Latest Moan From You and Me 2023

For all sorts of reasons, pedestrian crossings for example. Cars badly parked so people have to step onto the road. Sometimes cars have been known to accidentally mount the kerb, maybe to avoid another car. Some roads don't have footpaths or they are too narrow. Round here hedges aren't maintained so people have to step on the road to pass each other. It's even worse having a pushchair or pram in our village, there is little choice but to use the road sometimes.

 

Interesting. In our village we hardly ever get cars parked on the footpath blocking the way after a concerted effort some years ago where a number of villagers were given notices to put on offending vehicles about it, recorded their numberplates on a community website and they were reported to the police after a second offence. The police then put a notice on tne vehicle which almost totally eliminated the problem. The original polite notice requested them to leave enough space for a wheelchair or pushchair otherwise they would be reported to the police.

 

All been tried without success.

The worst examples of bad parking are the school run parents, leaving cars on double yellow lines and half up pavements with doors flung open. Other kids have to walk on the road to get past. They should know better, it's mainly the ones who are running late then spend ages chatting to other mums. Our local friendly traffic warden, George, does his best but there are two schools here and only one of him. Plus he covers all of the town with many other schools. Notes on cars and shaming on Facebook don't work either.

 

I suppose we're lucky with it being a small village as we have virtually no parking restriction and no traffic warden - and no street lights. The village school has a rear entrance where kids are dropped off and a small traffic island in the road at the front which stops parents from parking as they would then block the road. It only took about a week of police booking cars for obstruction to stop parking at the front.

Exceeding speed limits was a problem with commuters rushing through the village and past the school to a station two miles from the village but that has virtually stopped since some villagers have been trained to use hand held speed cameras. They can't arrest anyone but can report it to the police and a police warning gets sent.

 

I don't relate to the price per gallon anymore, but I still use mpg rather than lpk. Yes it was an excuse to bump up prices when we went metric.