In a bold move that has left Rochdale residents confused and Trafford slightly insulted, a recent article encouraging input on new parking rules used a photo of Trafford, because we couldn’t be bothered to send our Warrington based journalist over to Rochdale, this was the best pic from Google we could find.
We heard that local campaigners are urging residents to have their say on a new Private Parking Code of Practice, designed to bring some long-overdue common sense to the Kafkaesque hellscape that is private parking enforcement. The consultation includes such revolutionary ideas as “signs you can read” and “not fining people for dying mid-parking”.
The government, clearly keen to show it can do something vaguely useful in between collapsing like a flan in a microwave, has promised action against rogue private parking firms. These are the same firms who believe morality is something that happens to other people and routinely issue fines to pensioners who blink in the wrong direction.
Heywood and Middleton North MP Elsie Blundell has welcomed the consultation, saying she’s had “quite enough of listening to her constituents cry down the phone after getting a £100 fine for reversing too slowly”.
“We’ve all had that moment,” she added, “where you’re trying to get to a hospital appointment and suddenly the ticket machine thinks your fiver is a crude forgery from the reign of King George VI.”
Meanwhile, Minister for Local Growth Alex Norris blamed “four failed governments and a haunted parking meter in Stevenage” for previous delays in implementing the code.
“We’re going to fix it now,” he promised. “Unless, of course, something terrible happens like Parliament remembering it exists.”
Under the new rules, parking operators who issue fines for imaginary infractions, like “not parking telepathically between the lines”, could be banned from accessing DVLA data. Experts predict this could halve the nation’s GDP overnight.
The consultation is open until 5 September. Readers are encouraged to take part, if only to stop Rochdale being illustrated by stock images of a Nando’s car park in Altrincham.
