FraserWords

This is a dark day indeed. I find myself in agreement with Eric Pickles. My doctor has prescribed some booster hate injections for me, and assures me all will be well again soon.

Normally, like every right-thinking person in the land, I find Eric Pickles makes as much sense as an International Cricket Council ruling about bad light. This makes him about as popular as an ICC ruling about bad light, except with the sort of Neanderthal thug who believes in cutting back services and sending racist vans round the streets telling foreigners to go home.

For now, though, it must be said that Eric Pickles is right about parking. It may be the only thing the man has ever been right about in his mean-spirited life, but he is nevertheless right.

He wants parking charges lowered, over-zealous traffic wardens reined in and restrictions like speed bumps and bollards removed: “Draconian town hall parking policies and street clutter can make driving into town centres unnecessarily stressful and actually create more congestion because of lack of places to park. Anti-car measures are driving motorists into the arms of internet retailers and out of town superstores, taking their custom with them.

“Confusing and difficult car parking practices are undermining the economic vitality of the high street and tourist destinations. Over-zealous parking wardens have inflicted real damage on local economies and given many towns and councils a bad name.”

What is so sad is that this truth has been evident for years, if not decades. I suppose the late dawning of the truth in the dark mind of Mr Pickles is perhaps typical of the slow, painful way in which the party he represents accumulates knowledge. Let us be charitable and say it’s better late than never to hear Mr Pickles suggest means of helping motorists, shoppers and town centres.

Will he be reversing, then, his party’s long-standing approach to local government finance that has driven so many councils to use parking as a means of raising money?

Cornwall Council is among the worst offenders, of course.

I was given a  ticket myself when I  parked at Western Road, Launceston, in May – unaware that the roadside parking spaces had become permit-only for residents.

I subsequently discovered dozens of Launceston shoppers were in the same boat – a total of 108 tickets had been issued there since the change at the end of February and my ticket in May.

At £35 a ticket if everybody paid up within two weeks, that’s £3,780 that would have been better off in the tills of Launceston’s shopkeepers. It’s an absolute disgrace.

Cllr Alex Folkes very decently obtained the figures about the number of tickets issued after council officers refused to answer my questions. Cllr Folkes wrote in an e-mail to me: “I asked what publicity was planned. I made the suggestion that for a period the enforcement officers put notices under wipers. I was told that this was not possible as it was considered trespass. I was told that the council would be changing the roadside signs and putting a statutory notice in the paper and that these were considered good enough.”

But Cornwall Council’s consultation on the Western Road change amounted only to e-mails and post and tiny little signs up posts that look exactly like all the other parking signs. Certainly, no news of this change reached me or 107 other hapless motorists.

Another Cornwall councillor for Launceston, Jade Farrington, wrote to me: “I know lots of others are in the same boat which I think demonstrates the failed approach to notifying people. We will be ensuring the council more widely publicises any future changes. Unfortunately it’s impossible to reach everyone and there will inevitably be some people who are caught out whatever is done, but I’ve no doubt that Cornwall Council didn’t go anywhere near as far as it should have.”

There’s no doubt not enough was done to warn people, adding to the impression that motorists like me are just being used as till-fodder by councils.

But as Mr Pickles has now pointed out, this hard-line approach to enforcement, and failed communication, really does nothing to help hard-pressed businesses. Surely the council should be doing absolutely anything and everything it can to help businesses, down to operating a ‘soft-touch’ parking policy that shows tolerance, understanding and fairness to the motorists on whom the businesses depend?

Cornwall Council is supposed to be helping its tax-payers, individuals and businesses. Actively conning people out of money is about as unhelpful as it’s possible to imagine.

I tried to get my £35 back but have so far been fobbed off, of course. Now that Cornwall Council has admitted its policy is wrong, is committed to lowering parking charges and is planning further consultations, I shall try again..

Cllr Folkes told the Western Morning News: “Parking charges are hurting the Cornish economy.” They certainly hurt my economy!

Dick Cliffe, chairman of Penzance Chamber of Commerce, summed it up: “If you want to stop people coming to town centres you do two things, put up business rates and increase parking charges.”

Suffer the children

Lest you think I’m going soft, let me point out that the National Children’s Bureau last week reported that child poverty is now a bigger problem than it was during the 1960s. Sitting firmly in the Eric Pickles camp in terms of the belated dawning of truth, the report notes Britain is at risk of becoming a place where “children’s lives are so polarised that rich and poor live in separate, parallel worlds.” “At risk of becoming”? Really?

For those among you who hold fast to the workshy scrounger theory of economic damage, the report also notes that 63 per cent of children living in poverty have at least one parent or carer who is working.  I expect you’d sooner focus on that 37 % of useless wastrels, eh?

The report compared children’s lives with data collected from a study called Born To Fail published in 1969. 

Well. I wonder if Eric Pickles will announce next month that we really ought to do something to help children in poverty.

Not cricket

I couldn’t believe how quickly everybody involved in Sunday’s Test Match drama shut their mouths and toed the line. Commentators were briefly and rightly furious that a stupid ruling had prevented an exciting end to the day’s play, but this was all soon forgotten. Australia didn’t deserve to lose, everybody rightly said, and anyway we’ll all try to change the law.

Which is like an opening batsman dodging a Stuart Broad bouncer. Somebody needed to have the guts to say “sod the rules, this is a game, here to entertain paying people, and that’s what we’re jolly well going to do.” Cowards. Typical mealy-mouthed professional sport. Happy to take your money. Happy to toe the line.