CabbieBlog

Just the ticket

Like any petty crook, London Councils traffic enforcement departments don’t miss a trick for turning over the law-abiding public. Their latest wheezes have a touch of inspired genius in their simplicity.

Not content with waiting by a vehicle whose allocated time is about to expire so a penalty notice can be imposed at the first opportunity, or penalising a disabled driver for displaying their badge with the wrong orientation, they have gone one further.

They have trawled through their by-laws to find a legal loophole to penalise motorists who have paid but simply forgot to remove a previous stub from their dashboard or window.

For if after your allotted time has expired and the driver leaves the spent ticket displayed they can be penalised, for if a busy mother should drive off with the offending ticket in full view either on her windscreen or on the dashboard the Traffic Taliban can charge for that offence.

Prior to that of course the ticket had to be displayed in an “appropriate” place as designated by the parking authority, failure to so do . . . well you know the score.

And don’t forget your vehicle must be positioned parallel to the kerb (God forbid that it is found to be at an acute angle of 10°), and must not be more than 19.6in from the kerb. Presumably those guardians of traffic enforcement, whose total revenue last year was £328million, carry the appropriate measuring equipment on their person to make a judgment.

Now two councils have joined to perpetrate an even more audacious crime, this loose association of the Notting Hill Cosa Nostra has split Ledbury Road down the middle, with each protecting their own “manor”, one side falls within Westminster’s authority while the other side is The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea.

If you park your vehicle on the east side of the street but cross the road to buy a parking ticket on the opposite pavement, the ticket you buy will not be valid for parking on the opposite kerb, you will have contravened Westminster parking regulations, as Harvey Cass found when returning to his car to find penalty notice on his windscreen. So little time had elapsed between buying the ticket and having the penalty notice issued the traffic warden must have watched him cross the road and buy his ticket incorrectly from Kensington & Chelsea’s machine.

Westminster’s spokesman, a Mr Kevin Goad (a man whose name could not be more appropriate in the circumstances) said “We are working hard to improve motorists’ understanding of the rules and provide clearer signs and lines.”

If you should park in the centre of the road would that mean you could receive two tickets, one from each council? So there you have it, its not old-fashioned greed to line the council’s coffers, quite the contrary, we motorists have to be educated in the “rules”.

For more information (and entertainment) about parking tickets go to AppealNow.com.

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A Gated Community

“What have the Romans done for us?” asked Michael Palin in the film The Life of Brian.

Well, for us Londoners the Romans have given us Londinium one of the earliest of their settlements on the banks of the Thames and no doubt gave us a Latin version of Estuary English [Estuario Latino]. The Romans also gave us a rather fine wall with four gates and a fort to protect Londinium which nestled within, and which was surprisingly small measuring approximately 330 acres.

They built their city on the north bank of the Thames and judged they wouldn’t need a defence along the river’s edge, as who would want to come from Sarf London, so the wall was more of a two mile curve than an enclosure.

It was probably Queen Boudica who made up their minds to build a defensive wall after she razed Londinium to the ground in AD60, after they assaulted her daughters and stole her land, anyway after much discussion, much like councils of today, they had the wall completed by about AD140.

Walking anti-clockwise from where the Tower of London now stands it ran north from the river and as they feared Essex Man more than any other at least 20 bastions were added at a distance of about 60 yards apart along this section and after about 600 yards where the wall makes its first turn you would have come to a gate.

This gate is Aldgate (“Old Gate”), as its name implies was one of the earliest to be built, leading as it did to the Roman road to East Anglia, via Colchester and beyond to the feared Essex Man. The wall heads off in a north-westerly direction and the deep ditch which protected its outer flank had a rather novel use along this stretch and became known as Hounds ditch from the number of dead dogs left there to rot, only the street of Houndsditch marks this rather quaint custom.

At the end of the ditch for dead dogs was Bishops Gate, built across Ermine Street by Erkenwold, the Bishop of London, it’s purpose was to allow travellers a route to Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridge. This saintly prelate used to exact a toll of one piece of wood from all the carts loaded with timber coming into the City by way of his gate, God knows what he did with all that lumber.

