They also come out at night

Keep getting a google search "Do parking wardens work weekend nights?"

Some places yes, some places no. I used to. I've blogged about the drunks, the bouncers and the fast food drop offs. Mind you, after dark we were always thin on the ground, or rather my oppo's still are. The job was to keep people off the restrictions so everyone else could get by safely. We couldn't always be there, though.

Here's a little anecdote from the memory banks; a brand new BMW was parked on double yellows outside a takeaway near my house. I off duty and heading back home from the chip shop on foot. A truck went past in the narrow steet and there's a crunching sound as it is forced to cut in close by another car coming the other way and the truck carves off the beemers wing mirror. The truck carried on as if nothing had happened. I remember thinking at the time; "That'll cost him more than a parking ticket." I don't think insurance companies cough up so readily if you are breaking the law when you have a thump.

Weather

Have gotten absolutely soaking wet on my various errands today. Tying up the loose ends of your life does take a lot of time and energy. Just when you think you’ve signed that final bit of paper; bingo! Up pops another one. All this and unremitting rain.

It’s just like the summers of my childhood, downpour following downpour with precious few sunny days in between. Here’s how reflective it is; the fine drizzle this morning made me think of early mornings at certain Welsh beaches. The downpour around lunchtime acted as a recherché du temps perdu of Chalet Holidays when all there was to do was play Newmarket (Michagan in the US) for Matchsticks or get my Dad to hide us in the amusement arcade where I could shoot at electronic targets to my ferocious little hearts content.

I’m having a bit of a problem getting out of the mental habits I developed on patrol work. I look at a car, the first thing I’m looking for is the distinctive shape of a pay and display ticket. This is awful, I’m no longer a Parking Enforcer and I can’t get the wretched job out of my head! Argh! I need some therapy and quick!

Oh what the hell. It could be worse. I could still be in the job (Or in the new Tewkesbury Archipelago). Then again, this flooding is hardly a new phenomenon.

As for Internet access, thank goodness for the free library PC’s.

There will now be a short commercial break

This is because the TV has gone (No great loss) and my Internet account lapses tomorrow on the 26th (Dis-aster!). Mrs S, the dog and I are going travelling for a while, maybe the rest of our lives. Then again, perhaps not.

I shall still write and post, possibly much more than previously, but things will be a bit sporadic for the next two weeks.

My beat oppo’s Colin and Asif turned up on my doorstep this evening and presented me with a going away card, a bottle of Whiskey and an invitation to have yet another last drink with them. How could I refuse? So I didn’t. I can refuse everything but temptation.

We spent the best part of an hour swapping our version of ‘war stories’ over a couple of pints in my local hostelry. Especially the one where Colin had caught two girls lapping it up so to speak, on the top deck of one of our multi-storey car parks. Never caught any boys like that; yet, anyway. It’s only a matter of time before they do.

I recounted the tale about finding the ‘passion wagon’ of white van man at the bottom of a car park, which gave us all a chuckle as he’s rather one of our ‘regulars’. Makes you wonder what part of the anatomy does the heavy thinking doesn’t it?

Anyway; God bless ‘em both. They’re a couple of good ‘uns. There may even be scope for another last beer with the lads before I move on. Wife willing that is.

Wild & wet

Well that was a hairy couple of days. I mean the rain fell so hard around here that it might have made your head bleed. Good job I was wearing a hat, then. Street patrols got pulled Friday and Saturday because the Roads were more like rivers and the rivers more like tide races. All this and the last day of School run insanity for a while.

I saw the weather front coming in on Thursday evening while walking the dog; a thick band of musclebound cloud followed by a solid sheet of dark grey decorated only with far off lightning flashes. Double timed it home and battened down the hatches just as the rain hit. Dog went and hid in a corner, poor mutt. I gave myself a stiff whiskey and an early night.

At work on Friday we busied ourselves shooing people out of the levels of car parks that were threatening to become lakes. This didn’t stop one guy deliberately moving the cones we had used to block off the affected area and getting stuck in the rising waters. Silly bastard. Four or five other cars just sat there as the waters rose, leaving them stranded up to their wheel arches, their owners fuming quietly in the downpour. A number of the guys, including me, were sent home early because otherwise we wouldn’t have got home at all.

