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Give us a break from the zealous parking wardens
• IN the week between Christmas and the New Year we were again treated to the unedifying sight of parking wardens deployed all over Islington on the hunt for yellow-line customers. The roads were completely empty of traffic until January 2 and there was no earthly reason for enforcing parking restrictions, other than to generate a bit of extra cash for the council after Christmas.
Indeed, as there was so little traffic, and therefore much fewer yellow-line parkers the wardens were much keener to maintain their score of parking tickets issued and were therefore even more zealous than usual. Wouldn’t it be nice if Islington, and maybe other London councils, could take their cue from Transport for London, which stopped congestion charging on those few days and lifted their parking restrictions.
In these straitened economic times, when the retail trade needs as much help as it can get, it would be a nice gesture. Maybe something for Islington Council to think about in a year’s time.
DANNY MICHELSON
La Fromagerie
Highbury Park, N5
• I LIVE in Aubert Park, near the Emirates Stadium. For the past two seasons I have been in contact with Islington Council to complain about blue badge “disabled drivers” who are allowed to park on double-yellow lines, blocking each corner on match days, without any action being taken by Islington parking attendants (Red card for blue badges, December 24).
I suspect that these “blue badge” holders are not the genuine article as they arrive late, dump their cars on the corners and then “leg it to the ground”. I checked with police and they told me they were surprised that Islington Council allowed this to happen.
I have received two parking tickets, even though I have a resident’s permit, when my back wheels have just been outside the parking bay and on the double-yellow lines (on both occasions the tickets were issued in the early hours of Sunday night/Monday morning when nobody is around). Yet the council feels it is safe to allow these corners to be blocked when there are 60,000 people at the stadium.
It would appear that Islington prefers the easy pickings of catching residents out in the middle of the night but turns a blind eye when there is a potential danger of badly parked vehicles on busy match days when emergency services may need to have access.
Residents have a difficult time as it is finding a parking space, and match days are a nightmare. The council and Arsenal have a responsibility to cater for genuine disabled drivers and to ensure that the interests of residents and public safety are properly taken into account.
NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED
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