Police are looking for a short, rotund man, believed to go by the name of Henry, to assist them with their enquiries
I say, that sucks! Crooks are harnessing hoovers to clean out parking meters in Chelsea
The Toff-tastic West London borough of Kensington and Chelsea has recommended that Hugo and Caggie stop paying to park their Bentleys with cash – because hoover-hauling hoodlums are sucking coins out of the meters. The local authority told the BBC that £120,000 has been slurped from the machines over the last year alone, and …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 28th February 2019 12:39 GMT Dave 126
> "We also now know from local police that this is funding further criminality in London, from drugs and trafficking to possibly violent crime,"
Am I missing something? I'd have assumed that the only reason to deal drugs and traffic women is to make money. How is it that they require subsidising?
This has got hints of Fox News reporting that Movie Piracy Funds Al Qaeda!
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Thursday 28th February 2019 13:50 GMT Jellied Eel
Trickle down economy?
As in that odd sensation as a stream of cold, hard cash runs down your trouser leg from a hole in your pocket.
As for funding criminality, people seem to be missing that users need cash to buy drugs, or time with a hooker. Which then means an economist could calculate relative values, ie cost of parking vs other activities.. and possibly expand on the social cost. So a hooker @ £4/hr may result in additional costs to the NHS.
Meanwhile, Kensington's residents may object to a cashless audit trail. Rather awkward if statements show parking charges from a quick visit to one's mistress, or master. And high class divorces can be soo expensive. For councils though, I guess it'd be a lot cheaper if meters were just replaced with numbered bays, and an app to rent bays (bays! Bays I said!) and allow the meter maids to check licence plates against rentals.
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Thursday 28th February 2019 17:45 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Trickle down economy?
Which century are you currently inhabiting?
Ah, well, I admit I have very little first-hand knowledge of that sector of our economy. However, somewhere in the HMG bit bucket is a fascinating report. Can't remember if that was from ONS or NAO, but..
Countries where drugs and hookers are legal objected to revenues from those being included in their economy, and thus tithe to the EU overlords.. Who are probably more familiar given Belgium has legalised brothels (I think). So the UK had to estimate revenues from those activities so their revenue could be included in our tithe. Which presumably lead to an official market review and some civil servants working out an official hourly rate.
And now I'm wondering if nicking cash from meters could result in double counting, ie revenue to councils and revenues from hookers & blow. Luckily I'm not an accountant..
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Thursday 28th February 2019 19:32 GMT harmjschoonhoven
Re: Trickle down economy?
@Jellied Eel, In the Netherlands prostitution is legalized (and taxed). According to the Central Bureau of Statistics prostitution added an estimated 520 million Euros to the Dutch economy in 2014. The document stipulates that EU rules require that all illegal activities are tallied in economic statistics.
BTW The linked PDF is in Dutch, but the translation is easy: cannabis=cannabis, prostitutie=prostitution, pooier=pimp.
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Friday 1st March 2019 09:59 GMT Stoneshop
Re: Trickle down economy?
Meanwhile, Kensington's residents may object to a cashless audit trail. Rather awkward if statements show parking charges from a quick visit to one's mistress, or master.
To that end one keeps multiple bank accounts, multiple agendas as well as multiple bookkeepers. Savings can be made by having said bookkeepers double as mistresses/masters (as applicable)
(the one with the hidden pockets with the hidden agendas in them, thanks)
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Thursday 28th February 2019 12:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Just wierd
"We also now know from local police that this is funding further criminality in London, from drugs and trafficking to possibly violent crime,"
Times must be getting tough when the criminals need to suck coins out of meters in order negate the losses they are generating from their drug dealing and trafficking operations.
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Thursday 28th February 2019 13:40 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: Just wierd
Couldn't they apply for some sort of grant ?
If you paid drug dealers who didn't actually have any drugs 10M quid to ensure the supply of drugs in the event of Brexit, then they wouldn't have to rob meters - and there would still be no actual drugs delivered.
