Thursday, June 04, 2009

Dude, Where’s My Car?

And Why Is There Yellow Paint On My Tyres?

Council contractors lifted a woman’s car in Camberwell, South London, painted double yellow lines under it and then towed it away. It took two months for the council to admit what had happened – by which time the fines were £2,240. Lambeth Council has since apologised and offered her compensation of £150.

FOOTNOTE: Tow and fro.

14 comments:

phil puttock said...

lol now i know i shouldnt laugh, but it does sound funny, although i gather the person who's car it was prolly didnt find it amusing.

But thats the thing you see these local councils are doing things like this all the time, and yet no one enforce's them.

What a sad state our country is turning into, thanks once again for a good read..

Sharon Rose said...

OMG. . not much compensation for what she went through huh?

Janet said...

Seems like not quite enough compensation, even if they dismissed the fines as well.
I hope no one in my town reads this - this is exactly the kind of thing they would do if they thought of it.

Mojo said...

This sort of reminds me of a prank we pulled on a high school chum who drove an Austin Healy Sprite. Student parking at the school consisted of a row of spaces along the street leading out of the campus, and in order to get within a block of the school you had to arrive pretty early. My friend with the Sprite (roughly the size of an MG midget) was a regular occupant of one of the first half dozen spaces. So one fine day four or five of us literally picked his car up and set it on the sidewalk, then parked in the vacated space.

He was, needless to say, not as amused by this as we were. Especially when he realized he didn't have enough ground clearance to drive back off the curb. We did eventually get the poor guy unstuck... once we stopped laughing too hard to pick the car up again.

Sniffles and Smiles said...

Well, it's nice to hear a story in which a government admits it isn't perfect, and owns up to a mistake...and actually rectifies it!!! May not be much, but at least it's something... Gives me hope for the world!

Brian Miller said...

so wrong...the fact they lifted it, then towed it (why not just tow it in the first place?) speaks volumes of the wisdom in the situation...leaves me scratching my head.

Maggie May said...

Another silly English case of fraudulent behaviour by the council/government. We must be the *laughing stock*
We have a vote tomorrow............

jay said...

Wha ... ?? *Imagine dropped jaw*

I'm assuming that the £150 compensation was in addition to wiping out the fine? Good grief, I would be incandescent with rage!

Not good for my BP though, so I'm jolly glad it wasn't me! LOL!

Eddie Bluelights said...

If I was her after a huge rollucking I'd give them they certainly would not feel like "doing the Lambeth Waltz" # Eddie

Rikkij said...

that's what I like about the Brits-they're so creative! ~rick

K. said...

Love the title of this post! Haha...

Ananda girl said...

Oh my goodness! So much money for a mistake!

Lucy Corrander said...

Brian - the reason they didn't just tow the car away was that, having lifted it up and painted the yellow lines, they then lowered the car back into place and photographed it as 'proof' that she had parked on them . . . THEN - they took it away.

Lucy Corrander

Shrinky said...

Yup, sounds fair enough, eh? (Rolling eyes)