At home water started seeping under the front door and into the cellar, threatening to soak the electricity meters and blow our power supply, so I spent a while making an improvised seal with a few tea towels and stood duty with a mop and bucket. Fortunately our cellar didn’t flood, but one of our neighbours wasn’t so lucky, as far as I know he’s still bailing, and his cellar had supposedly been sealed against this sort of thing. From the sound of things our little area of town came off lightly. Other areas weren’t so fortunate. What price waterside property?

What didn’t help was my phone going off non-stop all afternoon. “You all right?” Comes the voice of my Mother in law, who was at her home in the far southwest watching the dramatised version on the news.
“I can’t talk now, got a bit of a situation on my hands.” I really had to finish what I was doing immediately or no light, heat or Internet this weekend.
“Oh can I help?”
“Not unless you can get here via the floods inside an hour and help me close a few gaps.” I tried to sound casual, but it’s hard to be insouciant when you can see a very real risk of an electrical fire if you don’t do something about it quickly. I’m afraid I might have sounded a bit sharp over the phone as I don’t suffer fools gladly when things get a little tough. Oh what the hell, she can cut me out of her will if she wants to.

Mrs S had trouble getting home as all the roads were gradually closed by the rising waters, but she made it and so did the kids, which pleased me greatly. On my way out to her in a rescue mission that in the end wasn’t needed, I saw water fountaining up from under heavy cast iron drain covers and whole streets inundated by the light brown waters. I had to turn back five times from places where the water was completely impassable. Most of the back roads that ordinarily were dry had been completely submerged in places to a depth of a metre and over at more than one point. Abandoned cars that had tried to go through the floods too fast ended up blocking the shallowest parts of the rapidly deepening waters, and so my possible routes to collect my wife. All the time, the rain hammering down and the nagging worry in the back of my head about the electrical distribution board downstairs.

A worrisome time. Fortunately for us the rain stopped and we like most of our neighbours escaped inundation. We had a pizza and a bottle of wine between us to celebrate our good fortune.

Anyway, the news is that I’m packing this parking enforcement lark in. Although it’s not a bad life out on the streets and car parks, my problem is like so many before me I’ve begun to suffer quite badly in the foot department because of the long distance walking in heavy boots. The pain, even chewing painkillers five days out of six, has had me almost in tears at times, and that doesn’t happen very often let me tell you. Even my Doctor has recommended that I resign to save any further permanent damage to my feet. “You need a different job.” Were his precise words I as I recall.

Following his informal advice I have submitted my resignation. I think it is well past time for me to look for some different (And softer on the old plates) streets to walk, while I am still able to do so. Wearing heavy work boots to cover an average of 17 miles per working day has done my feet no good at all. So much for ‘elf & safety culture.

How do I feel about finishing with the job? Mildly miffed of course, but there’s a whole other world out there and I’m off to see it. The only issue that leaves me with is what to do about the blog? Keep adding bits about my own particular take on the world? Bin it? Leave it as an archive? I haven’t decided yet.

On this subject, I was chatting online to Merys of “I am not a drain on society” recently via google and I broached the news of my impending retirement. She’s in my neck of the woods this weekend and we’re going to bring our significant others and have a natter over coffee or something. See how I feel about the blog then.

Have just looked out of my window and the rain has finally stopped and the streets are dry. Things are looking up already.

Witness to a storm in a teacup

Now, not a lot of people know this, but our municipal car parks are not often perfectly level. There is often a fraction of a degree slope in the surface to allow free drainage of surface water. This is a simple design which works, one of the few things that does work consistently well in our Municipal car parks.

This particular car park was on my beat, and I was just taking a passing interest when a member of the public confronted me.
“Officer, there’s a car blocking the alleyway.”
“Right, I’ll come and take a look.” Said I.
Sure enough, there’s one of those little short wheelbase Jeep thingy’s resting stern first against a grey people carrier blocking the main aisle and access. A silly person had parked their pride and joy without apparently engaging the handbrake. Said rinky dinky little 4x4 had subsequently rolled very gently backwards a distance of some fifteen feet and fetched up against the front of a grey people carrier with the slightest of bumps. No real damage done because the bumpers appeared to have absorbed all the impact energy. Member of public, having drawn my attention to the matter, swans off, leaving me scratching my head. What should I do? Book the vehicle on a code 86 (Parked beyond the bay markings) and leave it there, or do the decent thing and roll it back from whence it came? I opted (Possibly foolishly) for the latter.

