Parking Tickets 26, 27 & 28.

                                    |DOUBLE YELLOW LINES

                                               CAUTION!

 This doesn’t work in cities which have taken over the parking enforcement. The hero/fool? Neil Herron fought them further than I would, and uncovered a scandalous rip-off which has yet to be overturned, as far as I know. City-controlled parking enforcement doesn’t follow the law. They have an “independent” tribunal which is funded by a levy on all successful FPNs. Independent? Hah! You may succeed with very bad lines, but you’ll have to kiss their ass, not demand justice.

                                                  LEGAL

Everyone “knows” that DYLs are not enforceable if they have gaps. But it takes at least two days of court appearances, (turn up at ten am, and wait your turn), to challenge it, so those people with more sense than I have, just pay the fixed penalty notice, ( FPN).

The lines outside my house are there to keep the turn-round clear, but they are much longer than necessary. It’s a terraced street, parking spaces are in short supply. I don’t like to park in front of someone else’s house if I can avoid it, so I always take the hot spot.

I found this key legal precedent on “pepipoo” , to whom I am indebted.

Davies vHeatley, 1971.

It’s an appeal, about double white lines. But it applies to all road markings.

   “I have come to the conclusion, though with some reluctance, that the justices were     wrong. The legislation in question makes it abundantly clear that there must be strict conformity with the traffic signs which are prescribed”…

   ”Much as one sympathises with the approach of the justices, it is impossible to say that an offence was committed.”…

   ”I see no escape from saying that here no offence was committed, and accordingly I would allow the appeal and quash the conviction.”

                                                 MY STORY

I won the first batch because of big gaps in the lines. Easy-peasy, as long as the magistrate wakes up and listens.  

The council repainted them, but it was a blobby mess.  “The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002” specifies that DYLs must be as in the diagram, (continuous), and (100mm-100mmspace-100mm), or (75-75-75), or (50-50-50). It also specifies the dimension tolerances as plus 30 percent or minus 10 percent. Like the broken gaps, one failure anywhere invalidates the complete stretch. So I won the next batch of tickets.

The council repainted them again. Better, but not good enough. I measured, and found the widths of the new lines and spaces out of tolerance. I continued to park there. It became a standard wind-up for new  C3POs, (PCSOs) to be sent down my street, to stick a quick ticket on my van, and leg it sharpish before I caught them. Some succeeded, but some just got seen off, with tail between legs. Anyway, I made a formal complaint, and all the tickets were cancelled…

And the council repainted the lines for a third time! (The fourth incarnation.) This time they didn’t just throw paint blindly from a distance, they used pre-cut plastic tape bedded in a thin skim of tarmac.These l assume are actually temporary lines and not designed to be permanent. It was spot on, and when the Police Inspector rang me to see if they were now correct, I confirmed that they were. I added that they wouldn’t last very long, though.

Soon, bits were missing, and now I’m back to parking there again. Got six new tickets, all challenged. Two were quickly cancelled by Central Ticket Office, (CTO), and one was discontinued by the prosecution. Three remain alive.

The prosecution are obviously now playing cat-and mouse to teach me a lesson. Today was my fourth court appearance for these three, and they adjourned it yet again.

I made a fuss. Boy, did I make a fuss.

They then conferred at length, and then made it rather clear to me, (without actually quite saying so), that these charges will probably all be dropped and the council told to repaint the lines, and I won’t need to re-attend court. I’m confident that this will happen.

The lines will eventually be repainted. Again. They’ll be correct, I expect.

I shall park there again, and get lots more tickets.

THEN, and only then, I shall bring up a legal point that l've held in reserve! For obvious reasons l'll refrain from saying what it is at the moment. I shall win again. Haha-bloody-ha!

 Kudos to Neil Herron  who fought longer and harder than we have. (This is SH’s project too, he does a lot of the work and planning, but I’m the one who enjoys the court battles.) Neil Herron is continuing fighting and his blog is well worth a read. Many links and articles on parking issues.

I’m knackered now; hopefully someone will follow up some of this, and fill in more up-to-date info on the other FPN warriors I’ve mentioned.

PS, To round off a good day, I’ve just bought some of these subs very cheap, second-hand. (Groan, he’s off again!)

Anorak Part 2 incl Parking Tickets

Thanks for all comments to my last post. Comments are surprisingly gratifying. All of them.

Yes, I do have a few "dysfunctional" aspects to my character. I'm disgustingly happy, though. Fortunately, my friends seem tolerant.

