Barnet put a PCN camera at a goldmine

Mr Mustard recently read his first tribunal decision at a new location 'Ballards Lane Junction With Nether Street And Chaville' which is the crossroads adjacent to Finchley Central tube station. Whilst there is an exemption for turning right and being prevented by other vehicles waiting to turn right, he can see this is going to be problematic as the road is painted to allow a right turn from the middle lane and it is easy for the car in the right hand lane to block your exit because it is has to swing and is accordingly much wider that when alongside. People are going to get stuck as they can't see what their exit is like and the merciless cctv computer will be churning PCNs out by the thousand.

Mr Mustard will avoid turning right from Nether Street into Regents Park Road (i.e. over the tube bridge). If you look like you might get stuck, just go straight on, turn around in front of the tube station and then come back up to the lights and turn left. You will save yourself £130.

The turn right markings should be changed to remove the right turn advice from the middle lane.

The end.

Greggs - Ballards Lane, Finchley Central, London N3

Mr Mustard had to meet a lady about her PCN & car tow away in Brent and as she lived nearby they arranged to meet in Costa in Ballards Lane N3. Mr Mustard was stood outside as he was, as per usual, early. He heard shouting from across the road. He saw an apparently homeless man sitting quietly minding his own business on the pavement at the left hand edge of the Greggs shop and to the right, next to the open front door, a female Greggs employee with a mop & bucket. She was washing the black frontage. She shouted at the homeless man to 'go away' more than once. Mr Mustard, who used, once upon a time, to volunteer in the Crisis at Christmas homeless shelters, felt very uncomfortable with this. Then he sadly realised what was going to happen when the man didn't move, which was that the employee sloshed her bucket of water onto the ground in front of the shop, just to the left of the front door.

Now you can't drop a bucket of water on the floor without it spreading sideways in all directions and it duly reached where the poor homeless man was sitting and it caused him to move pretty sharpish. At this point Mr Mustard took to Twitter as he didn't have time to get further involved.

Mr Mustard has now got back to his office and had time to have a quick look at the social responsibility pages on the Greggs website, which includes the following snippets,

Clearly at senior level Greggs have the right idea but the message has not reached to one member of shop staff.

Firstly, why didn't the employee simply say to the man 'Please could you move for a few minutes as I want to wash the shop front?' as an innoffensive homeless person is deserving of as much decency & politeness as customers of Greggs; remember he was simply sitting there minding his own business. If he was being uncooperative then maybe you just wait and wash the shop front later?

The second thing is that the pavement fronting onto Greggs appears to be the public highway so she had no right to order him about, she would not have done it to Mr Msuatrd if he had stood there on his mobile phone. The homeless man is not a lesser being, he is a human being, in a lesser state at the moment. The pavement is his home. Homelessness is not, in a way, our, society's, problem, it is the problem of the homeless themselves. Once you hit rock bottom, no home, no job, no money, no food, no doctor, no shelter or safety, no toilet or shower facilities, no friends, no family, no health & no prospects, what you don't need is to be shouted at and splashed with water (luckily it is a warm sunny day but getting wet is one of the biggest problems to face the homeless) but some help, a place of refuge, some help fixing the drink &/or drug and/or mental health problems which may exist and then perhaps some work may be possible, is the solution that is needed and an advanced society's duty to assist.

Mr Mustard can easily appreciate how no food business would want a person camped out outside their shop making it look untidy & perhaps innocently sending customers elsewhere (30 years ago Mr Mustard lived in Potters Bar and the local tramp was no fool, he used to sit quietly on the wall near the cashpoint and the bakers where people fed him and gave him money) but the misguided actions of this one employee (Mr Mustard is assuming this event was a one off unless you know better, residents of Finchley Central) are not the answer. Mr Mustard does not want the employee to be sacked (as losing your job can lead to losing your home) but to be educated about her attitude, manner and behaviour.

Greggs have got far more financial resources than most and perhaps could help in London by working once again with charities and local authorities to try and get some of these people off the street with a helping hand rather than trying to get them washed away.

Moving on the homeless is not the answer, the street is their home. You wouldn't want to be there.

Mr Mustard started the day at 7am the happiest he has been in a long time. This unfortunate event marred his morning & made him sad. Hopefully Greggs, who will be tweeted a direct link to this blog and will hopefully update us as to what they have done about this member of shop staff, will become part of the solution rather than be a problem. Don't just think of the PR aspect Greggs, think what you can do to help as that will naturally bring benefits to you & make Mr Mustard happy again.

Now, back to parking tickets.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Bomb Scare - but PCN issue must continue unabated

On 24 November 16 there was a bomb scare in Ballards Lane. It was reported in The Standard, here.

You can see that it was absolute havoc with one of the main North South axes of the borough being severed.

Mr Mustard's client is a teacher at various locations. One was at Finchley Central where she has a parking space available to her. On the day in question she had to be there to teach her class at 11 and was unable to reach her destination. A teacher does not lightly abandon her pupils and so as the lesson was from 11am to midday she left her car at 10:45 on a single yellow line which she though must have the same time as resident parking i.e. restricted from 2-3pm (she was wrong) and many other people were also abandoning their cars where they could, and thought she would easily be back by 2pm.

In the pandemonium and her high adrenalin state she missed the sign that would have told her the single yellow was in force. She could not have paid to park, even if there was a suitable bay, as she did not have a mobile phone with her.

When she returned to her car she found a PCN which had been issued at 12:14 she took it to her office to get a letter from the supervisor confirming the lesson she taught and that there had been a bomb scare. She returned to her car to find another PCN which had been issued at 12:33 (it was not her lucky day) even though it is generally the case that a car in contravention & not moved cannot be ticketed again before 24 hours have passed and that is also what Barnet Council's own rules state.

Anyway, she wrote to the council saying that there had been a bomb scare and fully expected that in the circumstances the PCN would be forgiven. No such luck. Here are parts of the two rejections:

Absolutely no sympathy or understanding of the real world whatsoever. To think that the first thought of everyone when close to a suspect bomb is how they can comply with the parking regulations is to place the importance of parking tickets in society at far too high a level. The issuing of the PCN can be understood, if the roads had opened again and traffic was back to normal, but not the failure of the back office to apply sensible discretion to the request for mitigation.

In addition, the council have failed to appreciate that two PCN were issued just 19 minutes apart and that the second one simply isn't valid. The council have blinded themselves by the prospect of the £220 income. Had she not gone to her councillor and been invited to contact Mr Mustard, she might have ended up by paying. Mr Mustard is about to log a complaint & suspects that the PCNs will then both go away.

Yet more reputational damage for the council, self inflicted.

Yours sincerely

Mr Mustard