Now I’m a big strong chap, and pushing one of these little things back into place isn’t really much of a problem, but there was the issue of being able to steer it as well. Not to mention holding it in place while finding something to stop it rolling back again. Fortunately, another gentleman volunteered his services to watch over things while I found something to chock the wheels in place. Ten minutes and a bit of grunting later, we’d pushed the vehicle back into place, chocked the wheels and left a note on the windscreens of both vehicles, letting the drivers know what happened. I couldn’t see any damage apart from a couple of dusty scratches on the People Carriers number plate. Tell you the truth; I thought no more about it.

That afternoon I was talking to one of the lads on the late shift;
“Hey Bill, did you leave a note on the windscreen of a 4x4?”
“Yeah, it’d rolled across the car park and fetched up against a grey people carrier. No damage. Stupid person had forgotten to put their handbrake on, that’s all.”
“Yeah mate, the driver came back and got all snotty with me.”
“What for?”
“Gave me a right mouthful she did. Saying how she never put the handbrake on and her vehicle hadn’t moved.”
“Sounds like I should have left the bloody thing where it was.”
“Yeah mate, you should have just booked it for out of bay.” He added. “I told her ‘madam, he left you that note to let you know you’d left your handbrake off’ – it just made her worse.” He grinned. “She wasn’t having any of it and even when I pointed out where you’d chocked the wheels in place to stop it moving she went off in a right frump. The other lady was all right about it though.”
“Tell you the truth I could hardly see any damage.” I shrugged.
“Fancy leaving your car parked without the handbrake on. Dipshit.” He scoffed.
“Gordon Bennett, just when you think people can’t get any thicker.” I replied with a heavy sigh. We laughed at the idiocy of the 4x4 driver and left it at that.

Two weeks later Kerry, my line manager, called me to the front office. “Bill, did you deal with that 4x4 in the car park a couple of weeks ago?”
“If it’s the one I’m thinking of, yes. The one that had rolled across the gangway?”
“Here you go. They want a witness statement.” She handed me a brown A5 envelope.
“Bugger.” I vouchsafed as I saw the insurance company form inside. “Oh all right.”
“No rush.”
“Cheers Kerry.” I said with a cheerfulness I really didn’t feel. Kerry smirked at me; she knows how I detest form filling. Notwithstanding, I checked out the details and filled out the witness statement form, thinking that was that. A month later another witness form was handed to me, this time from another insurance company. This too got the same treatment. Form filled in, exactly the same information – returned to the insurance company.

One month ago I received yet another form to fill in, this time from the Police. WTF? A car rolls backwards because some idiot can’t stick a handbrake on in a council car park, hardly any visible damage, and all of a sudden the Police want a report? So this gets ‘crimed’ and listed as a ‘detection’? Bloody hell. Oh well, another day, another bloody form. I looked at it for the best part of a week, all sorts of things going through my head. Had the driver of the vehicle we had pushed back into a vacant bay and chocked in place said that her vehicle had been vandalised and blamed me because I’d had the common decency to leave a note on her windscreen telling her what had happened? Wouldn’t surprise me. Or was this a case of someone looking for a statistic? Well, do you know what I did with their bloody form?

Reader, I filled it in.

Bean counters, a rant

There is a word around our offices that brings out the despair in even the most hardened, no-shit buster Parking Enforcer. Council policy has dictated that these guys can have you fired on the spot should they so desire. Departmental Manager, Corporate Director, Parking Officer, whoever. All are subject to their diktats. When they say ‘frog’, everyone better jump. Or Else. Rather like Terry Pratchett’s ‘Auditors’ of time and space, these guys can royally screw you over if the ‘procedure’ isn’t followed rigorously enough. To them, the rules are God and no thinking outside the box is allowed. By comparison they make even the hardest hearted Ticket Hound look like Snow White on Prozac.

The word is ‘Audit’ and their department oversees everything, and I do mean everything that the Council does. No decision too small, no item too insignificant, no words unconsidered. It all comes under their hideously hidebound microscope. For yea and verily, the most sacred of Council commandments is written in tablets of stone in letters of holy fire; THOU SHALT FOLLOW THE PROCEDURE.

Over the past two years, these guys have been paying us too much attention, even though there was nothing broken to fix. Now after much cheeseparing and numerous staff resignations we are perennially short handed and most of us spend our time covering two beats. To say that our On Street officers are at half strength is an accurate representation of our current dilemma.

