The Congestion Charge Racket

To start, hands up, my wife and I are not great at remembering to pay, which is one of my beefs about the Congestion Charge for London.

But it's way more than that - it's getting like a racket - a licence to print money and the abuse of people's rights is getting silly.

First up - it's an unfair system. My wife only ever goes into the zone for minutes on any day she goes to London and always with another passenger in the car. Yet she is charged the full £8 just the same as a driver-only vehicle who may drive around for the full congestion charge period for the same charge - polluting and contributing to jams the whole day. That's just plain stupid and we should all make a stand to Boris Johnson on this - there is nothing 'green' about the system and it's wholly unfair in terms of usage.

It's not as if the technology does not exist to collect charges at source and dramatically reduce the amount of Penalty Charge Notices (PCN) which are sent out. My wife has an account with a debit mandate attached to it and if she remembers to text in then it debits her account. But we have two cars and so she repeatedly texts for the wrong car which has happened again. She has paid £8 but for the wrong vehicle. Transport for London (TfL) happily takes the wrongly paid £8 and will not refund the money in any circumstance - it's the only authority or company I know which has the right totally abuse the consumer rights law yet it is operated by a private company. It is an absolute licence to print money.

The technology for number plate recognition has been there since the day it was launched and the debit mandates are there for individual accounts - yet the payment system is 'rigged' to make sure you have to trigger something to pay even though TfL can actually do it for you. It's absolutely ludicrous that it should not be done this way.

Here's the new thing. Congestion Charge is neither a traffic offence or is it a consumer purchase so it operates in a middle ground but is protected by the laws of traffic transgression. Yet if you speed, the fine notification has to be sent out within 14 days of the offence occurring - any time after actually transgresses your right to defend yourself and so as 'Mr. Loophole', the famous lawyer who gets rich people off, exploits you do not have to pay and you cannot be convicted. Congestion Charge does not have the same rule, they can send out a PCN at ANY time after the offence has occurred - but technically it's not an offence and so despite the fact you have a right to defend yourself as each week passes it becomes progressively more difficult to get facts. TfL has now sent out the last two PCNs my wife has received, despite her paying £8 in both instances, fully seven weeks after the alleged offences took place. As the first was when she used my car, I called to complain and I was threatened that if I did not pay then the charge would be doubled and I would be prosecuted for non-payment.

The best part is that they are not even Londoners on the end of the line - they are Capita people based in Coventry - fat lot they know or care about London.

So, Boris Johnson, if you bother to listen to your public, listen to this. The Congestion Charge system needs to be properly positioned - and do what it says. If cars only enter the zone for minutes in a day then surely they should pay less for the little they pollute and congest within the charging hours. Surely, if not only as a matter of courtesy, PCNs should be sent out promptly and within a few days, maximum 14 days, of a penalty being incurred so that people can exercise their rights to defend themselves properly. People should have individual accounts and pay for any car on the same mandate just list the cars they may use. It is a simple process which is called customer service. And put the call centre in London - manned by courteous Londoners rather than people who have no knowledge of the City or zero care about Londoners.

Ken Livinsgtone famously had a referendum to see if West Londoners wanted the charging zone extended and in democratic process at its best he ignored the huge majority of 'No's' and went ahead anyway. It makes you think more was at stake than just trying to de-congest or de-pollute London.

So, define whether this is a service we buy or whether it is a transgression system. Like clamping and parking, the Congestion Charge is degenerating into a way for private companies to print money by effectively running it as a racket.

And finally, put the money made back into London rather than giving handsome profits to the private companies who run this - why should they profit so much from it?

The whole system was set up wrong in the first place and makes you wonder how many people associated with TfL had shares in Capita? I wonder if anyone checked as they are the only people benefiting from a service gone wrong.

The Cost of Bad Service

Happy Boxing Day everyone. I hope Santa was good to you and you had a lovely Christmas.