The wall was about 6-9ft wide and about 18ft high, with probably a catwalk along the top. It is obvious from the different bondings used in the various sections which remain that a number of building gangs were used in the erection of the wall. As London had no quarries of its own, the materials used had to be brought in from outside “squared-off” Kentish ragstone formed the inner and outer faces of the wall while concrete and rubble filled in the centre. Every few feet in height one, two or three rows of Roman tiles were used as a bond before proceeding with the next 3 or 4 feet, the manner in which this bond was constructed shows us that different gangs were used.

A small section of the wall between these two gates can be found at the end of London Wall showing the upper part of the Roman wall at the bottom, surmounted by medieval walling and capped by Tudor brickwork.

We now encounter a dog leg at Cripplegate which led into the fort which stood on the site before the wall was built and which necessitated the need to build around it. Although it was called a gate, it only went into the fort about this time. The gate lasted until 1760 when the materials were sold to a carpenter, Mr Blagden paying £91 for the right to cart the whole thing away.

Moving off in a western direction, but somewhere near there was an underground passage. For the name cripplegate is derived from crepel, an Anglo-Saxon word for den or underground passage. Once the City gates were closed for the night, after the curfew bells had been rung, it was impossible to get into the City through any of the gateways. So after a night out on the tiles you could stagger into the City after proving your identity through this tunnel, just don’t bump your head if you have had a few .

We have now reached the most famous of all gates; Newgate which has become synonymous with the prison that started at a later date in the rooms over the entrance. This was the entry from the important Roman road that ran to Silchester and Bath. Incidentally the last public hanging took place here in May 1868, after that Londoner’s had to entertain themselves. Newgate was the last of the City gates to be lost, it was removed in 1767.

The wall now leads south towards the river and half way along its length is Ludgate. In old English ludgeat means “postern” or “back doorway”, so presumably this was the City’s back door. The Roman did not, as a rule, bury their dead within the precincts of a city, but almost invariably by the side of a road. So beyond this last section of wall on the City’s western flank was a cemetery about where Fleet Street heads away from the Square Mile.

Oh yes in answer to the original question, among other things the Roman gave us:

Illustrations courtesy of Barryoneoff, check out his site if you feel like having a City of London walk.

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Top 10 Worst Places to Catch a Taxi

5 March, 2010 at 2:32 am | In Slug snail & puppydog tail | Leave a Comment
Tags: taxis

I have recently found the site mapvivo.com where travellers can relate their experiences, as it’s coming up to deciding your travel arrangements for this year I would suggest that you check it out, it’s a great source of information and frankly very funny. At the risk of being accused of plagiarism, although the author’s consent has been given, I think this travel report from the site is worthy of inclusion in CabbieBlog. [All italics are my contributions.]

Well, maybe not the absolute worst, but a catalogue of experiences around the world which explain why a taxi is always my last resort for getting from A to B, and why I’d rather walk, take public transport or a bike just about anywhere.

Disclaimer: Many taxi drivers are polite, courteous, professional and very honest. It’s the others that give you a bad rap, which are the ones I am complaining about . . .

Bangkok
Don’t expect taxi drivers to know the way – particularly if there has been a bad crop recently in the countryside, since in these times your taxi driver is likely to be an out of work farmer who is unlikely to find his way home, let alone that restaurant you just asked for. In fact, it may take 2 or 3 different attempts before you find a taxi driver that knows where your destination is; let alone how to get there.

If you are lucky the driver will tell you that he has no idea where the destination is in advance, otherwise he’ll just drive you around for a little while.

Having somebody write the destination down for you (or learning how to pronounce words in Thai) can help, but not always, as can calling the place where you are staying and asking them to talk the taxi home for you.

New York
Not that bad actually. Relatively inexpensive and efficient, but smells horrible and don’t expect much in the way of courtesy – either from the driver or other passengers competing for the same cab.

New York cabs win a prize for being the largest vehicles with the smallest passenger space, but definitely count as one of the world’s better taxi experiences.

It could be said that there is not much difference between driving a cab in London than driving one in New York – except that we speak in English and have to rely on our brains to get us from one part of the city to another and not rely on a numerical grid system.

