Short and Sharp

WELL someone had to say it - the new wave of traffic wardens are rude and over zealous.

Not my words, but the words of the Mayor of Pendle, Coun Dorothy Lord. And the Leader of Pendle Council, Coun Alan Davies. Who, incidentally, was recently lumbered with a parking ticket in his very own borough.

Coun Lord's own son was treated with disdain by one of our wonderful wardens for daring to ask how long he was allowed to park for.

It's about six months since Parkwise, the fancy, consultancy-inspired name for enforcing parking measures, was introduced across East Lancashire. And ever since then we've had nothing but trouble.

The pages of this very paper have been filled with tales of woe from people who felt unjustly treated. A minute over your allotted parking time? Tough, here's a £60 fine.

Parking an inch over your space on to the adjoining yellow lines? Hard cheese. Cough up buster.

When Lancashire County Council joined forces with borough councils to launch Parkwise, they insisted they were merely enforcing rules which had been in place all along.

There were suspicions from many motorists who suspected all the wardens were merely a tool to raise more cash for those continually cash-strapped councils.

But all along those same councils insisted that was nonsense. The wardens were there for our benefit, as motorists, and our benefit only. By cracking down on those unscrupulous ignorers of waiting restrictions and therefore helping traffic flows in our congested towns, the wardens were there to make everything fine. If you'll pardon the pun.

In every other part of the country where councils have taken over responsibility for parking enforcement from the police, there have been major backlashes. Motoring groups have jumped up and down like angry two year olds. And new groups were even formed just to campaign against the new regime.

And what a regime! Today, more than ever, our parking wardens are likened to ruthless mechanoids, intent on punishing the slightest misdemeanour with no concept of leeway.

That's the ironic thing. Because Parkwise was introduced when councils took over responsibility for parking misdemeanours from the police. It used to actually be against the law to break parking rules and regulations.

And now that it is no longer against the law, but a transgression of council imposed rules instead, people feel criminalised more than they ever did when actually breaking the law.

It's no wonder folk are angry.

We see so much going wrong in our daily lives that the authorities are failing to tackle. From juvenile nuisance to not having our rubbish collected for three whole weeks over Christmas.

And yet the one thing the council pursues relentlessly is good old parking. Over running your parking time is the one wrong thing you are guaranteed to get caught for.

That's not to say our councils are not trying to tackle those other issues. But they should have tried to sort them out first before deciding to treat the common motorist more like a common criminal. It's hard to understand why community wardens in Hyndburn are at risk of losing their jobs when so many parking wardens are patrolling the streets. In fact, it doesn't make any sense. Priority-wise, it's positively topsy-turvy.

And when our own civic leaders are starting to get fed up and have a whine at their own system, doesn't it just tell you that something is wrong?