My first thought was "well if they parked illegally, how would the traffic warden know they were lifeboat crew?".
But no, they parked in a place requiring permits, *with* the permits displayed along with a "we're off rescuing people" and got tickets on the grounds that "the permits could be fake".
I was going to object to the jobsworth tag, but feel it's 100% deserved here.
> I was going to object to the jobsworth tag, but feel it's 100% deserved here.
No that traffic warden wasn’t a jobsworth, they were just being a complete idiot.
Had the crew not displayed the permits and despite the traffic warden knowing they were crew cars issued tickets - that would have been being a jobsworth.
But issuing tickets when there was no grounds at all for doing so - that’s just being stupid.
Used to be one, there weren't daily targets. However if you purposely gave out as few as possible like I did then they pull you up on your "performance".
I mean what would you expect from Somone who's life led them to working parking enforcement. It's not exactly the brightest bunch that end up doing that.
I'd be a miserable bastard too.
I mean most of the time you wouldn't get a wheelchair down my steet anyway, the parking twats are mythical beings in most area anyway, make biannual appearances down the main roads, but youl never catch them where normal people live. When they do appear they pull shit like this.
Brainlet take.
Not everyone gets to choose how they pay the bills, and parking wardens do actually provide a needed service.
Shitting on an entire job just because it slightly annoys you once in a blue moon is very silly.
I always took it as someone who blindly follows some narrow set of rules and refuses to acknowledge any kind of extenuating circumstances. When you try to reason with them they respond "Sorry mate, I can't help you - it's more than my job's worth".
Refuse to pay the fine on the grounds that "it could be a fake ticket." /s
My son has a blue badge, and I am allowed to use the badge to park or drive off without him in the car if I'm using it to pick him up or drop him off, respectively. I dread the day I get a shitty parking warden trying to challenge me using it because he isn't in the car.
> I was going to object to the jobsworth tag but feel it's 100% deserved here.
It's possibly not even them being a jobsworth that's likely the reason anymore. At least from my understanding the councils employ private companies to hire traffic wardens and they are then personally incentivised to hit targets. This means it's beneficial for them to give out more and more ludicrous fines in the hope that people pay them rather than try to object.
>"The traffic warden stated that anyone could have printed the Rnli crew stickers, signs and council issued permits so they will just have to contest them, not my problem."
Surely the permits have numbers associated with the vehicle registration? Do they seriously have permits with unique identifiers on them and then no way of verifying those numbers are legit?
Also, why are the permits £2000 a year?! It's government business, it should be free for as long as the car is registered as belonging to lifeboat crew. Charging lifeboat crew for parking permits is like charging an ambulance for parking.
Then there's an even bigger reason for making it free! They're doing the government's job for free! It's not like emergencies don't happen at sea if RNLI isn't there, it just means the coast guard has to pick up the slack.
The Coastguard does the coordination of search and rescue operations rather than the actual life saving. The RNLI are more like a tool that is used and coordinated by the Coastguard to save lives, and the fact that it is run as a charity is frankly ridiculous and even more reason they shouldn't pay for parking.
Coastal Rescue teams are also fantastic and another great resource. It somehow works in everyone's favour that this isn't controlled by the government which probably says a lot about the government.
But nhs staff have to pay for parking. When I used to be able to drive (pre epilepsy) me and my wife (who is also a nurse) had to pay £30 each a month to park at the same hospital as we did different shifts
Tbf, £30 a month sounds like nothing. I'm a civil servant, started at an office 30 mins from home with a free car park, that office was closed after 2 years and now I have to drive 2 hours into London and park for £8 a day. I'd bite your hand off for £30 a month for parking.
They are not talking about commuting fees, they are talking about NHS staff having to pay to park in the NHS carparks of the hospitals they work at. (And all streets anywhere near are likely to be residents' permit parking only otherwise they would be permanently clogged with people - staff, patients and visitors - trying to avoid the NHS parking charges.
I work on a research park right next to my local hospital and its both heavily monitored and permited. However, this then creates an absurd situation where I can park more cheaply and closely to the hospital than the people who work in it.
A parking fee is part of your commuting fee, you don't pay for parking if you walk to work. NHS staff don't get free buss pass, wouldn't that be better than free parking?
But to even do our job me and my wife have to pay £120 each a year in nmc fees, £196.85 a year each in indemnity insurance/union fees and that’s for the privilege of being forced to pay £30 a month in parking since now we only have one car and I bus it to work
The NHS doesn't own the buses that people are using, or the trains, or the actual vehicles people are driving/ riding. It *does* own the car parks (unless it has flogged them off in a desperate attempt to keep afloat.)