London
Encyclopaedic knowledge of London’s streets, spacious cabs, polite drivers (to passengers at least – comments made to other road users are part of the entertainment) and cheap fares. London is Taxi heaven. I can’t disagree with those fine words.

Until midnight that is, when the black cabs go home and unlicensed mini-cabs take over to fill the demand.

Beware of these guys [he's talking here of the unlicensed minicabs]: people tell of drivers rolling joints whilst driving with their knees, whilst others talk of drivers who’ve obviously had several already. A phone call followed by a quick detour to help a friend of the driver escape from a crime scene is also not unheard of. Police reports describe far more sinister doings, particularly concerning women travellers.

Zürich
If your hotel isn’t one of the five biggest in Zürich then bring your own map, or choose a driver with a GPS. English is rarely spoken and German or other Swiss languages are not guaranteed. And bring plenty of cash – that number on the meter really is the cost.

Definitely the most expensive and most often lost taxi drivers in the world. On one occasion I spent 30 minutes while a taxi tried to find my (rather large) hotel, asking for directions from several pedestrians on the way. We eventually found it, and a long argument ensued over the expectation that I pay the meter fare for the whole duration. Which I won only narrowly.

Rome
If you manage to actually find a cab in Rome then please comment. I’ve given up each time as taxis are scarce in Rome, and drivers tend to strike (whilst blocking traffic in the city) every time the city tries to increase the number of taxi licences.

In a blog post, Pauline relates to an experience where a driver busy taking a phone call made them wait outside before allowing them in, in the rain, with the meter running (including the approach fare), for 10 minutes. That’s service.

Paris
Generally professional, but basically rude. Can make a bit of a fuss when asked to take you somewhere that’s not totally convenient for them – consider this when choosing destinations such as out of the way places where they won’t pick up a huge fare right after.

I once spent 15 minutes in a taxi being complained at by the driver because he ‘claimed’ he would lose money driving to my destination (near the airport). I paid him 1/3rd more than the fare as a good-will token, but it didn’t make him happy and he drove off refusing to give a receipt.

India
Finding a taxi or auto rickshaw is easy. Just wait by the road and they’ll soon be fighting over you. The family member’s shop or restaurant that they recommend is never as good as the place you originally wanted to go to, so be persistent and insist that you want to go to your original destination. Like many attempted transactions in India it comes down to a war of attrition.

Taxis are cheap enough to rent for the day in some cases, so make sure you enjoy the unique spectacle of road transport in India, complete with sleeping cows in the middle of the carriage way, oncoming trucks in the wrong lane, constant use of the horn, etc.

Cairo
Similar to India, except they continue to fight over you after you’ve arrived. In fact, Taxi drivers will follow you around all day, stalking you. The family member’s shop or restaurant is also never as good as the place you actually wanted, but in many cases they will take you there anyway and just pretend that’s what you asked for.

Don’t be alarmed by the fact that obeying traffic signals are optional in Cairo, meaning that they are always ignored, and on a three lane carriageway there will be at least four cars abreast.

However, if you can find an honest one (and don’t rely on a hotel concierge for this) then they can make excellent tour guides.

Don’t expect the negotiated price to remain the same for the entire journey; it usually has doubled when you get to your destination. If you are unlucky to have a driver who speaks English, a warning, they will talk to you whilst driving as you sit in the back seat, but face to face.

China
Don’t lose the piece of paper with your destination written in Chinese, unless you are good at charades, as you shouldn’t count on being able to pronounce your destination no matter how much you practice. Otherwise Chinese taxis are honest, professional and courteous, if a little erratic in their driving style.

That sounds just like London’s cabbies.

Warsaw
Very keen to get going to the extent that over eager drivers can slam doors shut before all appendages are inside the taxi. It can really hurt. Speeds on wet roads defy the laws of physics (or at least common sense).

Generally, taxis in Warsaw are very reasonable and honest providing you take a licensed taxi, not one of the private taxis that lurk around airport arrivals and on popular streets.

Moscow
Blindingly fast like Warsaw, with the added fun of driving on ice and snow during winter. Moscow taxi drivers sometimes take a little convincing to let you get in since passengers tend to be inconvenient. Seemingly honest and inexpensive though.

