I 'regret' that I must twist the knife

 

Almost every time that Mr Mustard travels along East Barnet Road he see vehicles parked on the pavement, as borne out by historic google street view images. Mr Mustard never sees a PCN on them. Mr Mustard has watched a 'traffic warden' on his scooter ride straight past them. Someone told Mr Mustard that a traffic warden was either threatened with violence or met with some and so now enforcement simply doesn't take place on that section of pavement nor here:

Unfortunately however if you a peaceable lady of a certain age, who parks with 2 wheels on the pavement in a hurry with her blue badge showing as she needs the toilet, you will be given a PCN as your car isn't known to be that of an unsavoury character.

If anyone knows the story about this location do email mrmustard@zoho.com

The lady, we'll call her Lady X, has had mental health problems for the 8 years that Mr Mustard has known her. Little will be disclosed so that she is not identified. She sent in her own challenge explaining how she came to park as she had. Shortly after that her adult son died unexpectedly.

Mr Mustard decided to write in and ask for cancellation, in the following terms:

You will guess what happened next. The request was refused.

Are the condolences sincere? Mr Musatrd doesn't think so.

Is the regret genuine? No.

Will this response do a mentally ill person any good? Mr Mustard doubts it.

Could the council afford to let one PCN go? Yes, of course.

Does the writer sympathise with the situation? No, they just just twist the knife.

Mr Mustard has no idea how these faceless letter writers can live with their consciences.

The end.

Redbridge Council - boxes its own ears

Mr Mustard's ears prick up when he sees a Council v Council entry on the tribunal website and he asks the council for all the paperwork behind the PCN. He doesn't always get it all but he gets enough to show the idiocy of the PCN system. In this case the council didn't fight the tribunal Appeal which it started against itself.

Here is the PCN.

There is no profit to be had from this PCN, it is simply a case of moving money from one council budget to another one, or not.

 

Mr Mustard didn't get a copy of the representations which were supposedly exempt but it doesn't really matter, they won't have been that radical.

Mr Mustard did get the video and here it is.

 

He was sent the rejection notice.

The rejection is a dismal piece of work because what you can't see in the video is the exit of the box so no-one knows why the vehicle stopped and the reason has to be because of stationary vehicles, what vehicles? There aren't any in shot. Adjudicators cancel PCNs for this reason all the time.

Mr Mustard went up and down Ley Street on google. It is rather long. Mr Mustard only found one yellow box, viz:

Where is this? It is at the entrance to the council depot. Mr Mustard wonders if the necessary steps were followed before the council painted a box intended to aid their workers but which they now use to penalise their workers? Laurel and Hardy have some competition it seems.

Mr Mustard did ask if the camera had been adjusted to better show the box and the answer was that it had.

Mr Mustard also asked how many PCNs the council had issued to itself in the year ended 31 March 2023. The answer was 107.

Mr Mustard also asked if the motorists caught in that box, which was inadequately covered by camera, would be refunded and of course the answer was 'no'.

There is little honour in Redbridge.

The end.

Islington Council - one off error or are you due a refund?

One of Mr Mustard's regulars (he is a big contributor to the hospice as well, £50 for every PCN I beat) got the below PCN.

Mr Mustard concluded that it did not meet the requirements to be a PCN and an adjudicator agreed.

The usual on street Islington PCN looks like this

Mr Mustard didn't think there could be many defective PCNs in Islington (it might just have been one handheld machine on one day with the wrong template loaded) but all the same he asked the question of the council. He received an open and honest response.

You might wonder how the copies aren't easy to find. It is because they are produced from templates which change over time and there could be 50 or 100 machines in use on the street at any one time. Keeping that lot up to date must be a bit of a task. The council doesn't have a great big file of copies generated as they go, as 50% of PCNs will be paid without fuss and only 1% will end up at the tribunal when a copy will be needed. The council generate true copies on demand. Generating the wrong copy for the tribunal leads to a win if the motorist notices.

Anyway, if you have had a PCN from Islington this year or perhaps last (if you keep paperwork like Mr Mustard does) and it does not contain the date of the alleged contravention (it only has From/To times) and you have paid it, now is the time to ask for a refund.

The end.

 

Islington Council - a role model

 

The above PCN was issued to a lady who had passed away and her car was insured for family to drive until it went back to the lease company shortly thereafter. Islington Council were very considerate in cancelling without fuss.

 

Mr Mustard thought that the PCN was served late being more than 28 days after the alleged contravention date, that being the rule (with an exception or two) for moving traffic cases.

 

He asked Islington how many such PCNs there were in the year to 31 March 2023. The answer was 1,162.

 

Mr Mustard told Islington they should refund them all and made noises about going to the external auditor (a deadline he missed as he was away on holiday).

 

Being late didn't matter as it turns out that Islington Council have morals.

Mr Mustard complains quite often so likes to dole out some praise as well.

The next story will be good news as well, also from Islington.

The end.

Sweeping into the future

 

Mr Mustard is a customer of H Firkin & Sons and was delighted to receive this email from them yesterday. If you have a chimney that needs to be swept do give them a whirl, they do a very good job, are always on time, polite and tidy.

Hello

Please see this link to read more about our new bike.

This is just a quick update for our customers about a new addition to our fleet, to try to do our bit to ease congestion in London and hopefully make us more efficient when working in certain parts of the capital.

