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Letter 11
RE: FOOTWAY PARKING IN PLANTATION ROAD
14/12/04
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing to complain about the letter I have received rejecting my representation against the issue of penalty notice BL41144476. The letter I have received actually says that ‘insufficient reasonable cause has been demonstrated which would allow cancellation of the charge’. This makes me wonder whether, first of all, anyone has actually read the correspondence relating to this issue, and secondly, if so, what world they are actually living in, because it is certainly not the same one as the people that live in this road. The case for Plantation Road, similar roads, and issues such as this penalty notice, has been painstakingly and repeatedly pointed out to Bexley Council over a number of years. What’s more we are the ones that have to live here, not you. If you did live here you would think just like we do. As it is, your logic is perverse and unbecoming of a public authority, as is your lack of attentiveness to our PROBLEM. Who is it that is responsible for making our lives difficult and taking absolutely no notice of our feelings or our predicament? Presumably not the faceless squiggle on the letter I received, that looks more like a snake than someone’s signature: and I wonder why that is?
In our opinion, penalty charges such as this are a wholly unjustified, blatant theft of an obscene amount of money. They contravene commonsense, fair-play and any decency and dignity for a local authority, who, in instances such as this, are behaving no better than a common thief and plunderer. Speaking on behalf of the general public, we are completely fed up with being abused and pushed around against the grain of decency and commonsense by people whose wages we are paying and yet who continue to make a mess of things, wasting our money on things that very few of us actually want, whilst unjustifiably ripping us off in the process. You are the real criminals - not the people you victimise. If you want to behave like the Nazis did in World War Two, you should, likewise, expect some resistance.
With regard to Plantation Road and roads of a similar structure, I have suggested more sensible, viable and realistic criteria in my previous correspondence with which to judge and control footway parking and it has been completely ignored. You do not seem to be interested in getting the best result for the people that you are supposed to be serving and whom pay your wages. Why is that I wonder?
We accept the fact that it would be difficult to restructure the pavements and make them a more practical and realistic width, so if you can use your imagination, imagine that if the pavements were the right and proper size, my car and others in a similar position would have been parked in the right place, leaving plenty of room for pedestrians and wheelchairs and enough room for motorists, delivery lorries, dustcarts and emergency vehicles to access the road. We didn’t construct the pavements to be that width, and we didn’t ask for them to be that wide, so why should we be punished on a regular basis because of an anomaly which is the result of someone else’s error of judgement and not in the least our fault! We have to live here! You don’t! Unlike you, we are not causing anyone any problems, so why can’t your people just butt out and leave us alone!? I look forward to hearing from you with regard to you taking a positive approach to solving this PROBLEM, for and on behalf of the residents that live here. Thank you.
Yours faithfully,
Mr D. J. Tarrant