CabbieBlog uses Technorati Tags: Bangkok New York London Zurich Rome Paris India Cairo China

Navigation Master

2 March, 2010 at 1:25 am | In A window on My World | Leave a Comment
Tags: satnavs

They say good things come in twos, and this has proved to be the case for me over the Christmas period. After spending a decade denigrating SatNavs I’ve received two in as many weeks.

The first was a TomTom Live gadget, an Christmas present from my wife, bought I suspect to stop me getting lost in every town outside of London, I’ll just have to swallow my pride and use it when we’re exploring England, no more blaming the wife now, when I get lost, it’s TomTom who will get it in the ear now.

Then the next week a received a telephone call and after a short conversation to tell me the news that I had won a Navigation Master SatNav from Stuart Pessok the editor of our trade newspaper (with the imaginative title of TAXI) a package arrived the next day.

Navigation Master’s screen is large measuring about 4½ inches across; much larger than my TomTom, robustly built with its own cradle and basic instructions (a full detailed instruction book is available on their website. With Bluetooth, address book, storage for music, video, photos and even e-books it doesn’t lack facilities.

My charger for use in the cab did not work, but after finding a help line number on the downloadable information sheets a simple call to arrange a meeting meant that I had my replacement charger within 30 minutes, that’s what I call customer service.

The map section is split into two with the A-Z London mapping giving three maps; A-Z Great Britain, A-Z Greater London and the iconic A-Z Central London which shows one-way streets, places of interest and all manner of information, as I have written about in this blog A-Z is among the best mapping available for cabbies, and Navigation Master with its search facility has an enormous database of thousands of entries.

When we do the Knowledge the student has to call all the roads from one point to another and the method we use to see if you’ve taken the correct route is to string a piece of cotton between two pins. If you have taken the correct route without deviation it’s said to be “on the cotton”. Similarly Navigation Master will draw a blue line between your start and finish points. It is just a matter of following the blue (or should that be yellow) brick road to your destination. The system by this simple, but effective charting of a route is only of assistance to somebody with an intimate Knowledge of London, a black cabbie in other words.

The second part of the mapping is a standard SatNav system developed by Smart to Go and produces visual and audible directions as any other SatNav. Supplied in map form, and rather over reliant on menus it’s not as easy to use as my new TomTom and traffic alerts and 3-D mapping come at an additional price. Rather disappointingly the keyboard does not follow a standard QWERTY layout unlike the A-Z section making it far more difficult to use.

But for the A-Z London map with its traffic alerts and vast database (I’ve yet to ask for one it didn’t know) this little gizmo is worth the £300 price tag. Given there are only about 14,000 possible users and already 800 devices have been sold, I would recommend that you use one as your working day will be so much easier.

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Moving targets

26 February, 2010 at 3:05 am | In Driven mad in London | 2 Comments
Tags: London life

I’m beginning to suspect that London cabbies are reviled with the same vigour as bankers, estate agents and MPs (well, maybe not as much as our Members of Parliament).

Recently a colleague of mine had his rear window smashed by local children as he sat waiting in a traffic jam in East London. Previously like me he’s had stones thrown at his cab, and had pedestrians hitting his vehicle with their hands as they cross the road.

It also makes you wonder why some Lycra louts of the cycle world get their kicks out of spitting at cab drivers. This Lycra-clad posers cycle up beside cabbies and spit in their face before peddling off, which I personally consider it the most offensive assault possible and rather cowardly when you realise how difficult it is to pursue the obnoxious assailant responsible, I now find myself asking the question, is it a new craze?

The whole practice has me wondering whether they only target cab drivers, like the young vandals who throw stones. Do they maybe mark up their hits on their bike frames, like World War II fighter pilots? Or perhaps it’s an individual avenger who was once wronged by a cab driver who refused to go South of the River and is now wreaking his revenge.

I suppose we could try fitting spittoons on the side of the cab – but well away from the driver’s window of course!

Are we all really so bad?

Poison pen letters are invited to the comments section at the bottom of this post.