At H Firkins and Sons, we are the first chimney sweeping in company, and according to EAV the E-Bike manufacturer, the first trade company in London to invest in an EAV cargo bike (Others have been massive logistics companies like Amazon and FedEx). We purchased the bike a year ago now in July 2022, but we didn’t make much of a fuss about it as we wanted to first logistically get everything in place to make the most of it, and get used to using it and figure out how much quicker or slower it made our work in certain areas.

It has replaced one of our older, diesel non ULEZ compliant vans.

We have just one favour to ask. To make this work, we need to organise work in smaller geographical areas. If you can help us by booking in your chimney sweeping appointment as far in advance as possible so you can be as flexible as possible, we can keep jobs as local as as we can and go on our bike rather than van.

If we can get work booked far enough in advance and organised well, our hope is we can replace another van with a bike, and soon do the majority of our work using bike rather than a minority.

As a reference, over last winter, Josh Firkins (one of our family chimney sweeps) worked on average 3 out of 5 days on the bike. It wasn’t possible to organise it well enough at this point to fill 5 days for Josh with bike based work, nor was it possible to organise it for the other two vans we have on the road, run by Graham and Darren.

We hope you will support us in this major change to our business, and I hope it demonstrates our willingness to do our bit to invest in reducing the congestion on the roads, reduce our carbon footprint and improve local air quality.

If you wish to make an appointment, please either call 02088869420 or contact us online

Best wishes

H Firkins and Sons - Chimney Sweeps

Barnet Council - losing track of time.

An interesting and worrying decision yesterday at the tribunal (Mr Mustard looks at random results when he has the time).

Hats off to J A Rattigan

It might have only been the one camera or it could have been all of them but this alleged contravention was a week after the clocks went forward so every single PCN had the wrong time on it and can be beaten. An honest council would go back and unilaterally cancel them all, and issue refunds, but somehow Mr Mustard doubts that will happen. This is why we need an ombudsman or similar who could direct an enforcement authority to behave morally and legally. There is no current mechanism to deal with this sort of error, it is up to each person and not everyone has Mr Mustard's willingness to fight petty officialdom.

End.

What is empathy?

Mr Mustard found the question harder to answer than he at first supposed. He has seen many letters from Barnet Council in which they say they empathise and then they mercilessly stick the boot in so he thought that the words were hollow.

He looked up 'empathy' in his Concise Oxford and the definition there means that the writer identified mentally with the motorist (and so fully comprehended their situation). Having so identified they then refuse the plea for mercy although Mr Mustard thought that having shown empathy they would have to be kind, it seems he is wrong about that.

Mr Mustard can't see the point of it anyway. The law says the council has to consider the representations (challenge) which was made and then say if they agree with it or not. There is no requirement to empathise, sympathise or show any feeling whatsoever.

Here is the challenge which was made.

Clearly difficult circumstances which could be verified if there was any doubt by a doctor at the surgery in question.

Here is Barnet Council's response.

There is needless repetition here. The motorist told the council that payment was made for the wrong vehicle so why do they tell him that? The council are correct that if the PCN goes missing from the windscreen it has been validly served. Years ago PCNs went missing a lot (Mr Mustard suspected traffic wardens were serving then removing the PCNs in order to prevent the discount being taken, then missing PCNs stopped and now it seems they have started again).

Barnet Council state that the PCN is valid. That wasn't doubted by the motorist. What was being requested was a goodwill cancellation. That has not been granted and the reasoning is because a contravention occurred, one which the motorist agreed had occurred, the PCN won't be cancelled, so this is something of a Kafkaesque refusal.

Mr Mustard found this explanation of Empathy.

If the council (and a body corporate doesn't have feelings so it must be the writer who we take to be a human being and not AI, although doubtless that is the future) have cognitive empathy they aren't distressed by what the motorist suffered and can reject the representations without feeling anything. That appears to be the only type of empathy that fits the refusal letter.

 

Mr Mustard doesn't think the council have emotional empathy because the motorist is regarded simply as a PCN reference, they aren't a real person, the writer and the recipient will never meet. All letters from Barnet Council are sent out in the name of a manager but he can't possibly write or even see them all so there is a distance between the writer and the letter in any event.

 

There clearly isn't compassionate empathy as that would probably lead the writer to cancel the PCN.

 

Having decided that, by definition, a type of empathy has been shown, but not the type that most readers of this type of letter would think, they would most probably think of sympathy, kindness and understanding which would lead to a favourable outcome, Mr Mustard thinks it would perhaps be better if this often seen standard phrase in Notices of Rejection was deleted from the library of standard responses. It is a word that clearly doesn't have a plain meaning.

 

Mr Mustard does have simple, easily understood words for what he thinks of the attitude of Barnet Council in this case, a council that has not had any revenue loss by the understandable error which was made.

The council is:

Vile

Mean

Heartless

Mercenary

Miserable

Tactless

Feel free to add your own epithets.

Even though the motorist did make an error Mr Mustard has taken up the Appeal to an independent adjudicator at the tribunal. An adjudicator is not allowed by law to cancel a PCN due to mitigating circumstances, a fact of which enforcement authorities often remind motorists who are contemplating an Appeal, but they can for procedural impropriety. Mr Mustard is good at finding those, if they exist, and one does in this case. An Appeal has been started.

End.