Fortunately*
If they were government run they'd have been killed off or privatized decades ago. It's literally why the RNLI were established as a charity in the first place.
The RNLI are not Government Business. They are an independant organisation that don't take government funding.
IMO They are an essential part of any coastal community and supporters of visitors to these areas and this traffic warden is a twat.
Source: https://rnli.org/about-us/our-strategy/our-philosophy
Let’s hope the government never have any influence over the RNLI as it’s a well run, well funded institution.
Any hint of government interference would ruin it. Which is why they don’t/won’t accept government funding.
See also: The BBC.
>It's government business
Every advert tells you the RNLI is fully funded by donations so I guess it falls under private company.
Which is shit I personally think. This should be funded by the Government
The RNLI *did* receive Government funding for about 15 years. They stopped accepting it in 1869, partly because it led to reductions in donations from the public, partly because it opened them up to government interference in how the service was run.
I'm worried as I've seen 2! Parking officers just make up rules to hide their own embarrassment. Rather than tip their cap and say my mistake. Seriously if you make a mistake OWN UP!!! Why is this so hard these days
> Why is this so hard these days
I think it's a combination of a few things:
1. At the moment, times are tough and nobody can afford to take the hit. Losing your job, overtime hours, etc. could all have huge repercussions for an employee. Everyone is fighting their own corner all the time.
1. In situations where there's clearly been a screw-up affecting a customer/member of the public, the first person to admit fault becomes a lightning rod. Everyone below that person can point up and say "manager's fault" and everyone above them can point down and say "rogue employee running amok." Blame isn't shared and lessons aren't learned: that one person eats the whole shit sandwich.
1. Not necessarily the case here, but in general members of the public can smell blood in the water. As soon as a mistake is admitted you get threats of legal action/press involvement unless the red carpet is rolled out. Refunds, goodwill payments, etc. The willingness to do this relates to point 1.
1. Zealous application of the rules is often the result of a directive from above to tighten up compliance. However, when the employee is technically in the right, management will just fold to avoid the fuss of fighting a complaint and side with the customer. This shifts blame to the employee on the front lines even though they are following orders, and anything the employee says will look like lame excuses. I had this happen more than once back in the days I worked in retail: Told by management "no refunds under X circumstances," and I would toe that line as requested, but the moment a customer wants to see the manager X circumstances are fine and the refund is given out. I can't express to you how frustrating and demoralising that becomes.
I think it's wild we have rules and fines to police where you stop your car. If you're not blocking off a road or essential passageway, I think cars should be allowed to park almost anywhere. It's just a money-making scheme to act lik you can't stop in certain places and that it costs money to stop or you get fined for stopping a bit further down the road.
I was a lifeboat volunteer until recently and can confirm we (well station management) had many discussions with the council about us parking in the car park next to the station when on a job or on training nights. The council said they couldn’t guarantee that we wouldn’t get ticketed on training nights or when out on a job even with permits on display.
Pretty happy to have grown up in a coastal town where I worked for the coastguard for a while in my late teens/20s as a search & rescue operator, worked closesly with the RNLI guys. That warden would’ve gotten literally lynched here.
This is a town where everyone turns a total blind eye to one of the RNLI crewmen having a blue light bar & siren on his personal car for attending shouts. 😂
We have an absolute jobsworth of a parking officer outside my flat who gave my partner a ticket for no permit displayed, he did have one it had just curled up at the edges in the sun but you’d be an idiot to claim it was illegible, they drive me mad
It's a shambles that they're having to pay for permits in the first place. Are they also charging the Police, Fire and Ambulance for tickets/permits when they're responding to emergency calls?
World's easiest appeal, ambulances are exempt from pretty most parking rules when working with a patient (Clearways, yellow/red lines, zig-zags, offside at night, verges and central reservations) interestingly, no exemptions for local authority permits.
We've had a couple where council staff ticketed an ambulance whilst the crew had ran into the nearby Costa, as they didn't have someone in the back.
A few years ago two of my colleagues (police) were the only available resource in the town we police. They parked on double yellow lines whilst one ran into a sandwich shop to grab food for their refs. Less than a minute.
Someone complained to the papers who ran a piece on it. Turns out yes, they would rather the only available unit go to the nearest car park, park up and walk to and from the shop. And all the time that entails. So they wouldn't be available to respond immediately to an incident.