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A tale of two cities

23 February, 2010 at 1:56 am | In Thinking allowed | Leave a Comment
Tags: London life

Our first city is at the cutting edge of information technology providing multi-lingual customer services to the world, while the second is struggling to provide high speed broadband access for its customers. One is taking its population out of poverty with the Globalization and World Cities Study Group ranking it as an “Alpha world city”, while its counterpart has a rising unemployment rate of 9.4 per cent of the workforce with increasing numbers are reliant on the State.

The first city was placed seventh in the list of “Top Ten Cities for Billionaires” by Forbes magazine and first in terms of those billionaires’ average wealth. The other’s economy is not so rosy with the government forecasting its debt will soar to an eye-watering £1.1 trillion by 2011.

The emerging city’s transport has 11 million passenger movements a day on its rail and bus services, in comparison with about half of that number who have to endure delay and breakdowns with the other city’s aged transport infrastructure.

With 24,000 cabs providing transport for the older city’s 7 million population the emerging city’s population of 14 million inhabitants are having their aging fleet of 55,000 cabs replaced, unfortunately in the older city, whose cabbies have been licensed for over 350 years, they have to provide a service with much older vehicles due to their extortionate replacement prices.

Similarly both provide a rickshaw mode of transport. One regulated by price and service provided by operators who know their city like the back of their hand, the other’s rickshaws are vastly overpriced, unregulated (charging what they think they can get away with) and, driven by foreign “students” who’s inability to speak the native tongue is match by their navigational skills around a city founded by the Romans.

Drivers in the city of the sub-continent sound their horn at every opportunity and in some ways this is where there are similarities with drivers in the older city following suit.

As the excellent Channel 4 series of programmes entitled Indian Winter showed, Bombay (or as the BBC insists on calling it, contrary to what it’s known to the inhabitants, Mumbai) has many lessons which we Londoner’s could learn. Could it be that Bombay’s emerging dynamism has positioned it in a far more advantageous place in the world’s economy?

With London appearing in a downward spiral and Bombay’s pulling itself up by their bootstraps it’s only a matter of time until the former colonial power is overtaken by its former colony.

We Londoners consider ourselves to be citizens of the world’s most influential city, true it still has a lot to offer its residents but is now under threat from emerging economies as never before, but at least we have recently adopted the curry as our favourite meal.

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A Turkish Delight

19 February, 2010 at 2:12 am | In The Urban Landscape | 4 Comments
Tags: buildings of london

If ever a building proclaimed its original function, this is it. Standing in Bishopsgate Churchyard is this Ottoman Hamam in the heart of the City dedicated to Mammon.

The fashion for Turkish baths was petering out a decade after this little curiosity was constructed in 1894 for the king of Turkish baths James Forder Nevill who owned nine Turkish baths in London.

Built on a site so constricted that its entry is via a small kiosk, it was said to be modelled by the architect Harold Elphick on the 19th century shrine at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem.

This Moorish gem of blue faience, brick, and terracotta, surmounted by an onion dome (to house the water tanks), continued the Alhambra theme inside with three hot rooms, shampooing room, shower bath and plunge bath, all with mosaic floors, tiled walls, marbled seats and stained glass windows

Against all the odds, it survived Hitler’s valiant attempt to destroy it and every other redevelopment scheme, continuing as a Turkish baths until the 1950s. Fighting a lone battle against the pressures of surrounding developers and encircling demolition work a Turkish gentleman; Mr. Mourat saved the building and converted it into the Gallipoli Turkish restaurant.

It is now an Italian restaurant and bar, and at last years’ Open House had Londoners queuing to view this rare surviving Moorish temple in the heart of The City.

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Rear View Mirror

16 February, 2010 at 2:19 am | In Slug snail & puppydog tail | 2 Comments
Tags: london taxis

I bet you, like me thought the sole purpose of the iconic London Black Cab was to transport its driver and his passengers with a measure of comfort from point A to point B.

Well, how wrong can we be? I’ve had Batman and Robin getting changed in the back in preparation to go to a “Fools and Horses” fancy dress party, and girls constantly risk serious eye damage by applying mascara while in the back of my moving vehicle.

