Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Didn't Jeremy Hunt raise the state pension by 8.5% in his last budget to try and get pensioners to back the Tories. He could have settled the various pay disputes rather than raising pensions.

Still looking for anything to write about, this week it's motorists.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... -hell.html

He's had a speeding ticket, and this is unfair because he's not a boy racer and he was only going a few miles over the limit, it's not like he was breaking the law or anything. He's not even black!

Still, we got away lightly, compared to Paula Rosevear, from Plymouth. She was woken by a bailiff sent by Bristol Council threatening to seize her car unless she handed over £508.

This was apparently a fine she’d incurred passing through Bristol’s clean air zone last year, without realising it, on her way home from the airport.

The bailiff told Ms Rosevear, who cares for her mother with Alzheimer’s, that she had ten minutes to come up with the money or he was taking her car, which he’d already clamped.

I'm going to make a wild guess that Ms Rosevear ignored a few messages before this happened.

Parking apps serve the same purpose, being especially designed to be fiendishly complicated so as to confuse drivers and extract fines.

I’ve described here before how the introduction of apps in my neck of the woods tripled parking charges and drove shoppers away from local businesses.

How? I use Ringgo regularly. It's got big buttons, and starts by listing local car parks. Then it brings up your stored car and card details. You choose how much time you want, and buy it. If you can't work it, that's on you, you thick cunt.

Bristol City Council said motorists should always check council and Government websites ‘before travelling to find out if they need to pay a charge for their chosen route’.

What? You plan to take the kids to the seaside, and you are expected to consult the internet for any snakes and ladders along the way?

Google fucking maps, cunt chops! Type in where you're going, and get the journey time and any known delays.

As I’ve argued for more than 20 years, we now live in a punishment culture, where the police work hand-in-glove with the far-Left, anti-car fanatics who have seized control of transport policies to persecute otherwise law-abiding citizens for trivial, and invented, motoring infringements.

Record numbers of people will set off by car over the Bank Holiday weekend. There’s enough to worry about – roadworks, potholes, fractious kids in the back seat - without having constantly to be staring at the speedo for fear of going over 20mph or worrying that you may have inadvertently strayed into a sneaky ‘low emissions’ or ‘congestion charge’ zone.

Most modern(ish) cars have a big display showing your speed in big numbers. You don't need to look at a dial. Everything you're whining about is on you. You cunt.

As I’ve argued for more than 20 years, we now live in a punishment culture, where the police work hand-in-glove with the far-Left, anti-car fanatics who have seized control of transport policies to persecute otherwise law-abiding citizens for trivial, and invented, motoring infringements.

Or, Littlejohn channels Foucault, and then goes in entirely the wrong direction.

Channels fuck all, more like.*

*Oldie but goldie. Sure, you've heard 'em all before, but it's the way I tell 'em.

Say what you like about the Wales speed limits, they aren't sneaky. Nor is the ULEZ expansion to the whole of Greater London. It takes a minute to check if your car is affected. As ever, seixed control means people who support these policies (by no means only on the left) keep winning elections.

Still, credit to him for exposing this major scandal of tech firms colluding to create deliberately bad parking apps to fleece the public. I assume a dossier is on its way to the Police and the Office of Fair Trading (as I still call them).

It really is exactly the same "I'm a middle aged white man, where are my natural privileges?" entitlement that drove the Farage Riots, isn't it?

He's had a speeding ticket, and this is unfair because he's not a boy racer and he was only going a few miles over the limit

That’s what you say in your 20s the first time you’re caught. But then learn from it. Perhaps Dickie didn’t really get a ticket recently as he hasn’t lived in this country for three decades.

I know I'm thinking too much about Littlejohn here, but is he seriously proposing that people get away with a "hadn't heard about the tolls, sorry"?

No, he's suggesting that the caahncils are coming down like a load of hot bricks on anyone going a whisker over the speed limit or violating an ULEZ zone, especially if they're a white person who doesn't expect to be treated like that and besides what about that lad over there.

Two years ago I got a letter from the Police, not the council saying I had been clocked at 35mph in a 30mph zone. I was offered a Speed Awareness Course which I took. Cost about £80 and 2 hours of my time online. I was happy to do it so I kept a clean licence, it would have cost me more in a fine and increased insurance if I hadn’t. It was my own fault even if i was in my MGB GT which is almost 50 years old now. I have driven more carefully since, so all is fine. If you make a mistake like that hold your hand up not moan in a newspaper, the rules apply to all motorists,

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Tue Aug 20, 2024 4:51 pm I know I'm thinking too much about Littlejohn here, but is he seriously proposing that people get away with a "hadn't heard about the tolls, sorry"?

Feels a similar argument by the Waspi lot.

It's the usual argument- it's not a proper crime if it's something I could be caught doing.

See also “Holiday of a life time ruined because I couldn't be arsed to check validity rules for passports”

I'm reminded of Alison Pearson railing against the Batman films, because nobody told her they'd moved on since the 1960s and Adam West.

Apparently, on "planet parent", your average mum juggling kids and a top career as a Telegraph columnist didn't have the time for that.

It's just another example of one of the defining characteristics of those on with a right wing mindset: victimhood. It's at the core of everything thing they say and do. I saw it close hand with my mother and father in-law who were utterly convinced that their values and beliefs were under seige and who believed that everyone was out to rip them off or take a lend. It ruined their lives, frankly.

Watchman wrote: ↑Wed Aug 21, 2024 8:06 am See also “Holiday of a life time ruined because I couldn't be arsed to check validity rules for passports”

Or think there might be traffic jams and long security queues at an airport on a Saturday morning in August.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Tue Aug 20, 2024 12:46 pm Say what you like about the Wales speed limits, they aren't sneaky. Nor is the ULEZ expansion to the whole of Greater London. It takes a minute to check if your car is affected. As ever, seixed control means people who support these policies (by no means only on the left) keep winning elections.

I remember a slightly tongue-in-cheek discussion on a cycling board about this sort of "sneaky bastards and their stealth taxes' language, and whether it constitutes an submission of driving without due care and attention. I'm still not entirely sure it doesn't.

If I can manage semi-regular trips to Dublin, with three different potential toll roads, all with different operators and time based price differences, not to mention those woke bilingual signs, b without ever once getting so much as a reminder email, why can't these fucking clowns?

I wish we did have toll roads- seems like a fairly efficient way of the people who benefit from something paying for it. But it would drive this lot mad.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Thu Aug 22, 2024 7:56 pm I wish we did have toll roads- seems like a fairly efficient way of the people who benefit from something paying for it. But it would drive this lot mad.

It's foreign. We didn't win two world wars to end up paying to use a road.