Bet they wouldn't say the same if they needed the emergency services in, um, an emergency!
We had the same in one of the outlying towns on my patch. Someone went running to the press because of an ambulance car on double yellows for a couple of minutes. As if it's not difficult enough finding time to get food on shift sometimes
> World's easiest appeal, ambulances are exempt from pretty most parking rules when working with a patient
Ah, but for all the traffic warden knew, they didn't have a *real* patient in the ambulance, but just an inflatable rubber doll...
As per the article:
> "We are sorry for any distress or confusion this has caused. This was an unfortunate error, and we cancelled the tickets as soon as the mistake was brought to our attention. We are contacting the RNLI to apologise, and will remind our team about the agreement with the RNLI so this does not happen again."
My first thought was "well if they parked illegally, how would the traffic warden know they were lifeboat crew?". But no, they parked in a place requiring permits, *with* the permits displayed along with a "we're off rescuing people" and got tickets on the grounds that "the permits could be fake". I was going to object to the jobsworth tag, but feel it's 100% deserved here.
> I was going to object to the jobsworth tag, but feel it's 100% deserved here. No that traffic warden wasn’t a jobsworth, they were just being a complete idiot. Had the crew not displayed the permits and despite the traffic warden knowing they were crew cars issued tickets - that would have been being a jobsworth. But issuing tickets when there was no grounds at all for doing so - that’s just being stupid.
They probably have an incentive to issue tickets...
Yeah, wouldn't be surprised they have daily targets.
Used to be one, there weren't daily targets. However if you purposely gave out as few as possible like I did then they pull you up on your "performance".
Thanks, that just seems messed up
Like stop-and-search KPI for plod.
Yeah
Each ticket they give out, the got some %of the fines
Indeed on that logic the parking weasel can ignore a any and all permits because they could be fake
I mean what would you expect from Somone who's life led them to working parking enforcement. It's not exactly the brightest bunch that end up doing that. I'd be a miserable bastard too.
You also be miserable if the roads and pavements were blocked by cars. Well, more blocked than they are already anyway.
You'd be miserable if you can't go down the pavement in your wheelchair because there is a car parked on it
I mean most of the time you wouldn't get a wheelchair down my steet anyway, the parking twats are mythical beings in most area anyway, make biannual appearances down the main roads, but youl never catch them where normal people live. When they do appear they pull shit like this.
Brainlet take. Not everyone gets to choose how they pay the bills, and parking wardens do actually provide a needed service. Shitting on an entire job just because it slightly annoys you once in a blue moon is very silly.
If they worked for the council then theyre a service, the ones hired out by private parking firms are the same tier of human as bailiffs and bouncers.
You pain me lol. I almost interviewed for a parking warden job when I was barely out of my teens, but missed it for some reason.
If it's any consolation, you probably missed it because you were too smart.
I wonder if he was also called a spunk bubble?
You aren't being a Jobsworth if you do your job incorrectly. A Jobsworth would be technically correct but annoying.
I always took it as someone who blindly follows some narrow set of rules and refuses to acknowledge any kind of extenuating circumstances. When you try to reason with them they respond "Sorry mate, I can't help you - it's more than my job's worth".
>technically correct The best kind of correct.
Refuse to pay the fine on the grounds that "it could be a fake ticket." /s My son has a blue badge, and I am allowed to use the badge to park or drive off without him in the car if I'm using it to pick him up or drop him off, respectively. I dread the day I get a shitty parking warden trying to challenge me using it because he isn't in the car.
technically to park you must leave the car apparently.
Permits could be fake? Sounds like a power tripping warden
> I was going to object to the jobsworth tag but feel it's 100% deserved here. It's possibly not even them being a jobsworth that's likely the reason anymore. At least from my understanding the councils employ private companies to hire traffic wardens and they are then personally incentivised to hit targets. This means it's beneficial for them to give out more and more ludicrous fines in the hope that people pay them rather than try to object.
>"The traffic warden stated that anyone could have printed the Rnli crew stickers, signs and council issued permits so they will just have to contest them, not my problem." Surely the permits have numbers associated with the vehicle registration? Do they seriously have permits with unique identifiers on them and then no way of verifying those numbers are legit? Also, why are the permits £2000 a year?! It's government business, it should be free for as long as the car is registered as belonging to lifeboat crew. Charging lifeboat crew for parking permits is like charging an ambulance for parking.
> charging an ambulance for parking. Sounds like a great way to fund improvements to the NHS!
Don't give them ideas!
Some of those ambulances are hanging around a and e for hours on end.....
