Labour's Parking Nightmare

10.03.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 21st May 2007

Labour's parking nightmare continues....

Lambeth Labour's savage onslaught on innocent motorists continues unabated this week as new reaches us of further unjustified attacks.

In Kennington, a 27 year old mother stopped for a few moments to breastfeed her 3-month old infant Ruben. No sooner was the tiny baby contentedly suckling than along came a Lambeth parking attendant who ignored the mother's entreaties and slapped a ticket on the windscreen.

An passer-by was so outraged by the incident and the subsequent argument that they offered to pay for the parking ticket. However the Council's supposed new breed of 'caring-sharing' traffic warden refused to back down and insisted that the young mum would be fined. A council official later confirmed the ticket had been issued correctly.

Meanwhile, when Brixton's Rushcroft Road was sealed off after a fatal shooting on 27th April, stranded motorists were shocked to find that they had been ticketed by zealous parking wardens as soon as the police opened up the area again after forensic examination. Other motorist's vehicles were clamped and one man even had his car taken away to a Council car pound which cost him £200 to retrieve.

And in suburban Streatham where they do not even have parking meters, Lambeth's greedy highway robbers are lying in wait for motorists caught in a yellow box outside Streatham Common Station at the Eardley Road junction with Streatham Vale.

Nothing wrong with that you might say. Except that here greedy Labour Lambeth has now admitted that newly installed traffic lights have not been working properly, causing motorists to get trapped in the box and that infringements had soared from 325 to 3900 over a three month period. Liberal Democrat councillors have called for the unfair tickets to be rescinded.

The 1200 per cent increase netted the Labour-run Council £240, 000 in fines, which translates into a whopping £1 Million in a full year. A Council official denied that a Council Smart car secretly employed to video unsuspecting motorists during the morning and evening rush hour was doing anything wrong and that the surveillance would continue.

Liberal Democrat Councillor, Brian Palmer, said " Labour came to power last May pledging to introduce fairer parking.The reality is that parking tickets have soared under Labour and they are now ticketing anything that doesn't move."

Cllr Palmer added, " This money grabbing and grubby Labour administration is now snaring motorists with dodgy signals, trapping motorists caught up in the Borough's soaring gun-crime explosion, and slapping tickets on breast-feeding mothers. Whatever next?"