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Where was goodwill?
• AT our invitation, two out-of-town friends parked outside our Canonbury house in order to accompany my wife and I by Tube to watch the New Year’s Day parade through London’s West End.
We returned three hours later to the sickening sight of a parking ticket affixed to their windscreen.
Our friends were guilty, it seems, on three counts. They had supposed that New Year’s Day was as much a public holiday in Islington as it was in the rest of Britain and that parking restrictions did not therefore apply.
They had failed to read the only nearby sign warning them that January 1 was an Arsenal home-match day and therefore subject to specially imposed, residents-only parking restrictions – largely because that sign was sneakily placed by the council inside the No Entry signs at the western end of Canonbury Grove and therefore legible only to motorists who had wilfully entered the area illegally.
And not being football fans, they had failed to get hold of a fixture list and therefore had no way of knowing that, two hours later and a full mile away, Arsenal were due to kick off on that day anyway.
I have never felt so ashamed of being an Islington resident and therefore an involuntary subscriber to a local authority of such dispiriting greed that it instructs its money gatherers to prowl the streets on a day of national goodwill, seeking unsuspecting victims to fill its unworthy coffers.
I have sent our friends a £50 book token as an apology on behalf of all the decent citizens of Islington whose civic pride is so ruthlessly emaciated by the very people whom we employ to protect it.
WILLIAM GREAVES
Canonbury Grove, N1
• We have always made it clear we never designed our green parking policy to increase income from residents’ parking permits (Poll tax for motorists, January 11).
Two-thirds of residents drive more environmentally friendly cars and so now pay less for their parking permits. That is just as it should be. Covering the cost of this balances out every bit of the extra income from gas-guzzling cars.
We clearly set this out in a leaflet we sent to every household with the green parking charges referendum, because we wanted people to be able to make an informed choice. Some councils have used these changes as cover to increase the money raised from parking – but not Islington!
The real reason we have begun introducing the green parking charges is, quite simply, because in the referendum the majority wanted to see the polluter paying more. Of course, some people opposed the scheme, which is exactly what democracy is all about.
However, now that residents have spoken, what should you expect the council to do? Listen to the 36,792 residents who exercised their democratic right and responded to the referendum – or the author of last week’s seriously inaccurate letter and a small number of others who don’t seem to want to abide by the result?
Cllr JAMES KEMPTON
Lib Dem leader, Islington Council
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