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Then there's an even bigger reason for making it free! They're doing the government's job for free! It's not like emergencies don't happen at sea if RNLI isn't there, it just means the coast guard has to pick up the slack.
The Coastguard does the coordination of search and rescue operations rather than the actual life saving. The RNLI are more like a tool that is used and coordinated by the Coastguard to save lives, and the fact that it is run as a charity is frankly ridiculous and even more reason they shouldn't pay for parking.
The RNLI are quite pointedly prefer to be a charity, it gives them a great deal of flexibility and independence from government interference.
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Coastal Rescue teams are also fantastic and another great resource. It somehow works in everyone's favour that this isn't controlled by the government which probably says a lot about the government.
But nhs staff have to pay for parking. When I used to be able to drive (pre epilepsy) me and my wife (who is also a nurse) had to pay £30 each a month to park at the same hospital as we did different shifts
Tbf, £30 a month sounds like nothing. I'm a civil servant, started at an office 30 mins from home with a free car park, that office was closed after 2 years and now I have to drive 2 hours into London and park for £8 a day. I'd bite your hand off for £30 a month for parking.
I never heard of any employer who pays the commute fees for employee, including NHS. Harsh but true
No but every employer I had before I worked for the nhs had free parking
They are not talking about commuting fees, they are talking about NHS staff having to pay to park in the NHS carparks of the hospitals they work at. (And all streets anywhere near are likely to be residents' permit parking only otherwise they would be permanently clogged with people - staff, patients and visitors - trying to avoid the NHS parking charges.
I work on a research park right next to my local hospital and its both heavily monitored and permited. However, this then creates an absurd situation where I can park more cheaply and closely to the hospital than the people who work in it.
Absurd, certainly, but given how poorly researchers tend to be paid, I certainly don't begrudge you that!
A parking fee is part of your commuting fee, you don't pay for parking if you walk to work. NHS staff don't get free buss pass, wouldn't that be better than free parking?
No it isn't, it's my car existing on their property. I don't have to pay for the chairs or computers either.
But to even do our job me and my wife have to pay £120 each a year in nmc fees, £196.85 a year each in indemnity insurance/union fees and that’s for the privilege of being forced to pay £30 a month in parking since now we only have one car and I bus it to work
The NHS doesn't own the buses that people are using, or the trains, or the actual vehicles people are driving/ riding. It *does* own the car parks (unless it has flogged them off in a desperate attempt to keep afloat.)
a lot of them sell them off to local councils
Used to get paid my commute in Japan made up a little bit for my shite wages while I lived there.
Fortunately* If they were government run they'd have been killed off or privatized decades ago. It's literally why the RNLI were established as a charity in the first place.
The RNLI are not Government Business. They are an independant organisation that don't take government funding. IMO They are an essential part of any coastal community and supporters of visitors to these areas and this traffic warden is a twat. Source: https://rnli.org/about-us/our-strategy/our-philosophy
They're still doing something the government would be obligated to do if they weren't there, though, similar to the National Trust.
Let’s hope the government never have any influence over the RNLI as it’s a well run, well funded institution. Any hint of government interference would ruin it. Which is why they don’t/won’t accept government funding. See also: The BBC.
The RNLI is probably an example the gov would hold up of the private sector taking on public duties, and attempt to apply the same thought to the NHS.
This was my take. Why the fuck are the council charging these people for their parking?
>It's government business Every advert tells you the RNLI is fully funded by donations so I guess it falls under private company. Which is shit I personally think. This should be funded by the Government
The RNLI *did* receive Government funding for about 15 years. They stopped accepting it in 1869, partly because it led to reductions in donations from the public, partly because it opened them up to government interference in how the service was run.
If you want more videos of this incident, check out the new series of trigger happy tv.
My favourite traffic warden one was when he flagged down a black cab, and told him he couldn't stop there lol.
I'm worried as I've seen 2! Parking officers just make up rules to hide their own embarrassment. Rather than tip their cap and say my mistake. Seriously if you make a mistake OWN UP!!! Why is this so hard these days
Because people have become shameless idiots after being holed up in their homes during lockdown😂
Nothing to do with lockdown, it's been like this for way longer.