There was a time when this wasn’t such a bad job, despite all the crap we had to contend with from our adoring public, but those days are long gone. Oh yes, and it’s all our fault, not the procedures. So what’s new?

Lines and signs, a study in confusion

A year or so ago I got called into the office, ostensibly over a couple of tickets I’d issued the week before. Senior Manager and Kerry, my line manager had an issue over a particular restriction which I and everyone else had thought was all cut and dried.
Senior Manager “Hello Bill. I suppose you understand what this is about?”
Me “Those disabled bays on Cross Street?”
Senior Manager “Correct. What is it you don’t understand about them?”
Me “They’re correctly marked and have a two hour waiting restriction for disabled users between the hours of nine and five.”
Senior Manager “So why have you been booking vehicles that park there before nine am and after five pm?”
Me “Pardon?” Okay, I’m confused.
Senior Manager “So why have you been booking there?”
Me “It’s a disabled bay 24/7 and people without disabled badges have been parking there.”
Senior Manager “No it isn’t.”
Me “I don’t understand.” Hang on, the markings say it is.
Senior Manager “Thought you wouldn’t.” Bloody cheek! Keep your face blank Bill.
Me “But they’re orange disabled bay markings and those don’t stop being disabled bays do they?” At least according to the Highway Code.
Senior Manager “In this particular instance, yes they do.”
Me “Hang on, the signs and plates say..”
Senior Manager “Bill, I don’t care about what the signs and plates say!”
Me “Alright, so what is the restriction?”
Senior Manager “There’s no need for that tone.”
Me “No offence intended, but my question is; I’ve only got what the signs and plates say as my guidelines. If the restriction isn’t what they say, then isn’t that signed restriction invalid?”
Senior Manager “That isn’t your decision to make.”
Me “I appreciate that, but what you’re saying is that the restriction isn’t valid before nine and after five?”
Senior Manager “Well done! You took your time getting there.” I see. Well thanks a bunch for your vote of confidence.
Me “Can I ask another question?”
Senior Manager “Of course.”
Me “I must have booked almost fifty vehicles on that restriction over the past couple of years, how come it’s taken until now to change?”
Senior Manager “As I told you, that’s not your decision to make.”
Me “That wasn’t my question. I was only asking why we weren’t informed sooner?”
Senior Manager “You do as you’re told.”
Me “Okay, I won’t book there after five any more.” I shrug. No skin off my nose. Senior Manager goes down yet another notch in my estimation, as if that were possible.
Senior Manager “Good. Kerry, anything to add?”
Kerry “No, not really.”
Senior Manager stands and on the way to the door addresses me thus; “Bill, you’ve got to learn to do what you’re told.”
Me “Ri-ight. I thought I did.”
Senior Manager, opening door and looking me in the eyes. “Your attitude is beginning to become a problem.”
Me “My attitude?”
Senior Manager “Yes, your attitude.” Senior Manager steps out off meeting room and heads off to another meeting leaving me feeling rather hurt and puzzled. What’s wrong with my attitude? I get out there and do the job to the best of my ability. My last assessment was okay so where the hell is this all coming from? Does Senior Manager suspect about the blog and this is a sly sideswipe to get me to back off? Not a chance.

I pick up my kit and fasten my webbing belt with all its gadgets and gizmo’s as we get ready to leave the meeting room. Kerry picks up her folders and notes.
Me “Kerry, What was all that about?”
Kerry “What?”
Me “All that stuff about my attitude. Where did that all come from?”
Kerry “We’re getting complaints from some of the other guys.”
Me “I hardly see them.”
Kerry “That’s just it, you don’t get involved.”
Me “With what?”
Kerry “You never go out to any of the after work do’s.”
Me “Do I have to?”
Kerry “Well, not really no.”
Me “I do have a life outside work you know. Wife, kids, family.” And the blog.
Kerry “Keep your voice down Bill.”
Me “Sorry, I had no idea I’d raised it.” Although I’m justifiably upset.
Kerry “You need to get more involved with your workmates.” Like hell.
Me “Even if I can’t stand some of them?”
Kerry “Have you got any problems with anyone?” As soon as I find out who the backstabbers are they will have a problem with me. That’s guaranteed.
Me “None I care to share, no.”
Kerry “Don’t go making me any problems Bill.” She warns me.
Me “Who, me?” I say sweetly. I solve problems kid, I don’t make ‘em.
Kerry “Yes, you. No punch ups in the mess.”
Me “Don’t be daft.” I was thinking of taking the mayhem round the back of the multi storey. “Besides, what would it achieve?” I add innocently.
Kerry “Exactly.” She gives me a look that’s not so much old fashioned as Jurassic. I leave the office and get back out on the streets, still fizzing slightly.