In fact if you gave Crapita the job of supplying free drugs to everyone you could solve the "drugs problems" overnight
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Thursday 28th February 2019 12:47 GMT Starace
Useless crime enforcement
So we have gangs driving around doing really obvious violent (and not particularly quick to commit) crimes in the heavily camera covered heart of London and no-one has managed to stop them or track them down?
Have they just given up on the hard stuff and just switched to dealing with hurty words on Twitter?
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Thursday 28th February 2019 17:01 GMT Lee D
Re: Useless crime enforcement
CCTV has several major problems.
- You can't watch every camera 24 hours a day without there being a person there watching each one 24 hours a day.
- If you happen to see a crime in progress (which may take you several minutes to realise even in the obvious cases), actually doing anything about it is several more minutes away.
- If you have historical footage of a crime... great. Now what? "He was a short man in a hoodie". In London. Good luck tracing that guy without thousands of cameras all over every road in London (which, despite US media propaganda, we just don't have)
Working in IT for schools means that I'm responsible for the CCTV on large sites - 50+ cameras on many of them.
Allow me to summarise the numbers:
Percentage of incidents actually in progress that we witnessed live: 0%
Percentage of crimes that occurred where we could see anything on the CCTV: 1%
Percentage of crimes that we had footage of, but in which not one identifying feature was present: 99.9%
Percentage of crimes that we had full HD footage, showing faces, of which resulted in any convictions whatsoever: 0%.
In fact, over the last 20 years let me summarise every "success" of the CCTV:
A "kid" (18yo) started a fight in a corridor with another pupil. A supply teacher, who hadn't worked in the school before, stepped in and gently pushed - with the palm of his hand - the kid who had started the fight back against the corridor wall (no injury, nothing fast or hard, just a literal "Hey, hey, hey... no.."). The parents complained. He was struck off the teaching register while police investigated an allegation of assault against him.
It's the one, single, solitary time when I've had to provide actual evidence via the CCTV.
Now consider that my systems have "caught" three burglaries, multiple intruders, deliberate vandalism of fire doors which could have endangered life (by a disgruntled local man running for councillor, no less), and all kinds of assaults, breakages, thefts, etc. on camera.
Then multiply those percentages above to work out what else *did* go on but we didn't actually have *anything at all* from the CCTV.
CCTV is there for monitoring and peace of mind. I can see my house from work. I'm the only person who actually cares if my house is broken into. The neighbours will complain loudly about any alarm going off, while simultaneously ignoring it, so they are pointless. But with CCTV I can *see* if someone's jumping / jumped my fence and report a crime in progress. Despite being in control of dozens of cameras for work... I can't just sit and watch them all day. And even if we pull up an incident it usually contains nothing of interest at all (everything from "so-and-so pushed me in the playground" to "what time did John go home" to "we heard noises outside last night").
Don't expect cameras to do *anything* at all. They are defeated by the simple precept of "wear generic plain-coloured clothing, preferably a hoodie to cover your face". And, in fact, most of the time you can commit a crime right in view of a camera perfectly well without getting anything worthy of evidence at all (e.g. supermarket thefts - how do you think a camera high up can tell if one person put an extra bit of cheese in their bag in the middle of a crowded superstore?).
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Thursday 28th February 2019 19:54 GMT A. Coatsworth
Re: Useless crime enforcement
The answer is the clear as day: if hoodies defeat the surveillance, simply ban hoodies! That way everybody's faces will be caught on camera.
How I *wish* I could put the Joke icon here... but that is precisely the train of thought of the "think of the children" brigade and many lawmakers...
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Friday 1st March 2019 12:52 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Useless crime enforcement
"It's the one, single, solitary time when I've had to provide actual evidence via the CCTV."