I hate to pick on a sour note but something triggered my mind this Christmas to how poor service kills the experience of either buying things or at minimum using a service. Typically if things aren't going according to plan, our only recourse as customers or users is to call the company in question and either clarify or complain. We hit the dreaded call centre and the world of scripted customer experience, designed, no doubt, by hard nose managers who have neither ever answered a customer call nor really ever had to use their own service.

Once, at the Ralph Lauren Outlet shop in Bicester, a gentleman's credit card required some extra authorisation as a standard security check. The queue looked on in anger as the poor shop assistant went through some questions and it appeared that things were not happening for some reason - the call centre was in some foreign location and language was clearly an issue. The customer smiled enigmatically and asked for the phone as he was worked as a bank manager of the credit card company in question. He apologised to the queue generally before turning to the phone, explained who he was and then tried to clear up the situation. After several minutes of talking he suddenly lost his rag and started shouting down the phone trying to explain he was a manager and why that made a difference. The call ended a full 10 minutes later and he withdrew his card, left his purchases and stormed out of the shop as people muttered at him, 'Now you know what it's like, mate.'

But generally managers don't know. In the UK, on average, senior executives are paid around six times more than lower level staff - in the US this gap is over ten times. The closer you are to the customer, the reality is that the less you are paid. Meanwhile, the farther away you are, the more you are paid by a massive difference. It is also true that the closer you are to the customer, the less decision making power you have - stands to reason as you are less paid therefore have less responsibility.

Wrong. The closer you are to the customer the more influence you have over the company's service, brand and reputation - and therefore - it's profitability.

How many times have you called companies to complain and all you get is the euphemistically called 'Customer Service Engineer' or similarly exotic title. If your question goes beyond a scripted answer, you naturally ask to speak to their manager, or heaven forbid, a director who is responsible for the whole service. Forget it. They are not paid all that money to merely listen to customers, deal with problems or understand how their service is performing. They have graphs and reporting lines for that. As long as the colours look pretty - the business is fine.

I have mentioned this before, at Genesys Conferencing some years ago we came up with a radical idea as customer 'incidents' were increasing and, in general, people were getting angrier. For once, we looked beyond the graph and listened - I don't know what possessed us to do it. It seemed that customers who had more incidents subsequently spent less with us and some even left us - all resulting in lower profits from that customer. Often, the incidents were over minor losses to the service or billing mistakes (like continuing to bill an account after a person had left, which on the face of it should be the customer's fault for not closing the account and making sure no one used that service on that account again). So we decided to give discretionary powers to the customer service 'engineers' to actually give refunds for the service to the value of the incident that went wrong or up to £1,000, usually by offering a credit to be consumed as they carried on using.

The effect was astonishing. Instead of getting customers leave us, they stayed. As MD, I would get calls praising our customer service team and account managers who helped solve problems but at the financial end, we lost less profit. This seems daft as surely we were giving some away. It turned out that not all customers rang with the purpose to get a credit so when offered it they felt it was not required but at least someone had listened and done something about it. While for others, by giving a small credit instantaneously, we never felt any further losses from less usage or customer churn. Better still, by understanding what caused the problems rather than simply turning people away, we got procedures in and looked at technical faults more closely which fixed the base problems causing the incidents. By listening and acting we were able to find the real problems more easily and fix them. Eureka!

This was not rocket science. Recently, my wife used my car and drove into London. She entered the Congestion Charge Zone for approximately 5 minutes before parking and then left after charging had stopped. She used her account to text her charge of £8 that day but mistakenly paid for our other car which was being used in Basingstoke by me for the day. It was the second time we had made that same mistake. This was on 5 November this year. On 12 December, we received a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN), which had been issued on 7 December and took 5 days to arrive even though they have our email addresses.