Now as far as I’m concerned I’ve done nothing wrong. Where the restrictions are concerned, the goalposts have moved but that’s nothing new. All this stuff about my ‘attitude’ is going to have to be challenged though. I think I know who it is and they’re going to face me when I’m seriously pissed off. Which isn’t an attractive prospect let me tell you.

Update, 2 Weeks later;
My reasoning self and I have had a good long sit down and a man to metaphorical self chat. My reasoning self says that I need the money and what with all the extra outgoings I cannot afford any foolish prideful gestures, even if it would be ultra nice to kick someone’s richly deserving arse to perdition and face the sack for it. My reasoning self says that an English midlands town just over fifteen miles east south east of Birmingham is the best place for our bitchy colleague. Word in the mess is that I’m not the only guy to be massively pissed off by his antics. My shift oppo’s and I all know what he’s like and are electing to stand together on this one.

I know it’s harsh, but he or I have got to go. Not that he will, but we just have to shut the little tattle tale out. Yes I know, according to some ‘experts’ we should sit the arsehole down and talk to him to ‘confront’ his behaviour but sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day to mess around like that.

Said unwelcome item just handed in his notice. Huzzah!

Pardon?

A couple of days ago three white kids tried to play around with me while I was busy booking a car on a single yellow line. Mock pleading “Don’t book me car!” and other similar nonsense. Did my usual trick of ignoring them and they got bored very quickly and pushed off. One thing about them that made my brow furrow was the accents they put on for my benefit (I suppose).

Let me explain; one of my minor life skills is an ‘ear’ for accents. I’m actually reasonably good at working out where people are from, and what they are saying, but these kids had me foxed. The actual thought that perambulated through my head was ‘why are these kids trying to sound like Rastafarians?’ Although it wasn’t like any Rasta I’d heard before.

It wasn’t until I was reading Tom Reynolds blog this evening that I worked out what it was. I’d never heard the term until Tom linked to it, but apparently it’s a ‘Jafaken’, or fake Jamaican accent put on by ‘wigga’s’, white suburban kids who are about as hard as jelly trying to make themselves sound tough. Reminds me of a kid I knew many years ago who used to put on a fake Glaswegian accent to make himself sound menacing. A gambit that failed spectacularly when he ran into several guys from the real ‘Tartan Army’ who thought he was taking the piss. This was back in the late 1970’s, before Glasgow became a European ‘city of culture’ and the amicability of the Scottish Football teams supporters was markedly less noteworthy. Last I heard, after his bruises faded, he’d signed up on a college course and later became an accountant. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

Now my lexicon has been expanded by two brand new words. Well I never, you learn something new every day in this job.

Pay and Dismay

The book is only a few days away from being available. In the meantime, here is a post that isn’t in it;

A lot of our car parks and on street car parking are what is called ‘pay and display’. You park your car, go to a pay and display machine, pay for however long you might like to stop and stick the printed ticket on display on your dashboard. Simple isn’t it? Well in theory perhaps. The operational side is a bit; well how should I put it, more complicated. Life would be far easier if the machines themselves were;
a) Better built and designed
b) Not quite so old and knackered

Furthermore, their state of decrepitude would not be so acute if they were not routinely subject to;
1) Coin of the realm so battered that it looks as though it has recently passed
through a black hole
2) Repeatedly being struck by members of the public who think that hitting the outer casing of a machine can actually ‘fix’ a mechanical fault
3) Superglue (Or other foreign matter - Euww) in the coin slots
4) Attempted break ins
5) Ham fisted attempts to ‘fix’ problems by Officers who were never taught how
to do it properly in the first place
6) Being hit by someone’s shiny pride and joy at speed
7) Rain, hail, sleet, snow, sunlight and next doors cat

All the aforementioned being taken into consideration, you can quite safely bet your twinkling little booties that at least one of the machines on your beat will be hors de combat when you begin your shift. If it’s a really bad day you can find yourself dealing with whole streets and car parks being out of order. Such bad days are not that uncommon.

The worst bit is that everyone wants these machines fixed right now because they are very busy and haven’t the time to wait five minutes until you can get all the way across town on foot.

