Wilf: Fair play would be just the ticket

May 30 2009 by Roy Wright, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

My old friend and marine adviser Ronnie Lumb is eighty one years old.

He’s had a licence since 1947 and driven in Egypt, Jordan and Australia without offence. Kirklees have given him a disabled parking sticker.

He displays this sticker on the windscreen with a card showing the time he parked and he’s then allowed a three hour stay.

One time he put the clock upside down and he was fined forty pounds. His attitude was, it’s my fault, so he paid.

The second time he got out of his car walked a few paces realised he’d forgotten to adjust the clock and turned back to do it. Too late.

A warden who’d been lurking in a doorway was punching in a ticket. This man had watched Ronnie get out of the car.Why didn’t he tell him he’d forgotten the clock?

When Ronnie confronted him he said it was too late, he’d started printing the ticket. Ronnie said to him if he’d been going to a ticket machine he wouldn’t have had time to get back to the car. Fined forty pounds.

Recently he parked by the charity shop. No charity in the mind of the warden he promptly issued a ticket. Ron was baffled, sticker and clock out of date. He hadn’t had the usual reminder. He’s expecting a seventy pound fine.

Again why didn’t the wardens on each occasion just inform him what the problem was? He could then have got parking tickets till the sticker was renewed.

The main point is the disabled sticker was there in plain sight and because the sticker was out of date Ronnie hadn't suddenly miraculously recovered and become 'undisabled'.

I thought the warden were there to serve the town but are they there to screw as much as they can out of the public.

Are these wardens on commission? Kirklees gave Ronnie the sticker but now they are making him too scared to come into town. Simple courtesies and fair mindedness are apparently not on the agenda.

A long time ago Huddersfield realised that if folk from outlying districts couldn't get to town or work the place would not prosper so they started the public tram system.

Without them the boom textile years would never have happened.

The same applies now if you can’t get to town to shop the shops will close and stop paying rates.

Kirklees is one of the main employers and it needs huge amounts of cash for its secure pensions and wages.

If you live in a house where inhabitants pay each other to do the washing, cooking and cleaning.

Buying food from supermarkets that take the money out of the house with no one earning money from out side.

Everything grinds to a halt.

Some people like to call it bankruptcy. Kirklees is not quite there yet. Fortunately the University brings in cash.

Don’t Kirklees realise they work for us? I get the impression they think we rate payers work for them and we are there to be fleeced like the peasants of old.

We get less and less for more money. Will there come a time when they expect us to gift wrap our rubbish and post it to the dump.

It’s like living with robber Barons under King John. Where is Robin Hood now we need him..

PS. The letter from the so called Kirklees employee bragging that he’s never had it so good is I think a spoof deliberately sent to create bad feeling towards Kirklees. Perish the thought.