I called to complain that this delay was unreasonable as I had not used the car that day and my wife assured me she had paid and even had the text response to say she had. The menu service at Transport for London - TfL -(or CC London) on the call handling device clearly says 'if you want to complain, press X' and I did so. The customer service person said they only handle complaints in writing - I pointed out the taped call handling said differently and they said to write to complain about that too. As you only have 14 days after the date of issue to challenge the PCN, I wrote via the website complaint email service and explained what had happened the same day. I got a telephone message on 21 December from a lady who gave a number that did not exist to respond to which curtly said they had reviewed my case and tough - no explanation.

I called again on 21 Dec to the customer service line which did answer and asked to speak to the lady in question, who was unavailable but the person said they could handle it. I explained I thought it unreasonable to be sent a notice after 4 weeks on an incident and it made investigating at my end difficult - tough was the answer as there are NO LIMITS on the length of time that a PCN can be sent out after an incident. TfL can send them out as long as they liked after. The person did offer that a system upgrade had caused delays but that was that. I explained that was not my problem, I surely had a right to defend myself as clearly we had paid £8 for something and we wanted an explanation, not realising the mistake was ours. I explained I was in our other car that day and gave the registration number but they would not check if that car had been paid for - it was irrelevant.

As the call ended, the lady then said, 'Do you want to pay now?' Haughtily, I said I had until 23 Dec according to the PCN and she said, nope - I had 14 days from the date of issue, 7 Dec and so 21 Dec was the limit. It was now a point of order - the PCN clearly stated that I had until 23 Dec, she said she did not have access to the PCN and she doubted if that's what it said, and, in her own words - 'I don't care'. If I did not pay that day, I would be charged the full amount.

I paid there and then. But it was a classic example of rubbish systems, not joined up and little attention to the customer experience. Capita, who operate the service for TfL assume this is a penalty or tax service and so these are fines - punishment and so customer service is not required. The onus of paying the charge or fine is on the customer even though account details and direct debit mandates are in place and number plate recognition has been available from the start. In our case we have two accounts, one for each car but with one payment method - surely we could operate as one account? The final point of principle is that we HAD paid £8 that day for the right to drive a car in the Congestion Zone and if we got the wrong car, surely we had the right to get at least a credit for the one wrongly paid for?

It seems CC London has the right to steal money and impose unreasonable fines plus have an indefinite period to impose the fines making defence of such fines as impossible as it can. But it is the glee with which the customer service people take in telling you there is absolutely no way that you can get relief on a charge and no matter what happened it is your fault and your responsibility and crap service is not an excuse.

CC London is law unto itself. But poor customer service and stupidly imposed systems by highly paid management makes matters far, far worse. It is derived from the first principle that the customer must not be refunded no matter what. If that is challenged, pull down the 'Iron Curtain' that says managers and directors do not take calls and that will frustrate the hell out of people and in the end they will give up.

Utilities are classic for this and only recently have we got enough choice to change suppliers as you should do in the real competitive world but CC London has a monopoly to impose whatever it likes as you have zero choice in the matter. It is a licence to print money and they do so with complete impunity.

No wonder the mangers get paid so much more than the people on the phone - they are clever bunnies. If Boris Johnson had a real brain, he would put out to tender the running of the service - and the first stipulation should be that the call centre should be located in London and run by Londoners rather than Coventry as they should know what they are talking about having used the service at minimum. Secondly, he should combine cars and accounts so that people can pay for any car with one text. Thirdly, he should review the fairness of the system as a flat £8 charge is imposed even if you drive around polluting and congesting all day or enter for only a few moments.

Come the revolution! Make Customer Service mean what it says - remember we are customers after all.

Customer Billing Service?

It was comforting to hear the patronising tones of British Gas CEO, Bob Bentley, on the radio this morning sounding as if he has had an epiphany when it comes to billing customers. Bless him, he finds the bills his company issues complicated to read and therefore has some empathy with his customers.

Rather nicely of him, he has now decided that 'Estimated Bills' should be done away with. Instead, customers can call in or text their latest readings with only the odd spot check to keep them on the straight and narrow. How very thoughtful of him.