Once upon a time when we had a full crew, this would be within the realms of possibility. Member of Public or Officer would put in a call, Supervisor would leap in his van and bimble across town to the fault location and everything would get done inside five minutes. Result, machine would be fixed and happy (Well not quite so unhappy) customer would be sent on their way rejoicing (Or at least not complaining quite so much).

A routine call would go like this;
A mobile phone rings and a beat officer (Me) answers; “Good day, Parking Department, how can I help you?”
Member of public; “Your machines broken.”
515; “Which machine is this sir / madam?”
Member of public; “I don’t know.”
515; “Okay, which car park are you in?”
Member of public; “Erm, the one just after the traffic lights on the right. Come quickly, your machine’s broken.”
515; “Which traffic lights?” We have several; it’s a very cosmopolitan town.
Member of public; “I dunno. Your machines taken all my money.” Call the Police! It’s a crime wave!
515; “Is there a number on the machine?”
Member of public; “I don’t know, I’m not in the car park any more.”
515; “Okay, where are you now?”
Member of public; “I’m in Marks and Spencer.”
515; “Are you parked anywhere near there?” Give me a clue – please.
Member of public; “No, your machine’s taken all my money and it didn’t give me a ticket.”
515; “Was it in a multi-storey?” Here we go, twenty questions time.
Member of public; “No.”
515; “Which was the closest shop to it?”
Member of public; “It’s up by the bus station. By the traffic lights. You know.” News to me. Wish I did. Well that narrows it down to two.
515; “Right, I’ll exempt your vehicle until we can get the fault fixed. Do you know the registration?”
Member of public; “No! This isn’t good enough. I’m making a complaint!” Line goes dead. Oh God. Arse map their without a can’t find.

And they’re going to let people like this use credit cards and text messaging to pay for parking? Well there’s an accident waiting to happen.

Hi-ho, all this and no sodding body armour. Especially for the poor sods who work in London. My sympathies to this poor guy in particular. You know what really pisses me off? He’ll be forgotten long before the current media frenzy ends over a spoilt rich kid who just did a little well deserved time for pissing on the law. Makes me want to spit.

Going to the dogs?

Another on and off rainy day, another run in with people who basically aren’t looking or don’t care. This little anecdote finds old Uncle Bill in his traditional stance (Arms folded, standing his ground) receiving a thorough telling off from a member of the General Dyslexic (Post Parking ticket of course).

“You know what’s wrong!” He frothed at me. “This country’s gone to the bloody dogs! You know why? Eh, eh!” The customary angry finger was thrust under my (apparently guilty) nose. “Go on! Why’s the country in the state it’s in!” He stood there, quivering with old rage, seeing me as the symbol of everything that was wrong with his country.
“Don’t know sir.” I responded carefully. An intelligent response will only wind this idiot up even more.
“Of course you bloody don’t!” He railed. “You’re the problem! All of you fucking jobsworths!” Thought so. I breathed a heavy inner sigh. So it’s my fault you took up a parking bay you weren’t entitled to because you were too tight to stump up fifty pence? “You go around making people’s lives a misery, and I bet you get a kick out of it don’t you? Don’t you!” The accusing finger dropped. I stood there saying nothing. Just waiting until the storm appeared to have blown itself out. As his blood pressure seemed to be dropping, I administered the coup de grace.
“Challenge procedure’s on the back of the ticket sir.” I advised gently.
“What?” I’ve really confused him now.
“The instructions on how to challenge the ticket sir. Should you wish to do so. On the back of the ticket. In the envelope. Sir.” I reiterated, not unkindly.
“ARHHH!” He shouted and stomped off back to his vehicle. Job done, another confrontation survived. There are ways of fighting back without actually getting into a fight.

What he said left me thinking. Why is England in the state it’s in? Am I part of the disease or the cure? I like to think it’s the latter. Doing little things like keeping streets running clear (Where I can) and showing the wilful that they cannot get away with being the grit in the ointment of other’s lives. Helping out where I can. Small stuff.

On that subject; albeit a little obliquely, I was reading ‘The Pub Philosopher’ a few days ago and found a link to this article (Why England is rotting) in a Canadian publication. It makes for thought provoking reading.