I was doing a job in a school a little while ago and the CCTV monitor was drawing green boxes around any faces it detected on the camera feed. Not sure if it then went on to make an attempt at facial recognition, but I was quite shocked that they were even going this far. At no stage on entering the school or signing in as a contractor was I informed there was CCTV surveillance and possible face recognition going on. But they did require that I prove my DBS clearance existed, even though the rules don't require I even have DBS clearance unless I'm going to be left alone with the kids on a "frequent basis", ie at least twice in two weeks.
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Thursday 28th February 2019 12:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
"We also now know from local police that this is funding further criminality in London, from drugs and trafficking to possibly violent crime," Pascall added.
How, pray tell, could this possibly be related to trafficking.
Perhaps, I suppose, the crims will celebrate by purchasing some recreational drugs.
"National lottery funding Champagne and cocaine industries, campaigners warn".
( Ok, I made that last one up )
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Thursday 28th February 2019 12:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
Most likely political
I do support a parking enforcement team, and I have to admit that some of the things that criminals have done to get the cash out of machines, is truly awe inspiring. And we have the armoured cash boxes with the mobile phone alerting systems... the whole nine yards.
Having said that, I personally peg this as more likely a push by the council to get people onto cashless parking to save themselves a small fortune in parking meters and the associated costs of handling cash.
And having said THAT... I am living up to my promise to Brighton, never to go there again after their parking team and their electronic parking system, combined with their screwy line painting, robbed me blind. I ended up paying for the parking AND a fine. Now I don't spend any money in Brighton shops.
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Friday 1st March 2019 13:03 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Most likely political
"Having said that, I personally peg this as more likely a push by the council to get people onto cashless parking to save themselves a small fortune in parking meters and the associated costs of handling cash."
Business expense claims require receipts. Daily parking charges all over the place for some of can add up quite significantly. I avoid "cashless" parking fees as much as humanly possible because it *always* generates queries on every monthly claim. If, instead of requiring registration with a credit/debit card they could just charge it to the phone account or by a "premium" text message on my company mobile phone, then I'd be happy to use them.
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Thursday 28th February 2019 12:56 GMT Loyal Commenter
"It is a trend we need to stop and motorists going cashless is one way we can help tackle this."
If the parking machines in K&C are anything like the ones I've tried to use without cash, then you'll be stuck callng an automated number going through a crappy menu system before having to punch in your 12 digit card number, expiry date and CVC on your phone's keypad while still trying to hear what the automated voice is saying, in the rain, to pay £5 for parking, plus the extra 50p 'convenience fee' they scam out of you on top, then run to wherever you're trying to be because you've spent 20 minutes doing something that should have taken 20 seconds if you'd had the right change handy, whilst at the same time havng to remember to text your registration number in the correct format to some random number so you don't come back to a ticket.
I'm not sure why they can't just make the bloody things have working card readers on them, or $deity forbid, be contactless.
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Thursday 28th February 2019 13:15 GMT Valerion
In the London borough where I live, the meters have NO card payment OR pay-by-phone or pay-by-app. If you want to park, you'd better have the right combination of correct-shaped pieces of metal in your pocket to pay for it. In 2019.
Mind you this same borough wants to solve the problem of too many cars needing to park by taking away parking spaces.
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Thursday 28th February 2019 13:48 GMT A Non e-mouse
NCP
I've twice recently had the unfortunate pleasure of trying to deal with NCP parking machines. These machines do have card readers (both chip & contactless)
On both occasions, it took me over 10 minutes to pay for my parking because the machines are so badly designed.
It never ceases to amaze me how companies can produce such bad IT that's intended for the general public to use.
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Friday 1st March 2019 13:08 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: NCP
"On both occasions, it took me over 10 minutes to pay for my parking because the machines are so badly designed."
...and always seem to mange to hide the button to request a receipt in the system so well and that you need to know to press it before you start to make payment or you won't get one.