It sounds like this is an enormous innovation in customer service but it hardly moves the needle in reality. Sure, we can now get more accurate monthly or quarterly bills and so smooth the payments better and not have those shocking bills periodically when the utility company gets around to read the meters they own and run, but are these companies providing a real service?

True, they provide gas and electricity to homes - thanks. But in most cases, like the phone company or milkman, they do not provide accurate billing regularly and without customer intervention. The onus, in most usual instances, is on the company providing the service to provide an accurate record and bill of the customer usage and to make payments easy. The meter is provided by them and for them to read, so life could not be much easier for the utility companies really. In fact, these meters have not changed in tens of years despite all these utilities posting nice profits; the billing technology and base mechanisms have not been updated for ages and the onus is right back on the customers to intervene and question bills, estimated or otherwise. And when you do so, boy, are you are in for problems as they do not believe a word you say - the subject of an earlier blog.

It is remarkable in these modern times that at least an upgrade cannot be fitted or new meters put in which negate the need for them to be read by humans at all. It may cost money but I am sure the long term return would be there if they charged just a tiny amount per quarter for the new meter. It isn't rocket science - it's actually, in my opinion, their responsibility to do so and the racketeering we have seen on utility bills over the years has, I am sure, caused customers to pay significantly over the odds for their utility bills. I know that is likely to be the case as it happened to me.

And here's the best of the new billing companies - Transport for London (TFL). Yes, they introduced the Congestion Charge for Central London with a state of the art billing system that required the customer to pay and it was strictly cash on the day or now up to 24 hours later - you miss, your responsibility even though you never asked for the whole thing. It is important also to draw a distinction here - the Congestion Charge is not a service, it's a straight local tax which is entirely incumbent on the individual to pay. If you were a sporadic user of the roads in London or, heaven forbid, a visitor then you were basically stuffed. The onus was on you to know exactly where the limits of the zones were and how to pay - and it isn't that simple. Until recently, the website had an issue with the latest version of Windows - which they denied - that stopped you paying online. But if you made a simple mistake or forgot for 24 hours, the penalties are unforgiving and more than those for assaulting people.

It's draconian and stupid. The technology was put in there from day one to capture images and number plate recognition. They have always had the capability to set up automated billing and it is an absolute crime that they did not implement this from the start.

It is the basic premise - you want to bill people for using roads, then you set up the system for them to pay without even having to think about it. It's a tax in all but name and, boy, do we know the taxman likes to make sure he or she gets her money without the hindrance of human intervention. For TFL, it was always the case to be able to get as many penalty charges in as possible and Capita, the system designers and operators, are superb at making money for old rope.

The day will come when all companies who want to charge for their services set up billing systems which make it simple, easy and automated for customers to pay. I think it's a basic responsibility for being in business.

How To Beat Road Congestion

Well this news caught my eye this morning, as I rose at 5.30am to beat the traffic going west on the M25 as there are the lovely roadworks to contend with on the way to Heathrow and now the schools are back in session.

It seems all those ponderous Think Tanks, academic studies and research projects are a complete waste of money after all. The best way to beat congestion is not to build new roads, renovate old ones, put in Toll Roads, have Congestion Charge systems - in fact, perish all of those daft and expensive ideas.

The simplest way is to create more unemployment - and at last, the Government has found its 'Sweet Spot'.

Now, as a fairly regular M25 user and who walks over it while walking my dogs virtually every day, I may contend the findings of the research. But I suppose you cannot argue with facts. No lessor authorities than the AA and Trafficmaster have found that over the last two years, congestion has dropped by a whacking one third (33.33%? Surely not). Even more, they assert that this drop is due to unemployment.

It may have cost the odd Bank Bail Out and Credit Crunch to achieve but those were unavoidable 'Global Phenomena', according to our glorious leader - the rest of the world caused us to spend so much bailing the situation out - and we can prove we are better off for it. Now, Brown and Darling, can forget about making up whether they were lying to us about trading international mass murderers for oil deals and point to their valid achievement. They have solved the congestion issue and it has not cost us a penny increase in tax.