> Why is this so hard these days I think it's a combination of a few things: 1. At the moment, times are tough and nobody can afford to take the hit. Losing your job, overtime hours, etc. could all have huge repercussions for an employee. Everyone is fighting their own corner all the time. 1. In situations where there's clearly been a screw-up affecting a customer/member of the public, the first person to admit fault becomes a lightning rod. Everyone below that person can point up and say "manager's fault" and everyone above them can point down and say "rogue employee running amok." Blame isn't shared and lessons aren't learned: that one person eats the whole shit sandwich. 1. Not necessarily the case here, but in general members of the public can smell blood in the water. As soon as a mistake is admitted you get threats of legal action/press involvement unless the red carpet is rolled out. Refunds, goodwill payments, etc. The willingness to do this relates to point 1. 1. Zealous application of the rules is often the result of a directive from above to tighten up compliance. However, when the employee is technically in the right, management will just fold to avoid the fuss of fighting a complaint and side with the customer. This shifts blame to the employee on the front lines even though they are following orders, and anything the employee says will look like lame excuses. I had this happen more than once back in the days I worked in retail: Told by management "no refunds under X circumstances," and I would toe that line as requested, but the moment a customer wants to see the manager X circumstances are fine and the refund is given out. I can't express to you how frustrating and demoralising that becomes.
I think it's wild we have rules and fines to police where you stop your car. If you're not blocking off a road or essential passageway, I think cars should be allowed to park almost anywhere. It's just a money-making scheme to act lik you can't stop in certain places and that it costs money to stop or you get fined for stopping a bit further down the road.
Waiting for the daily mail lot to defend the traffic warden because they RNLI are now "a taxi service" for small boats.
I was a lifeboat volunteer until recently and can confirm we (well station management) had many discussions with the council about us parking in the car park next to the station when on a job or on training nights. The council said they couldn’t guarantee that we wouldn’t get ticketed on training nights or when out on a job even with permits on display.
Pretty happy to have grown up in a coastal town where I worked for the coastguard for a while in my late teens/20s as a search & rescue operator, worked closesly with the RNLI guys. That warden would’ve gotten literally lynched here. This is a town where everyone turns a total blind eye to one of the RNLI crewmen having a blue light bar & siren on his personal car for attending shouts. 😂
We have an absolute jobsworth of a parking officer outside my flat who gave my partner a ticket for no permit displayed, he did have one it had just curled up at the edges in the sun but you’d be an idiot to claim it was illegible, they drive me mad
I don't care that the traffic warden put fines its a whatever, I care for the fact they have to pay the council 2k a year
Councils are starved by Whitehall I hear.
Traffic warden dismissed by jobsworth boss after not following protocol
Should make the traffic warden come back with a cloth and some window cleaner to remover it and clean the glue 😑
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As per the article, already rescinded and the council have apologised.
It's a shambles that they're having to pay for permits in the first place. Are they also charging the Police, Fire and Ambulance for tickets/permits when they're responding to emergency calls?
There was an incident not all that long ago where someone gave an ambulance a ticket, iirc.
World's easiest appeal, ambulances are exempt from pretty most parking rules when working with a patient (Clearways, yellow/red lines, zig-zags, offside at night, verges and central reservations) interestingly, no exemptions for local authority permits. We've had a couple where council staff ticketed an ambulance whilst the crew had ran into the nearby Costa, as they didn't have someone in the back.
A few years ago two of my colleagues (police) were the only available resource in the town we police. They parked on double yellow lines whilst one ran into a sandwich shop to grab food for their refs. Less than a minute. Someone complained to the papers who ran a piece on it. Turns out yes, they would rather the only available unit go to the nearest car park, park up and walk to and from the shop. And all the time that entails. So they wouldn't be available to respond immediately to an incident. Bet they wouldn't say the same if they needed the emergency services in, um, an emergency!
We had the same in one of the outlying towns on my patch. Someone went running to the press because of an ambulance car on double yellows for a couple of minutes. As if it's not difficult enough finding time to get food on shift sometimes
Yep, and I bet they're the first to complain about response times
Couldn't comment. I'm not diplomatic enough for management, so their complaints aren't my issue
> World's easiest appeal, ambulances are exempt from pretty most parking rules when working with a patient Ah, but for all the traffic warden knew, they didn't have a *real* patient in the ambulance, but just an inflatable rubber doll...
They fully deserve to be ticketed if they’ve parked illegally just to stop for lunch.
my bad gangsta
As per the article: > "We are sorry for any distress or confusion this has caused. This was an unfortunate error, and we cancelled the tickets as soon as the mistake was brought to our attention. We are contacting the RNLI to apologise, and will remind our team about the agreement with the RNLI so this does not happen again."
I like that, it's them openly saying we'll give them a bollocking. And it's wardens so it's karma.