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Thursday 28th February 2019 14:28 GMT Tom 7
Re 16 digits
my card may well have 16 digits on it but that design guru (or utter fucking bastard (the one that designed the plastic tag for opening your packet of bacon that never ever works)) decided you'd really like a credit card with a pattern in shiny on it so no matter where the light is you can only ever read 12 of the digits accurately! 4 on mine are under the hologram so change randomly.
Makes me so angry I could lisp.
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Thursday 28th February 2019 13:13 GMT Lee D
1) Cash in an unattended box is just asking for trouble. (I'm still amazed that I went into a car park up in Scotland where the payment was "put some coins in this jar", and a jar full of coins just brimming over was just sitting there unsupervised).
2) If you don't want to deal in cash, give us a way to pay by card.
3) No... paying by card should NOT involve signing up for your account, talking to human operators, reading out your credit card details in full view of a car park, getting spam email, and having to sign up for a different service for almost every car park, borough, council, system, service, etc. etc. etc. I should be able to bonk / PIN and walk off with a ticket.
4) If you don't *want* to do that (For card fraud? Then make them put in their reg-number... either they end up paying for a ticket that isn't valid for their car and caught by your normal processes, or you know what car registration used a stolen card).
It's a REALLY simple system that I can't understand quite why it's so complicated, and I avoid anything that isn't just "park, pay, go". In Falmouth once, a few years ago, I signed up to three different services and abandoned each and *literally* moved my car to the next car park each time. Don't even get me started when it wouldn't let me register using a card "because that card was already tied to another vehicle"... because I'd used it on a one-off elsewhere several years ago and several hundred miles away, and there was no way to change it.
If trains can do it. Shops can do it. My own workplace can do it. HELL! *I* can do it (I have an iZettle in my bag). Then for damn sure, paying for a ticket in a car park should be as simple. And I am likely NEVER going to want to sign up to an account to do so.
Even the whole "this is the code you need for this car park" is a crock... I don't care about that. I just want to tap on THE BOX THAT IS HERE and be done.
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Sunday 3rd March 2019 21:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
Very hard!
If Big Issue sellers can now take cards then how hard can it be for Councils to sort out simple payments.
If you think your council employs anyone with even half the brains of a Big Issue seller, you should nominate them for some kind of award. Mine certainly doesn't. And I doubt the entire NCP IT team has more than 3 brain cells between them either.
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Thursday 28th February 2019 17:00 GMT defiler
To be fair, we're more trustworthy in Scotland than in Kensington & Chelsea. Even in Edinburgh and Glasgow!
Besides which, Edinburgh Council's parking fine payment is remarkably streamlined. Clearly they want that fat cash fast! It's easier to pay the fine than pay the parking. Except for the size of payment...
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Thursday 28th February 2019 19:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
One of the apps I use for parking in the Greater Paris Area just asks for the post code where I'm parking and for how long I want to park. That's all. I only have one car so the app skips the 'which of your registered cars is this for?' bit. 10 minutes before my time is up I'm asked if I want to extend my parking time.
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Friday 1st March 2019 10:17 GMT Spamfast
I'm still amazed that I went into a car park up in Scotland where the payment was "put some coins in this jar", and a jar full of coins just brimming over was just sitting there unsupervised
The honour payment system is widely used in Denmark & Germany too. Farm produce at the side of the road, unlocked drinks fridges in common areas in hotels & hostels and in harbourside kiosks, etc., etc.
We stayed in a ten room hotel in a town near Bremen which had nobody at reception when we arrived at about five in the afternoon on a Saturday. All the unused keys were on hooks on a board with a sign saying, "Please take a room key if the conceige is not present."
The manager rolled up at eight the next day to cook breakfast and check us out but there was also a letterbox fixed to the wall in reception and payment envelopes if we'd wanted to leave earlier.
Try that in the UK! Sad, really.
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Thursday 28th February 2019 13:37 GMT Dave 126
Re: Where did they get the power?
