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| BEND & KNEEL BEFORE ME YOU PITIFUL CITIZEN! |
Dear Oxford Councillors,
After the election on Thursday (we
are voting Lib-Dem or tactically to oust Boris-the-Incontinent-Fascist) –
please forward this to the officers in charge of the Waitrose Supermarket Car Park in
Headington – and please get the aggressive ******** Parking Ticket Machines
changed. Or better still, abolished.
Last Sunday was my 77th Birthday – lunch for all the family. I
drove to Waitrose early to buy heavy-weight supplies that I could not carry by
hand. The car-park was almost empty. There was a Merry-Christmas warden gluing
parking-offence fines on cars. I tackled one of the £2 machines. I had no coins
so used a card. To enter the car registration I had to bend almost double and
tap it in on a tiny keypad. This did not improve my lower-back ache. Pressing
the GREEN button, no ticket emerged.
Following the on-screen instructions
I tried to insert my card into 2 or 3 likely looking slots – but failed. Still
bent double I restarted the process. After some minutes I found the card slot –
near the ground - and inserted the card. Nothing happened. Minutes later the
screen announced “follow the instructions on the screen” – after a few more
minutes I realised “they” meant the card-screen hidden about 9 inches above the
concrete.
I knelt down on the concrete to read
it. I followed those instructions, tapping things into an even smaller, worn
keypad. No ticket was issued. I had by now been bending double or crouching for
five-minutes. I went through the routine again – getting cross. It reportedly
took £2, then rejected my card as invalid (it is a perfectly good card) but
gripped it in the slot. After pressing all buttons everywhere I managed to
release the card.
I un-cricked my back and knees and
went to the warden – and explained. He said that the machine would not have
charged £2 – and I should try again. In his view the machine was perfection
itself. I pressed my point of view more firmly and asked him to pass it on to
the machine managers. The warden eventually yielded and said he gets hundreds
of such complaints and he has complained to “the office” many times; without
result.
By this time another baffled
would-be car-parker, probably in her sixties, with spectacles (an added hazard
as glasses slip off when kneeling in cowed supplication to read the lower
screen) was queuing to complain to the warden. I yielded my position. I went to
the other set of machines near the Waitrose door. And went through the same
routines. I was advised by a 40 something man, another hopeful, initially
optimistic, parker, who I imagined was an Oxford professor of mathematics.
Between us – we forced a ticket out of the machine. I took mine to put in the
car and get bags etc. Coming back the Professor of Mathematics was still
crouching and praying before the machine failing to get a ticket. I selfishly
did not volunteer to crouch alongside him. My knees and back were still
hurting. This process had taken 20 minutes.
Who – just who – which ******* idiot
designed the crazy machine? Why, please tell me why is it ******** necessary to
have such complexity for a £2 charge? Is it a con? Are the officials taking
backhanders from the machine makers? Do the parking gangsters fix the machines
to frustrate users to the point of not buying a ticket – and incurring a £60
fine? Why not have a simple Contactless pad at the entrance? Why not simply
give someone the job of selling £2 tickets off a roll? Why do “they” need the
registration numbers? It must cost a great deal to install such demented
technology, maintain it, and have wardens to police it. Why don’t Waitrose buy
the car-park and free it for customers? Why don’t The City provide free
parking? Will “they” pay my medical expenses as my back and knees collapse and
my funeral expenses as my non-parking-ticket rage triggers a terminal stroke?
Will I ever do a Big-Shop there again?
The equally baffling ticket machines
in central Oxford, at night shine a blinding light straight into one’s eyes,
obscuring the instructions. Why?
Please fix this bureaucratic,
aggressive war-on-cars and in-town-businesses madness.
Noel HODSON - Author
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