Cars

There are three things about cars that have got me rattled this week:

School Runs

Parking Fines

Imbecilic Ignorant Drivers...

So not much there, then?

I do not profess to understand the education system in this country any longer. It's been over 30 years since I left school and everything has changed; even the location and name of my alma mater. Everything seems slightly Americanised (or should that be Americanized?). Nothing is measured in forms any more, it's all Year this or that and obviously there are more kids getting brilliant A level results, not because it's easier, but because kids today are considerably more cleverer than wot we was...

Arguably, the education system is better now; it has more opportunities, more diversity and, um, I'm struggling to come up with a third example, but I'm sure there are loads. What amazes me is young people can still manage to attend school. I mean, they're such fragile little creatures now with especially vulnerable legs. If the poor dears use their legs too much they're apt to have them wear out or fall off. This, to me, has to be the reason why kids don't walk to school any more. I can understand, in this age of going to the best possible school, rather than the one just down the road, the need for the youngsters to be taken, especially if they live five or six miles from their educational institution of choice (which to me is a complete anathema); but if a kid lives less than a couple of miles from their school, why the hell can't they walk? Or, you know, catch a bus?

Rush hour is bad enough in any town without it being added to by parents taking their precious little angels to school in their 4x4s or, as is the main reason, in their cars that they have almost zero understanding how to drive and leaves you feeling that they had to have paid the test examiner money to get their licences to kill.

I'm thinking anyone that takes their kids to school and parks within a mile of the school should be fined, rather than focusing traffic wardens' attentions on nabbing as many people as they can in places that really need help - like town centres.

The news that parking charges and parking fines are likely to go up, by more than 10% nationally, just smacks of a country that no longer wants its people to do anything. Just going out now poses a logistical nightmare. Even shopping centres, like the Weston Favell Centre, are imposing time limits and employing parking stewards. This is blamed on the people abusing the system, which, as we all know, normally works out to be less than 1% of the users, so everybody gets punished. The WFC is pretty fare in many respects (apart from needing a degree in maths to work out exactly how its road layout is supposed to work), you get, I believe, about 4 hours before your car is pounced on and if 4 hours isn't enough to get all your shopping, have a cuppa and do some browsing, them you're either stupid or possibly disabled - maybe not disabled enough to warrant a Blue Badge, or maybe you're just a wee bit older than the average users and getting around is a bit slower?

I appreciate that we need to make money; money makes the world go round, it pays for things (mainly council workers salaries) and we need to be punished if we abuse the system. Why else does the council only employ certified deaf sociopaths as traffic wardens. In the USA, the cops treat everyone like they're an axe or machine gun wielding homicidal maniac; we're getting that way with everyone in this country. No one has a genuine reason for being 2 minutes over their allotted time; they are just abusing the system and taking the piss out of everyone else. You are a liar and you can't argue with this accusation. Try taking the council to court over an unjust parking ticket and see how far you get.

Incidentally, I have not been the victim of an irrational parking fine for a couple of years. I avoid anywhere that is likely to have a hidden, covert warden hiding behind a wall ready to pounce on me whenever I have a centimetre of wheel infringing upon a double yellow line - when in reality they should be allowed to penalise idiots who don't know how to park their cars properly and who leave about 3 feet either side of their bumpers. It doesn't matter if you park like a chimpanzee on crack as long as you're within the lines!

And what about imbeciles that have been given the right to drive cars? Over the last couple of years I've noticed that traffic lights have a new unwritten meaning: green means go, amber means go and red also means go for the first ten seconds after it gets there! This is especially prevalent to drivers of white vans of whatever shape or size. In fact, as a friend of mine suggested, anyone driving a vehicle that obviously doesn't belong to them will abuse the system as far as they can, as long as there isn't a speed camera or a police car in sight.

I've stopped being courteous to other drivers as much as I was. The reason is two fold - I rarely get acknowledgement for my kindness and I'm never the recipient of courtesy. I still see no end of people cutting others up, barging in, ignoring traffic instructions, just to gain that extra car's length and as I get older, the more I want to buy a clapped out old banger and plough straight into these arseholes cars and then just say, 'Oops, sorry bloke and guess what I don't have any insurance' then run away. It might make these idiots realise that one day they're going to cause a god awful accident, especially involving some stupid woman badly driving her children to school in a very crowded street...