In an idle moment you might have Googled on the internet an “adult art movie” filmed in the back of a cab, while The Mail on Sunday in their You supplement regularly purports to interview stars in a weekly feature entitled: In a taxi with . . .

London cabs are a great choice for city tours (well I should know) and what better place to use a London cab than Christchurch, not that rather genteel town on the south coast, but on the other side of the world, New Zealand.

Another company utilising our vehicles are Justsofilms who over the past two years have filmed dozens of musicians, performing in the back of a London licensed cab. Brian Wilson, Ryan Adams and the Doves are among the clips to be found on their site blackcabsessions. If you dig deep enough you can find a duo entitled The Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs playing while one wears a glittering cardboard box on his head, being driven by a very embarrassed cabbie around London.

White cabs make rather good wedding cars, just a few months ago at my daughter’s wedding a rather splendid cab took us to the church.

As a footnote Will Self has written a novel entitled The Book of Dave about a London cabbie, click the link to watch him using the back of a cab to promote his book.

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Mythical Creatures

12 February, 2010 at 3:14 pm | In Slug snail & puppydog tail | 1 Comment
Tags: London statutes

This Sunday is the start of the Chinese New Year when we enter the year of the Tiger; it is the sign of courage, a fearless and fiery fighter revered by the ancient Chinese as the sign that wards off the three main disasters of a household: fire, thieves and ghosts.

The Chinese have a culture seeped in animal mythology from nine headed birds to numerous dragons, so for today, to wish you Happy New Year and CabbieBlog gives you London’s mythical creatures, starting with a dragon for fire:

The City of London – Dragon or Griffin?
There is some confusion in identifying dragons and griffins in The City of London. Certainly both are mythical winged creatures. A griffin is the offspring of a lion and an eagle, it has the head, shoulders and legs of an eagle, while the body is that of a lion, so think beak and talons on a large cat – with wings. Traditionally, griffins have kept watch over hidden treasure, not much of that left in The City. While a dragon is a “winged crocodile” or scaled creature with a serpent tail, capable of breathing smoke or fire, so for this one think teeth, flared nostrils, scales and a snaky tail – with wings. Symbols of these creatures can be found at: The boundary to the Square Mile either standing or on plinths; at Temple Bar on the top of the Bar; Holborn Viaduct has them incorporated in the bridge spans; while Smithfield Market’s Grand Avenue they are breathing fire; at the entrance to Guildhall, Bank Underground Station and Leadenhall Market; at the Monument and on the weathervane atop St Mary-le-Bow Church – scary.

Cadiz Memorial
This French mortar mounted on a cast-iron dragon can be found on Horseguard’s Parade. It was a gift of the Spanish government to the Prince Regent in memory of the lifting of the siege of Cadiz following the defeat of the French forces near Salamanca in July 1812 by the Duke of Wellington’s army.

Chindit Memorial
At Embankment Garden there is another strange looking beast. The Chindit Memorial statute depicts the Burmese mythical beast Chindit who is the guardian of Burmese pagodas and temples. The statue commemorates the Burmese campaign during World War II in 1943 and 1944 with the Chindit Special Force, their motto features on the plinth “The Boldest Measures Are the Safest”, a lesson they should have put into practice in Afghanistan.

Cleopatra’s Needle Sphinx
Having nothing to do with her at all, but still called Cleopatra’s Needle, carved in 1475 BC over 1,000 years before London was named, is by far the capital’s oldest man-made attraction. Standing over 60 feet high and weighting 186 tons. Presented to the British in the early 1800s against its wishes. It was loaded onto an iron pontoon and showed its obvious displeasure at being moved from the shores of the Mediterranean by nearly sinking off The Bay of Biscay. The obelisk was saved but six seamen died in the ferocious storm. We eventually erected it in 1887. It is now the most popular suicide spot on this stretch of the Thomas, come here at night to witness two ghosts who are seen jumping into the river. You cannot help but feel that the needle is waiting for the day when it can return home to stand proud under the hot Egyptian sun.

