Double trouble in Newham

 

Above you see Cleves Road in Newham where the council have been splashing paint about that wasn't needed.

Mr Mustard found this wrongly painted location on the PCN tribunal website, case no. 2220882876, which had the following comments by the adjudicator.

In order to be considered at the tribunal Newham Council must have already rejected what were eminently sensible representations by the keeper of the vehicle.

What isn't said here is that yellow lines are generally held by adjudicators to apply from the edge of the carriageway to the middle which means that single yellows can be on one side of the road and double yellows on the other.

If Newham Council didn't want people to park at the end of this cul-de-sac they should have painted the double yellows for a few yards on both sides. There is no need to paint anything across the carraigeway, it just causes confusion as it did here.

Was the council blinded by wanting to grab another £130 to help their budget? you bet they were.

The end.

Blindingly obvious revenue raising

So here we have a parking suspension which is for one day whilst the road is dug up, by the looks of it. 

Along pops a traffic warden, the depot isn't far away and this is on a main road, and sticks a PCN on the windscreen at 08:33

Then along comes a  different traffic warden at 12:40 and dishes out another one.

Note that the second PCN is affixed in a different place to the first one (neither ticket reached the motorist so did the traffic warden put them back in his/her pocket in order to deny the discount - that won't work, it will be 100% once Mr Mustard has finished with them).

Now this being a one day suspension one PCN can legally be upheld. This is the most basic information which traffic wardens, supposedly trained to NVQ level 3 or the equivalent, must know or they shouldn't be let out on the streets to wrongly penalise motorists. In fact, the contract with NSL specifies this.

Mr Mustard is more inclined to think that the information was conveniently forgotten by the traffic warden. 

It would be a good use of technology to programme the hand held equipment to prevent the issue of a second PCN for the same contravention at the same place to the same vehicle for the same contravention. This would prevent such wrongful behaviour by traffic wardens.

This sort of double ticketing trick is one reason why the Barnet Council parking department drags the reputation of the council down towards the gutter.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard 

Double trouble with percentages

First off we had the council issuing a press release that 99% of libraries now have free wifi (which isn't really anything to boast about in 2013 in any case). The only trouble is that one library doesn't have it and so only 13 out of 14 libraries have email which equates to 93% and to think that Robert Rams is allowed to take part in big decisions which affect us all is quite worrying. It isn't as if he shows any sign of being bothered about accuracy "I'm happy with it". Will voters be equally happy with him in May 2014? we'll see.

sorry this is somewhat out of focus

and now I see from twitter that Robert has been out today and seen the new blue wheelie bins being delivered. Mr Mustard thinks that the council have not readied themselves for the storm of protest they are about to receive when people actually try and find a home for this third 240 litre bin.

Here is some blurb about it on the council website. So you already have a green bin and a black bin, both of which are 240 litres in size. Your green bin has been halved in usefulness as it will only be collected every other week from October.

Now the council say that more than 30% of the typical bin is food waste (not at Mustard Mansions - probably only 1% and he doesn't believe this statistic anyway) and so they have spent loads of our money on new food waste bins and a collection service (careful buying and cookery classes might be more useful) and of course this new food bin will be the correct size, won't it? Let's see:

240 litres * 30% food = a 72 litre sized bin is needed.

Food Bin being supplied is 23 litres.

What is the point? or is some officer also unable to work out percentages?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard