Of course it is a story; being an allegation doesn't make it untrue. This then makes one think what else the council might be doing wrongly.

People need jobs Simon. Pure & simple.

That is something I can agree with you on, although for some this would sniff of socialism!


What would be hard to sign up to an annual roll-over automatic renewal like insurance companies do?

If a few dozen examples could be found I'd agree with you.

The NWN may as well start running 'stories' on any old supposition, may be, what if or rumour.

Well you can either have large numbers of the population paid not to do anything ( it works for farmers after all ) or find a balance between totally pintless jobs & gainful employment.

I notice that someone is paying for a 'fish run' to bypass Shaw Mill & allow fish to move between the Kennet & Lamourn rivers.

Is that a waste of tax payers money in theese austere times, or a useful contribution to society which also employs many people?

This case isn't a rumour, and comes on the back of a number of parking management 'errors'. West Berkshire Council's parking management system is being clearly brought in to dispute. Not only that, they seem to fail in getting the PR organised properly too.

I don't know enough to comment about it, but it wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't an ecological value here that isn't immediately apparent; however, the management of the parking in West Berkshire appears incompetent and there are valid reasons to believe that.

As a vociferous critic of council spending I can see nothing wrong with this. My Councillor and his party mentioned investing in their election literature, so I had a choice. He got in and did what he said, it's a capital spend and also in line with Central policy......unlike robes or flags

one case.

but to try & gve the story more credence we have the usual 'Oooo, if it happened to me how many more cases like mine are there out there???'

funny that.

You old socialist you - will the real Richard Garvie please stand up!

Seriously though, I don't agree that it's the role of the state to create busy-work just for the jobs. It wasn't right to prop up our anachronistic heavy industry in the seventies, and creating administration non-jobs isn't right now. If the Big Fat State didn't tax us so hard British manufacturing might just be able to create some real jobs.

That has been brought to our attention, but it is not the first time the council have wrongly fined someone for an alleged parking offence.


And in this case, due to the primitive system the council have in place, the council are unable to confirm whether this was a systemic failure, or a 'clerical' error. This is why organisations attempt to install robust systems to mitigate any such incidence. The council are not in a position to refute anything.

So heavy industry was right to fail, but if we wern't taxed so much we'd have a maunfacturing base.

Why do I have this feeling you are thinking along the lines of 3 men on cloth caps, wholem,eal trousers & sandals making hand turned toilet roll holders from knarly bits of wood they have foraged?

they haven't done so. just the usual

'we don't know'. 'we have no recollection of that'

You're in danger of moving into user23like scatter-gun argument territory!


History shows if something isn't self supporting, or sustainable (e.g. non-jobs) it will fail. What is also true is mechanisation and IT are removing jobs too.

This is all mute anyway, in this incidence the council failed to employ people to oversee a system that could have been self supporting. Parking permits are a reasonable idea for the circumstances, but in this case, the council failed to make use of a service requirement that might have created sustainable jobs and failed to ensure good record keeping which I would have though would have been mandatory.

Now there is a meatier bit of the story. Why don't the council know who has paid & why?

That has been my argument here. Not only that, why was this person taken to a tribunal which has now cost the council (tax payers) even more than it otherwise needed to have done?

While the signage for the bridge and parking areas may be questionable I've never had a parking ticket or a fine. Ultimately we are using get out clauses to avoid paying for our mistake (eg driving over the buses only bridge).

However there are regulations there and legally the regulations should be upheld
Cost is not an excuse. Sure they made enough out of us anyway.

Idiots.

perhaps keeping such information isn't required.....


the parking tribunal is the only authority when you have a dispute. that is the way it works. If the council decides leniencey, the penalty is anulled. If not you can either pay up, or take it all the way.

the council don't write their own rules with regard to parking regulation.

The fact is that our Council are using the parking system to raise funds at the expense of the tax payer, they have been caught out more than once and are not about to change their tune becaus ethey have some big senior managment salaries to justify and they believe they are higher than, the courts, the police, the information commissioner, the LGO and even higher than God.

Has no one noticed the inordinate number of people who get fined by our council for parking on the high street in the pedestrian zone. These poor people simply don't understand the sign posting because it is so incredibly unclear. It seems to suggest that the signs are for pedestrians to pay attention to and with the absence of yellow lines and the absence of the word 'parking' anywhere in the signs it leaves the motorist to think that the parking bays which line the street are there for them to use. Then no sooner than they do than they get slapped with a £70 fine.

I wrote to the council about this and asked why they did not put up clearer sign posting which would aid the motorist to comply and make the traffic flow better and aid the pedestrian in the process. They told me that they had put it past the ministry of transport and that their scheme complied. I said but teh public don't understand - they said we don't believe you. So I did and reported a survey - 20 motorists were shown the sign and 17 got its meaning completely wrong, one knew the answer as he was a councillor who had voted on teh scheme, one knew the answer as he had been fined by teh scheme before and one got very close but was narrowly wrong. The council still refused to put up clearer signs and when I complained they initially refused to lodge my complaint, then they rejected my complaint and eventually they told me I was not allowed to ask them questions any more about this issue. In the middle I asked them how parking fines compared with other roads with clearer signs - they refused to answer the question but did compare our highstreet with a parking facility in town and the figures were not greatly different which seeing as the high street is only open for 2 hours a day during shopping time and the car park is open all shopping hours is a scary comparison. I also asked whether anyone had been injured or killed since I first raised the issue as I was concerned about pedestrian safety. The Council told me that no one had, but a DPA request i made later showed that someone had apparently been killed and they had burried the issue because they could not tell whether the incident had actually been with a car in the area or if the person had stumbled into the area after being hit by the car.

The whole system is corrupt, the taxi drivers tip off the wardens to come and nab unsuspecting motorists who simply have not understood a sign post that the Council refuse to replace or improve upon (though they will put up signs telling people to lock their bikes) because it would reduce their potential to mug local people of money and hide behind the law in doing it.