The Ideal Christmas Present for The Traffic Warden in Your Life

It's almost Christmas Eve, the day that traditionally, men visit their local petrol station to stock up on Christmas presents for their loved ones.

The Telegraph motoring section has suggestions today including a "Parking Ticket Holder"

It is actually a clear bit of plastic that you are supposed to fix pay-and-display tickets to your windows with.  It costs £1.99 which seems excessive and I would be very miffed if someone bought me one of these for Christmas.

 

It is claimed that it helps prevent "sticky mess" on the window.  I never suffer from sticky mess on my windows but, then again, I never attach pay-and-display tickets to my windows - I just leave them, clearly visible on the dashboard.  However, the Tikettak (for that is what it is called) sticks to the window with an adhesive strip - bet that makes a mess if you take it off.

 

They make a big deal about it being manufactured in the UK.  Good.  However, some of the errors in their Website make me suspect that the producers themselves are not British:

 

  "unless, of course, you don’t mind whether the logo is legible properly!"

 



This may only be available online so it could be too late to get one for Christmas time so I guess it is off to the filling station now.

Charcoal Brickettes anyone?

Disc Breaks

or should I call it "Tax Brakes"?

No, this story is about tax discs not disc brakes.

I'm not sure why George Osborne announced that he was scrapping the Tax Disc this afternoon.

Because everyone knew that it was happening this morning - along with the rest of his Autumn Statement.  The BBC had it here.  Autocar had it here.

They used this picture.  That registration number belongs to a Range-Rover.  I wonder if it was just parked outside their offices or it belongs to a member of staff there - it isn't the one that comes up if you look for a review of a Range-Rover on their site.

The BBC have also used this as an excuse to bring back their occasional (and amusing) RIP item with "R.I.P. Car Tax Disc".  These sometimes prompt amusing tributes from the readership - I await these in mild anticipation.

What the scrapping of the discs doesn't mean, though, is the scrapping of the tax.  That will continue to be collected and the Police will have access to the databases which tell them who has actually paid - although your average traffic warden or nosey neighbour won't be able to easily tell.

The tax itself is "vehicle excise duty" not "road tax".  I make this point because this comes up every time anyone mentions tax discs - it comes up a lot in the comments at the end of the main BBC article.  Cyclists generally make this point a lot.

I am an occasional cyclist myself but very much take the Jeremy Clarkson point-of-view on this:

Not Very Smart

This story made me laugh when I read it in my local free-paper, The Wirral Globe.






It follows on from my 2010 post about the spy-cars that Wirral Borough Council are using to bring in revenue/stop illegal and dangerous parking*

*delete as applicable

My opinion of parking enforcement operatives isn't that high - despite eco-friendly ones getting in the papers. The guy in charge of this car managed to open his door as a bus was coming along with the result as seen in these pictures.

The Council were keen to play down the incident - a spokesperson said: "A CCTV vehicle operated by NSL was involved in a minor road traffic collision with a bus whilst carrying out parking enforcement activity on behalf of Wirral Council. Nobody was injured, although both vehicles were damaged and were taken off the road for repair.

A replacement CCTV vehicle has been deployed by NSL so there will be no gap in the provision of parking enforcement services."

The Council are obviously more concerned that they are still getting in revenue rather than looking at what caused this.

Surely, either the Spy-car was parked dangerously or the bus driver was driving too close to parked vehicles. In either case, the Spy-car driver should have looked in his mirror before opening the door - buses are quite big.

The article keeps referring to the Spy-car as a Smart. It is true that the first Spy-cars in use here were Smarts (I refer you back to my 2010 article) but this is a Toyota iQ (or possibly an Aston Martin Cygnet - but if it is a Cygnet then the Council have too much money and I want a refund of my Council Tax)

It doesn't make a lot of difference if it is a Smart or an iQ apart from the fact that I should rename this post to mention traffic wardens not having much in the way of IQ.

A Kind-Hearted Traffic Warden

That can't be right!

But it is. He took pity on a Falcon.No, not a Ford Falcon - the bird of prey type of falcon. He rescued it on New Year's Day in Birkenhead when it was knackered after being blown about in the gales. The story is covered here on the Liverpool Echo site with a nice comment added by a reader at the end. Being Birkenhead, it could be the same git who booked my wife a few years back when she was three minutes late getting back to her car with a load of shopping and two bickering children. I appealed against a £60 fine for three minutes but the Council weren't interested - and they wonder why traffic wardens need stories like this to try and boost their image. Here is the bird-loving one, his name is Lee Gallagher and he is releasing the bird back into the grey skies at Hamilton Square:
The BBC also had that story, but since I posted last month about how I am finished with the BBC - I can't really link to them now, can I?

Then, on Monday, I finally picked up the new copy of Top Gear Magazine which was delivered last week but I haven't had chance to look at, what with Christmas and everything, and I saw that the new series of Top Gear TV starts on January 29th. Yippee! Well, maybe not "yippee", maybe more "I'll quite look forward to that"

The Christmas special didn't grab me the way Top Gear usually does and I'm finding I'm enjoying Fifth Gear a lot more than TG nowadays - is my disillusionment with Auntie Beeb affecting my motoring televisual enjoyment - or am I just getting bored with TG? I don't know - I'll let you know after the new series.

Then, yesterday, I got my annual letter from Richard & James extolling to me the virtues of subscribing to my next year with Top Gear Magazine - they really ought to change that letter - it's getting very stale. Anyway, could this be a good chance to show my displeasure with The Beeb?

Damn it, I still really enjoy the magazine and I pay for it with Tesco Clubcard Reward tokens so they'll not be making much out of that so a new subscription it is.

I've given up on their blogs though now - I've found like-minded people (and so far no trolls) on Facebook which leads me, rather neatly, to the fact I've joined Facebook!

I've set up a Metro's Car Blog page but I'll just monitor how that goes along and see whether or not it's worth keeping it going. I've put my two favoutite pictures of Vicki Butler-Henderson on there for starters.

And, while we're on the subject of social networking, I think I finally understand why anyone who isn't Stephen Fry might want to Tweet on Twitter. "Friends" are actually interested and comment when you add stuff to your Facebook wall so it's the same logic. I've not played with Twitter yet - maybe a job for next New-Years but someone who does is NASCAR driver Kasey Kahne.

I'll leave you with this story from last week from Autoguide.com