That's a good point. I guess they're using a 12V DC to 240V AC inverter from their car's fag lighter socket. Sucking coins from a box wasn't part of the vacuum cleaner test matrix in Which? last I saw, so I don't know how well a cordless Dyson would work (and the batteries on those don't last long on a charge, and don't appear to have overcharge protection circuitry so leaving them in their wall mount means the battery is next to useless after 9 months.
In any case, if you're stealing coins having your vacuum cleaner be transparent is a bug not a feature.
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Sunday 3rd March 2019 04:19 GMT -tim
Re: Start up money
I was woken up by what I thought were hacksaw sounds and I noticed a guy with the hood of his car up and working on something. The next day I notice that the parking meter was gone and there was a freshly cut pipe where it used to be. A few days latter all the parking meters were gone as it appeared that the proceeds from the night of the slow hacksaw went to buy a proper pipe cutter which was quick and silent. A few weeks later all the meters were replaced and someone had welded rods on the sides of the pipes. I'm guessing a prybar was the next weapon of choice based on the paint on the top of the newly added fulcrum. The next step was rods with angles and far more precision. At AU$10,000 per year per space, the council wasn't about to let that money go away.
A neighbor wanted to protest the increase in parking cost by getting a key made for the parking meters and then get a hundred copies made and distributed to the homeless before a long weekend. The plan would have put an enormous pressures on the council's finances. He want to call it "keys for the homeless"
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Thursday 28th February 2019 16:48 GMT Milton
"funding further criminality"
'We also now know from local police that this is funding further criminality in London, from drugs and trafficking to possibly violent crime," Pascall added.'
And many of us remember the frothing propaganda about video piracy, telling us that copying a tape supported terrorists and international criminals and intercontinental drugs gangs and child traffickers and black market arms dealers (and, who knows, even to the worst of the worst, the Catholic Church?) ... it's funny how no one ever said, "Yeah, some pikies are knocking out tapes in Wolverhampton and buying new caravans".
These hysterical warnings of all the hellish evils being funded by pound coins sucked from council meters are sooo yesterday, not to mention silly, unnecessary and counterproductive, because when you begin this kind of hype, people don't even trust you when you do speak facts.
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Friday 1st March 2019 10:43 GMT TrumpSlurp the Troll
Cool Hand Luke
Came here to post just that.
However, consider the goose and the golden eggs.
You really need to cut a hole then plug it so it isn't obvious so you can repeat the cash grab with minimal effort every few days.
Which in turn raises the questions. Do the councils repair or replace? Do people keep feeding the meter when there is a hole in the side? How long before the theft is detected?
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Thursday 28th February 2019 22:09 GMT Gene Cash
Loopholes
On this side of the pond, there's a loophole that since cashless parking meters don't involve cash, they aren't required to show time remaining. They only do so if you pay with cash.
So even though you paid for 30min and left after 10, the next guy has no way to see there's 20min remaining and is forced to pay.
And yes, the apps are equally as shite as the ones described above.
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Friday 1st March 2019 03:03 GMT D.U.B
It's not the gangs, the drugs,or the $4 hookers they want to stop.
It's the cash.
They want to ban the cash.
Cash is freedom.
Cash anonymity.
The gangs, drugs, and hookers are jut the aforementioned "for the children" cover story.
Easier to track card tansactions and build travel history.
How long after banning cash before installing cameras and microphones.
Can't build dossiers without data......
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Friday 1st March 2019 11:19 GMT Spamfast
Re: I think I may have the solution
You're shafting me with fuel duty, VAT on top of that, road fund licence thingy (whatever it's called), insurance premium tax... isn't that enough?
I don't like NCP's virtual monopoly on private car parks but none of this tax goes to the owner of the car park if privately owned and only a proportion if council-owned. (The council may see more if it's in London than anywhere else in England but that's a different flame war.)
Councils and central government have to spend money to maintain the roads. If you want the road network improved it costs a bloody fortune. (And if you're advocating increasing road capacity I want to see an equal or greater amount spent on improving public transport and building proper, safe cycle paths.)