Look, you cynics. When Mr. Brown said Britain would not go into recession, he did not mean a global recession caused by sub-prime which no one could have foreseen. But what he did was to use the current economic conditions to cleverly manipulate the congestion figures to help make all of our lives easier and we should give credit where it is due, as not a bean of tax has been directly raised to do so.

The rise in fuel duty on 1 September had nothing to do with lowering congestion at all - as Jack Straw would put it, 'This was academic'. It was going to happen anyway and every penny of that rise will go to saving several molecules CO2 from hitting our atmosphere. In fact, the Government plans to support the new emission trading schemes and in time, Britain will need to buy in plenty of such emission rights in order to cope with the excess hot air coming from politicians generally as there has been a corresponding sharp increase in such emissions in the last two years.

The news that congestion has decreased may shock all commuters whether in cars or public transport. Clearly, none of the researchers either sat in or counted the daily queues on the M25 roadworks or from Leatherhead to Heathrow or around the Dartford Crossings or for that matter, the M1 roadworks for last year. They either call that 'Seasonal Adjustments' or 'Accountants Smoothing' - either way, it doesn't count.

So rejoice everyone, the congestion you may be sitting in this morning is in fact 33% less than two years ago no matter what you may be thinking - it's a fact. And thank all those people who are languishing at home, having a great time being unemployed for their selfless contribution. And don't forget to offer thanks to the people who made this possible - step forward the Government, the financial world, international recession terrorists, sub prime mortgagees and, of course, our dear friend and international cowboy, John Prescott of the Two Jags.

It was his vision 12 years ago that gave us the platform to achieve this. Of course, he didn't know how to, but judge him by his results everyone. Judge him by his results.

What Are Think Tanks For?

You could call the front bar of most pubs in Britain 'Think Tanks'. There, many people blessed with the wondrous gift of 'Common Sense' have the 'calling' and slave tirelessly, over many hours, unpaid, in the illusive quest to solve the entire world of their problems. But no one ever listens.

In fact, in the 'Think Tank' I have attended on occasions, we even predicted the over-heating of the housing markets in the Western world as being the point at which economies would collapse. We even predicted that the rise of Hedge Funds and fat City bonuses would cause economic meltdown. But as the two observations were made in different 'sittings' and by largely different members, nobody linked the two things together.

But that's how 'Think Tanks' work. It is basically people with too much time on their hands sitting in the room with some kind of 'stimulus'. In our case it was alcohol and most other Think Tanks it is the money paid by the body who wants the answers and usually the initial question goes something along the lines of 'The NHS is getting overloaded, so how much money can we get out of it?'.

You think I'm kidding? Where did you think the Congestion Charge came from or Road Safety Speed Cameras or catching terrorists came from? All the answers involved ways of making more money, the latter by using the cameras installed to supposedly catch terrorists to be used to catch people putting the wrong things in bins and old ladies illegally parking, hence making more money. And they must be all done at separate meetings as none of the answers ever reference the other and always assume we have bottomless pits of money to hand back to Government or in consultant-speak their thinking is 'unjoined up'.

So today's gem is that a new Think Tank has come up with a way to solve over-crowding at GP surgeries. It must have take all of 30 seconds this one and the minutes of the meeting show that the chairman did not even finish reading out the question when some professor from the University of Pratts Bottom piped up, 'Charge the bastards £20 a visit.' Brilliant - all those in favour? 'Aye'. Passed unanimously. Next question vexed them a bit but took 45 minutes and they decided to end world poverty by charging all inhabitants of Africa £35 for the use of condoms.

Ryan Air seem to be operating much the same way by the looks of some of the ideas they have come up with but that's another story.

It strikes me that politicians clearly can only think for themselves when it comes to expenses and getting second jobs. All other times they simply toss the offending question into a Think Tank and out pops the answer which always goes along the lines of 'The answer to Britain's problem referenced XYZ (no need to fill the question in) is to charge ABC (refer to demographic chart book) £Delta (refer to charging rate booklet).'

