicle...
Do you have any data on the relative rates of occurrence of these two situations, Steve? Or is this just another example of the lack of critical thinking I was targeting in my post at the top of this thread?
|
It's called personal experience. I grew up on a dodgy estate next door to Broadwater Farm, the majority of my friends were into nicking cars and burgling houses, even back then, again and again some Guardian reading apologist would find a way of blaming society and keeping them out of clink all at the taxpayers' expense. I had poor but decent working class parents who taught me right from wrong so I trod the correct path despite it being a lot harder than nicking stuff for a living. When I was 18 I inadvertently let my car insurance expire (3 days) I got a tug and was nicked. As I had a job (trainee on £40 per week) I got hammered - 7 points on my license and a £750 fine - I can tell you that was a lot of money back then - it took me two years to pay it off. Meanwhile the car thieves and burglars I knew personally carried on getting slaps on the wrist for serious and multiple offensives. Still, slip back into la la land if that makes you feel more comfortable - I'll deal with the real world - I know - I've lived in it - you stick to your "stats".
And before someone accuses me of being well off for having a car aged 18, I bought it for £5 and restored it myself - total cost about £45.
|
So, Steve, your evidence for the assertion that 'scrotes' are let off while respectable citizens go to prison consists of a personal anecdote about some young offenders you thought were shown too much leniency, and a TV programme made for some cheap sensation? That's not living in the real world; it's not looking beyond the end of your nose.
Sorry to pick on you - this isn't personal but it really matters. Look what happened with MMR: one person with an anecdote, and one doctor with some inaccurate, unrepresentative data managed to create mass hysteria. The result? Children dying of measles for the first time in a generation because of the reduction in herd immunity.
The evidence that there was nothing wrong with MMR was freely available in the scientific literature and in those papers that prefer accuracy to sensationalism. (Believe me - I had an eight-month-old baby at the time and I read it all.) But people who should have known - should have thought - better still sucked their teeth and said things like "better safe than sorry". Well, safe was MMR and sorry was the consequence of not thinking critically.
That's a non-motoring example that I hope the mods will allow to illustrate my broader argument. We cover a lot of subjects here, including how car use fits into its social, political and scientific contexts. There's some good information out there, and a lot of bad presented as fact by people who are aiming to protect their interests, not ours. Unless we take the trouble to sort one from t'other, we'll be taken for a ride - and we'll deserve it.
|
|
Hear, hear Mr DeBeest. Excellent post, if I may be so bold?
|
|
Well how about a guy with 50 convictions (just how many offences went undetected!) who was caught by the guy whose house he just burgled and was dealt summary justice at the end of a cricket bat? How the hell has a young man still got his liberty after 50 convictions? It's obvious the UK is soft on crime, I used to date a defence solicitor she spoke about "her boys" like they were little angels, constant re-offending and wrist slaps all round were the order of the day - still it keeps otherwise unemployable wet Guardian readers in a job in the parole and "outreach" worker industry.
|
In your world I take it everyone reads the Telegraph? Or is it the Sun? Or the Daily Star?
: )
Whether you like it or not, these "unemployable wet Guardian readers" are trying their best, often with little back-up, to reform people. Because that is how our justice system works, we don't just lock people up and throw away the key.... we try and reform them. No it doesn't always work, but isn't it better to at least try? Sorry to be like, so liberal and all, but then I guess I have a faith in human nature that is maybe naive, but I'd rather be like that than be cliched about how I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and therefore I am tough and uncompromising and I know the score etc. etc. I didn't exactly grow up in Brideshead Revisited Land either before you comment!
|
|
I've got no problem with reform but that should follow punishment, we go straight from crime to reform with nothing in between, criminals are laughing. Check out the crime stats in places like China or Thailand where you'll get beaten to within an inch of your life for street robbery - ergo street robbery is very rare there. Punishment works as a deterrent. Most Humans by their nature are lazy, if crime pays then it's attractive, all humans understand, and dislike, pain. As Frank Field recently pointed out there was more violent crime in his constituency alone last year than in the whole of the UK in the 50s. The sandal wearing, tofu-knitting brigade have been calling the shots for 50 years and this is where we are. That's "progressive" politics for you.
|
Steve, I will meet you round about halfway if that's OK! : ) I do genuinely understand what you're saying. The one thing I would say is that if punishment works as a deterrent (and I don't necessarily disagree, I just have this question) why are there so many people on Death Row in the States?
By the way, I prefer "tofu-wearing, sandal-knitting". Sounds way more fun. Joking aside, not EVERY person who pops into your head when someone says "Guardian-reader" is a tofu wearer or a sandal knitter. Just like I am sure not all Daily Mail readers are whining halfwits, or that all Times readers are braying inbred idiots.... it's called a stereotype and it's not a good thing.
The 50s also had rickets, TB, people stuck in loveless marriages, very few women's rights, racism.... and god forbid and heaven forfend if you were a friend of Dorothy's. Now some people on here might say that sounds like a veritable Eden, but I think in many ways we've come a long way.
Oh, er, for the moderators: I like cars, me. Shiny fast ones. Back on topic! : )
|
The US has lawless heavily ghettoised areas with massive gang-warfare problems, no amount of punishment will stop crime when that kind of culture becomes entrenched as (sadly) we are starting to find out as a direct consequence of abandoning stop and search here. Death row holds no fear to a person who does not expect to live beyond 30 in his 'hood anyway. In the US's "European" populated areas you'll find there is hardly any crime, people are kind and polite, crime is rare - much rarer than the UK.
I like my cars black, but shiny is optional as I never wash them.
|
|
|
|