If some of this comes from people who insist on driving around in central London and other city centres then good luck to the councils. It's either that or it has to come from everybody else.
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Monday 4th March 2019 09:38 GMT Alan Brown
Re: I think I may have the solution
"Councils and central government have to spend money to maintain the roads. "
"the government" gets around £5-6 billion from "road tax" (vehicle excise duty)
It gets over £60 biillion from road fuel excise duty (that's a _large_ chunk of total income - possibly the single largest chunk by type)
Both of those go into the central fund and are used for general spending. Talk of "ringfencing" road tax is playing a shell game and hoping you don't notice the fuel taxes because roading costs about £7-10 billion to maintain and then they can say there's not enough income so you have to live with the potholes. (oh woe is us)
Councils _by law_ are not allowed to use parking(and fines) income as general revenue, but in practice they've come up with various scams to allow them to actually do so. Westminster in particular is known as a parking company with a council parasitically attached.
The more astute will have already noticed that:
1: Electric vehicles mean less fuel duty
2: Self driving vehicles can go and park themselves where the charges are lower
3: Self driving vehicles are bound to result in lower levels of vehicle ownership
Which means that in a few years central government is going to be looking to make up a substantial loss of revenue, probably by adding a fuel duty component to electric vehicle charging (~90p per litre of your fuel is tax in some form or another, the actual fuel is only about 25p) because they're not particularly imaginative. VED is a relatively small amount and they can stand the losses there but ZEVs will eventually start having an annual tax on them because they're the government and because they can.
And in a few years (probably fewer years) councils such as Westminster are going to be finding that they're going to be looking at _substantial_ income shortfalls that need to be made up.
Interestingly, public transport can actually make the road condition _worse_ - road damage is proportional to the 5th power of axle weight and the square of velocity, with the practical upshot that a 10 tonne vehicle (bus) averaging 45 passengers does roughly 8-10,000 times the damage PER PASS that a car does. This is something that several cities around the world have found out to their chagrin - having successfully reduced traffic levels in central areas and only allowing busses in sensitive areas, they tend to find that roads and surrounding continue to deteriorate just as fast as before (faster if they have to increase bus frequencies). One city (Vancouver?) made things worse on a particular downtown road by making it bus-only and funnelling the things down it, with the result that its wear rate tripled.
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Monday 4th March 2019 14:23 GMT Spamfast
Re: I think I may have the solution
Upvoted - good analysis. But ...
Westminster in particular is known as a parking company with a council parasitically attached.
Let's face it - anything in Westminster whether local or national is self-serving offshore bank stuffing.
Self driving vehicles
Show me one in which you'd be willing to be conveyed on the M1 at 70mph, Marylebone Road at 40 or a country road in Dorset at 30. I'll give you ten years to find it.
Then I'll send flowers.
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Friday 1st March 2019 11:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I think I may have the solution
> Don't charge for parking.
That would guarantee that every space in $town will be full all day, dawn to dusk with office workers parking for free and no one else would ever get a look in.
If you say - well we'll limit the time - then you'll need a warden to enforce it and who is going to pay their wages? Introduce parking charges, of course - so that the cost of parking is borne by those who use it not the local rate payers.
Oh look, we're back where we are now.
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Friday 1st March 2019 17:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Getting kids interested in engineering
One of the things that interested me in engineering was a harvest made in a local town where a whole street full of parking meters disappeared overnight, leaving only the steel tubes set in the pavement, missing the top foot or so, plus the meter head.
The cut ends of the tubes were very neat, with distinctive concentric markings and a slight burring of the outside edge.
Eventually they were replaced, this time with a half inch steel bar welded to the side, all the way up the tube, to prevent repetition of the loss, which had been effected using a large pipe cutter - a very big brother of the kind used for copper pipe in domestic plumbing.