So do we get value for our £60,000 a year plus multiple expensed MPs? Not really as when you add up all the consulting, research and Think Tank fees they pay out a year, we see that using their outsourced brain power actually costs us a great deal more. But one thing we can be sure of is that the more we pay for them, we end up paying a great deal more in our taxes.

Get with the programme, everyone. Register your pub's front bar as a 'Think Tank', invent a suitable studious name and make some money while you drink. I guarantee you'll make more sense than the ones in existence today.

The Shady Edge Of The Law

The whole point of the Law is to have guidelines in which we all live but its essence is that we have a right to be proven to have transgressed. The cornerstone of our justice system is that we are innocent in the eyes of the law until proven guilty, and that each of us has the right to some sort of defence.

However, at the edge of the law, there are several 'offences' which are not governed by the legal system - in fact, they are not even administered by the legal system. In these cases, you are simply guilty and the process of appeal against such a 'conviction' is made to be so onerous as to be futile.

I refer to the whole area governing parking, clamping and speeding. I could cite many more examples, but it is the basic principle that courts cannot be bothered to get involved in the volume of alleged offences and so simply transfers the onus to other administrative methods and effectively allows the Law to be interpreted, even hijacked and rewritten, by a bunch of third parties, few of whom are qualified in such matters.

I would like to point out that I have never had my car clamped or towed away but I have a lot of sympathy for those who have. I have heard of people who have had their car clamped for minor transgressions and I have heard of private individuals or companies who have clamped cars who have parked on their property where they have taken little or no effort to forewarn potential transgressors, and then charged fees for release which are purely arbitrary. These are not 'cowboy clampers' that the RAC Foundation wants to get some regulation on, but effectively anybody can clamp cars the way the Law is structured today. Even I can.

The Woolly Rules

A restaurant local to me has a small car park with a sign saying 'Clamping is in operation'. It doesn't say what for, is the first obvious matter. However, many cars park in there and some get clamped and some don't. The some that don't are people known to the restaurateur and have bought meals previously, allegedly. Those that get clamped, are seen as people who just use the facility to go to the shops. However, the notice does not make clear the rules nor does it give any time limits for unauthorised parking, nor does it specify fees for release, nor does it give a number to call for release or to ask questions, nor does it have an appeals service, nor does it make clear that if you have used the restaurant in the past that you may be entitled (at the discretion of the restaurateur) to park when not visiting the restaurant. Then there are those collecting take-aways - it is a potential mine field in the eyes of the Law, but it is beyond the Law.

The loose interpretation of the rules means that a car may be clamped solely if the restaurateur feels like it and it does not take account of the rights of the disabled, as a for instance. If you asked the owner of the restaurant, they would give you a whole load guff and not be able to explain any of the rules at all - it is basically down to their own interpretation, whenever and however they fell like. Then comes the final twist - they are not the landowners. They lease the land from an absent landlord, who has not given them any authorisation to clamp.

The whole business of parking in the country is BIG money. In St Albans, an army of uniformed wardens from a third party company roam the streets and hand out fines liberally with scant regard for rights and none for logic. As a for instance, I was playing golf at Batchwood Park municipal course one day last year and the car park was empty except for about 5 cars, one of which was mine. A warden on a scooter arrived and picked on a car which was parked in a long line of empty parking berths and one of its wheels overlapped the white lines defining the parking berth. Even though this car posed no issue to any other car and did not even stop someone parking in the next booth, the warden proceeded to issue a ticket and take a photo. I was amazed as it is a good mile or so from the town centre so I walked over with my camera phone and took a photo of the warden on the process of doing this and of the surrounding car park. I then asked him why he was issuing a ticket.