Crystal Palace Sphinx
The Great Exhibition of 1851 was the expression of a society at the zenith of its prosperity and power. Paxton’s Crystal Palace was a huge iron goliath with over a million feet of glass, containing such industrial exhibits as the jacquar loom, courts depicting the history of art and architecture from ancient Egypt through the Renaissance as well as exhibits from imperial territories like India and Australia. Major concerts were held in the Palace’s huge arched Centre Transept, which also contained the world’s largest organ. The central transept also housed a circus and was the scene of daring feats by world famous acts such as the tightrope walker Blondin. The Crystal Palace itself was almost outshone by the park in which it stood, which contained a magnificent series of fountains (the water pumped through a set of towers designed by Brunel) and the park’s original trees. Today, it is a rather different matter, moved to Crystal Palace after the exhibition it burned down in the thirties; all that remains are a set of empty terraces, with headless statues gracing the steps and Sphinxes guarding the entrance way to nothingness.

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Driven from your drive

9 February, 2010 at 2:24 am | In Motoring matters | 2 Comments
Tags: traffic wardens

Knowledge students
at the Knowledge Point School
in Caledonian Road,
parking their bikes on private land

Before reading this post I should warn you that sitting or preferably lying down might lessen the risk of injury to yourself when reaching the end of this sorry tale.

Dr. Richard Dawood is the sort of conscientious doctor we would all like to have as our own. Anxious to be able to negotiate the congested streets of north London quickly should an emergency arise, he purchased a scooter.

He could park the scooter on the tarmac forecourt adjacent to his property, but to draw attention that this land was owned by him, and therefore private property, and not part of the adjacent flagstone pavement, he affixed to his wall a notice which read:

“This forecourt is private property and is not dedicated as a public footway”

So far so good, indeed in 2001 when he received two parking tickets, although his scooter was parked on his own property, the chief executive of Camden Council wrote to the good doctor apologising for the error admitting the doctor’s scooter was parked on private land.

Then 2 years ago he received another ticket while parked in the same place and assumed another mistake had been made and wrote asking that the penalty be struck off.

After several letters (and more parking tickets) he was appalled to receive a reply informing him that Camden Council had reconsidered the matter and decided that his forecourt was part of the public footway, whether private or not, and would enforce the penalty notice.

When Dr. Dawood decided to take the case to a parking tribunal, the tickets were mysteriously cancelled just prior to the appeal dates. But five tickets were overlooked by the council and became the subject of a parking tribunal where the adjudicator reserved judgment, siting the case White v The City of Westminster, this test case is regularly used by councils to penalise motorists on private land, but crucially if one wheel of their vehicle is on the public pavement.

Dr. Dawood then applied for a judicial review of his case, and at this point I would earnestly advise you to hold on to something.

Lord Justice Sedley ruled:

That Dr. Dawood did own the land or rather, the subsoil marked on his deeds, but the Tarmac surface above was subject to public access, and because there was no physical barrier between the road and the Tarmac strip, parking restrictions did apply.

This ruling means in effect that unless you erect a physical barrier at the point where your drive abuts the highway it could technically be accessed by the public and therefore is now fair game for traffic wardens, and you just know that the Traffic Taliban of Camden Council will at every opportunity use this loophole to milk the motorist.

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CabbieBlog’s London

Regular Bloggery on London and England . . and how to fix it.
It's just like sitting in the back of my Black London Cab listening to me pontificate without having to tip.
CabbieBlog
- Just the ticket
- A Gated Community
- Top 10 Worst Places to Catch a Taxi
- Navigation Master
- Moving targets
Translation
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Read my regular CabbieBlog at the London Scene page of London Evening Standard's site just click this link:
Londonist Interview

Read my interview with Londonist.com the website on all things London, just click on the cute link below
The Blogpaper

Read my contributions to this new on-line paper and vote to get your favourite London stories printed. Click here:
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Categories
- A window on My World (19)
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- Driven mad in London (21)
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- On being a London Cabbie (6)
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- With an artistic bent (4)
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What I’m Reading

Rescue Me: My Life with the Battersea Dogs by Melissa Wareham: Heartwarming anecdotes from the manager of Battersea for all dog lovers
London Miscellany

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CabbieBlog by David D'Arcy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at www.cabbieblog.co.uk.