Man gets 30 parking tickets, for parking on his own property

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Outrageous! Judge rules doctor’s scooter can be ticketed – even when parked on his own property

By David Menzies
Let us all raise a toast to Dr. Richard Dawood, a London, England physician who valiantly fought the local authorities – at considerable cost – when the parking enforcement thugs continued to give the good doctor a hard time for no good reason (namely, by ticketing his scooter while parked on private property owned by Dr. Dawood.) Yet, talk about a screw job of epic proportions: even though Dr. Dawood’s scooter was parked on a two-metre strip of land belonging to him, a judge has ruled his scooter is fair game for parking tickets.
Although the parking spot in question is clearly marked on the doctor’s property deeds as private property owned by Dr. Dawood, the doctor’s scooter has received more than 30 tickets during the last decade. According to a Daily Mail report, Dr. Dawood eventually took his parking battle all the way to the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, spending more than £10,000 in the process.

But fasten your seatbelts for the ruling: Lord Justice Sedley found that although Dawood indeed owns the “subsoil†of the spot marked on his deed, parking wardens hold dominion over the surface as long as it’s accessible by the public.

“It really is a world gone mad,†says Dr. Dawood. “It seems our front gardens are not our own, unless they are fenced-off, gated or chained-in... Traffic wardens have this ‘gotcha’ mentality, but the money they raise is directly deducted from normal people’s quality of life.â€


Indeed, according to a BBC report, if London’s legion of traffic wardens and pay-and-display machines were a sovereign nation, they would rank as the 171st wealthiest country on the planet. The city's 32 metropolitan boroughs plus Transport for London raised more than £456m in the last tax year. That sum is just below the gross domestic product of every man, woman and child in oil-rich Liberia. In fact, World Bank figures indicate there are more than 30 countries with an economy rated as smaller than that of London’s parking racket.
And yet, the power-tripping pettiness of parking enforcement officers apparently knows no bounds. Simply put: surely there are enough illegally-parked cars in London on any given day to keep the parking wardens busy without having to ding people who are parking scooters on their privately-owned property?

Apparently not. Just ask Dr. Dawood.

 

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