The response was that the car was 'illegally parked'. A sign in the adjoining car park warned that this was an 'offence' and is a rule 'known in St Albans' - there was no account taken that the car owner may be a visitor from another town playing golf and so not be aware of the 'St. Albans local Law'. I asked if the warden knew that this car was the original offender and was only parked this way as a result of another car parking 'illegally' previously which forced all other cars to park wrongly but had now left the car park. In such a case, the warden explained, all cars would be parked illegally and so be fined. By extension, if a single car causes a pile up, all cars who crash as a result are liable to prosecution - he said I was talking rubbish. He also radioed to his HQ as my taking pictures of him was deemed 'harassment' and therefore his company would bring criminal charges against me. I asked if, because a single car parked illegally, no other cars should park in an entire car park because all of them were liable to be fined - he said he did not make the rules.

The incident ended when the police arrived and gave me a warning for 'assault' which actually was the act of taking a photo of the warden, even though by this time there were several witnesses to the entire conversation who piped up and said I had only taken a two photos. St Albans wardens are a protected species indeed.

But the point here is that the rules are made up by a faceless body somewhere in the bowels of St Albans Council. It is not my only run-in - my wife was booked while waiting for me in an empty car park which had one other car in and her ticket ran out at 6pm and she was booked while sitting in the car waiting for me at 6.02pm - the warden had waited in the car park for her ticket to expire while the rest of St Albans was snarled in traffic as people parked wherever they liked while this chap picked on a lone female in a dark car park. Witnesses to the incident sent letters on my wife's behalf and there was not even a letter in response.

You could go on for hours on this subject and even start on the incredible decree that security cameras in town centres can now be used to spot parking offences rather than for use in protecting us against violent crime, assault and terrorism. Surveillance in this country is now on the hands of muppets with vendettas and book balancers.

Getting back to the point, clampers are only part of the problem. The issue of parking and speeding fines is one of the areas of law where the right to legal process is foregone and you are guilty with little recourse to prove innocence. In fact, the only way to prove innocence is to pay large legal fees as the appeals process is not a legally defined one - you effectively have to 'sue' the ticket issuer to get a legal hearing.

The article I have referenced makes a reference itself to the Human Rights Act of 1998 which states that all of us are entitled to a legal process no matter what the offence. The Human Rights Act has got a bad press because it allows mass murderers and serial offenders the right to challenge their convictions or give them some sort of right to a fair trial when everyone just wants to see the victims get a similar right. In the case of speeding and parking, all such rights are waived and fines, which are more than the legal ones handed out out for theft and assault, can be handed out liberally with no real recourse to the Law.

I understand there has to be a way for all 'small offences' to be dealt with and to clog up the legal system but I do not believe it should be carte blanche for small Hitlers to make a shed load of money. Speeding fines in this country are handed out at the rate of £250m per day while parking tickets and fines amount to a similar sum. Eager council and police officials see the extension of such fining systems to make money and so the rules governing the whole thing become economically driven, not trying to solve the problem of road safety or how many cars can be parked.

One day, a bright spark lawyer will go pro bono after one fine too far and test this whole grey area of the law to destruction. I am in no way intelligent enough to do so myself but I am intelligent enough to know we are all being taken for a ride. And, currently, there is not a thing we can do about it.

Congestion Charge

As a final point on all this. London Congestion Charge which itself seems to have done little to rid the capital of its traffic problems is an unfair system, administered in a way so that maximum money is made. Not only is the call centre governing the system in Coventry (no jobs for London) and administered by Capita who are making millions out of it, but it is unfair. My wife can travel in a car with more than one person in it which makes it cheaper than using trains. She parks 30 yards inside the zone and then walks 500 yds to her office. She then leaves London after the CC has ended which makes it a long working day and outside the legal hours governing her work which she does not get paid for. If she is 1 minute late parking her car then she gets a full fine. If she pays the £8 or fine, then she has entered the system for just 1 minute while a car that pays £8 or a fine can drive around London during the whole day causing congestion and polluting the air. Naturally, a 'pay as you go' scheme would be too expensive for Capita to design and administer, so we get a system wholly unfair.

I had hoped Boris Johnson would have done something about it but cash speaks louder than sense and fairness in these modern times.