 I think if I had OCD though, it would all be a lot tidier!

I've always been into electronics, I repair stuff for a living, and I tinker for fun.  I shop around and get the stuff cheap, second-hand. I love my Transit, although I don't often need the load space.

I can do it. I can afford to do it. I want to do it. Why would I not do it?

I'm from an age when "Bass" meant turning the tone control down on the Dansette record player, losing the treble. So I was deprived of bass as a child. :-)

You can't play this kind of bass power at home, if you have neighbours. An hour a day driving through open country though, I can indulge beyond reason.

The point?

I, me, - I love to feel the bass kick and thunder and growl and shudder. It's a dimension of music. Some people are wine nuts, some read poetry.

Pic 7? Yes, I was losing track. Note the post-its on the amps. I kept swopping amp-speaker combinations to find the best match.

The new van is much more tidy, having learned a lot from the first and started again from scratch. I'll post about it soon, for those who are interested or just amused. I can be mind-numbingly boring on the subject, everyone assures me.

My crucial new discovery? The "class D", (pulse width modulation), type of amplifier. Usually called "monoblock" (or "digital"), for no good reason. If you want a LOT of bass in a vehicle, do NOT consider anything else.

And ignore the watts rating if it’s not “watts RMS”. If in doubt, multiply the fuse (amps) rating by 14.4(volts). That’s the watts you cannot sustain without blowing the fuse.

PARKING TICKETS-

And finally, The parking tickets! I'm back in court on Monday 2nd August for tickets 26, 27, 28. We're on the fourth incarnation of the double yellow lines, the council has repainted them three times. I'll win again, and they'll repaint them again. They'll then be perfect. I'll park there again. I'll get more tickets.

Then, and only then, I'll reveal that the lines shouldn't be there. They are 24 metres long, but should be 15 metres. The bit I park on is not included. Gotcha.

The council will then shorten them, and I'll do a moony at the spiteful bitch opposite who keeps reporting me for parking where she can see my common, ugly van.

She started when she moved in, about 5 years ago. (I've lived on this street since 1956.)

It's very difficult to become my enemy. People need to be attack me persistently and effectively to achieve that distinction. Casual taunts in comments are probably deserved, and are not unwelcome.

Zaphod.

Anorak's Corner

ANORAK'S CORNER

You were warned.

Everyone should have a hobby.

After borrowing SH's  fancy car one day, I was then a bit dissatisfied with the sounds in my van. SH's bass, standard merc fitting, made the wing mirrors vibrate. I wanted some of that. I looked in the second-hand ads, got a 12inch sub and amp. Nice. So I got another.

You hear these boy racers driving past, going "boom, boom, boom", and think, "Wanker". Yeah, I know. But I've got a half hour drive to work, on open roads. It's the only time I can wind up the volume. That's my excuse. When the boy racer gets his girlfriend pregnant, she says "That's got to go, I can't get the pram in the boot". So I buy it cheap.

I've now got fourteen 12inch speakers installed, each with its own amp. Plus two ten inch, two 6 x 9's, four tweeters. A length of cooker cable from the battery to a consumer switch unit in the back, extra batteries, two power caps. (I'm not sure I believe in the caps, but they were going cheap).

I've got, but not installed yet, six 10inch, two 8inch, four 6 x 9's, and several spare amps.

I'm running out of power now. I guess I've got to install another alternator.

I also have to unship all the cabs when I need to carry a load. So I've installed four 12's outside, in the top of one back door, with a big box sticking out. I can fit eight 12's in each door with that trick. But it's a lot of work, and the MOT is due soon. Will it pass this one?

So maybe its time to let this van die, start work on another. The Transit shape has changed, so my cabinet work is not transferrable.

In my defence, I don't associate with other car sound loonies. It's not a social thing. I've dipped into the websites, but they all talk bollocks. I know about electronics and physics, I don't believe in oxygen-free cable and crystal therapy. A watt is an amp multipled by a volt. Volts is amps times resistance. I'm pulling 150 amps from my alternator, (and it glows).

If you're still reading, you're as weird as me. Guess I'd better do some pics. It's all a bit of a mess, a work in progress. Experimental. Well, it's something to do in tea-break. Mumble, excuses. Er.

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This post is now obsolete. I got another van and I’ve started again! I’m doing it all a bit tighter now, so it’ll take a while. But I’m posting this anyway. Have a laugh at the pics. Yeah, it’s messy, but it’s a work-in-progress.  J