In perspective; not so very long ago, a couple of decades in my recollection; anyone messing around with the rule of law could expect some fairly rough handling. If you got drunk and stupid, you could expect a night in the cells and a short trip down the steps if you got disrespectful. It was an experience to be avoided and feared (Unless you were too stupid and full of yourself to care). Likewise, anyone messing with the Royal Navy could expect to be summarily blown out of the water. Now everything seems so emasculated. We expect our front line soldiers to be nice. This is crazy. Our Armed Forces and Police were never meant to be social workers. To illustrate by comparison; Dobermans were never really bred to be house pets. They are primarily guard and attack dogs.

In addition there is this asinine view that everything can be micro-managed remotely by non-combatant politicians and the guy on the spot has to refer each command decision upstairs. This way of doing things is quite frankly ludicrous. That ain’t no way to run an army. It’s a sure fire way to lose a war. Does no one read any history around here?

To enlarge; there is an idea that seems to stem from this huge, confused power / guilt / ego / morality trip that much of the left leaning English middle class seems to be hooked on. It’s like some people are trying to out-nice each other in the hope that the meek really will inherit the earth. (They will eventually, after everyone else has finished with it; but not just yet, it’s not their turn this millennium, or the next if human nature is any yardstick.) We are told that we have to stay on some farcical ‘moral high ground’ and ‘save the planet’ (That’s all utter bollocks if you ask me, this planets biosphere could shrug us off as a species without a twitch in it’s orbit and still keep going round the sun – it’s still got billions of years left in it).

England (As a societal entity) seems to have been so busy bending over backwards for so long that now, without turning it’s figurative head, it can make a spirited attempt to kiss it’s own arse as well as everyone else’s. We seem to have missed the middle ground somehow. I know we are no longer a colonial superpower and should accept this; our ancestors did many ‘bad’ things (By today’s standards, perhaps not by theirs). I understand one of my own distant ancestors was hanged for murder – but that doesn’t make me (Or any of my close relatives) a killer. Similarly, it’s no reason to (As a nation) wear sackcloth and ashes for the rest of eternity. What I’m trying to get across is that we as a nation should ‘fess up, learn the lesson and move on without all this guilt. It’s so adolescent and self-indulgently destructive. For want of a better term, it’s just so Chav. Which is half the problem really.

Not the last post

Was my last post on the 15th? How remiss of me, but I’ve been rather busy of late, what with one thing or another. The news on the publishing front is that the book is finished, but I’ve just got to sort out the distribution and listing side of things. Such are the joys of self publishing. Bear with me.

In the meantime, here’s the latest from the wonderful zany world of parking enfarcement in our area;

Fraud

Team meeting this afternoon and one of the many sticks that are used to beat (Sorry, motivate) us came out of the closet. This is the ‘You get a paid tea break’ gambit. One that isn’t always taken I might add, because there’s often nowhere to bloody well take it (Especially in the afternoon) and fit in all your patrol duties. Especially on the longer beats. Senior Manager also likes to trot out the old chestnut about how five minutes a day costs yay much, and multiply this by so many working days in the year and so many staff on duty meaning if we aren’t all out on beat ‘On the dot’ we’re wasting hundreds of thousands of the councils money fraudulently. This means preparing for the days duties on your own time, changing into their uniform, setting up their equipment (Printers, Hand held Computers, Radio’s), unpaid. Ahem, who is being defrauded here might I ask?

I know our employers pay the wages, but surely that’s for my time at work, not to make inroads into my personal life. As long as I am performing my work duties within reasonable parameters and catching the naughty people who abuse the parking laws, why the heavy handed approach? Especially when I personally am not at fault. This rankles somewhat.

As we don’t get time off in lieu (Or paid overtime) for being on site and ready say fifteen minutes to half an hour before our start of shift time, this seems a very one sided bargain. I know we’re better paid than call centre workers, but we do undertake greater physical risks and are expected, amongst many other things, to fix pay and display machines etc with ‘customers’ breathing down our neck, demanding that we do something right now! There seems to be this view that we should go straight out on street (As we so often do) with very little information apart from what’s come through on the grapevine. More often than not it feels like no one tells us anything.

No wonder mistakes are made. We often feel we are not important enough to be told what we need to know to do our jobs better. Grumbling has already reached the lower end of the richter scale, and it’s not just me. I’m just the bloke who sits at the end of the mess table with his mouth clamped firmly shut. I know my job is out on the streets and car parks, and that’s where you can generally find me during the duty hours of my shift. My employers get their money’s worth. So when I am told that I should be giving up my personal time for the job, who is defrauding who?