Invalid Parking Ticket News Cheers Me Up

My state of misery has been lightened today, following a conversation I had this morning with a local taxi-cab company owner by the name of Jim Byrns. Running me back home personally from a meeting at Ocean, this happy chappie started telling me a hilarious story about a traffic warden being arrested in Upminster for slapping a ticket on a police patrol car while it was attending an incident.

Admittedly this tale was funny enough, but my ears really pricked up when he went on to the bit about a High Court judge ruling that Havering Council has been issuing unlawful parking tickets. Apparently, according to my taxi friend, their parking tickets breached the Road Traffic Act by not containing both the date of the offence and the date of issue as separate items, even if the ticket was issued on the same day as the offence took place.

According to Jim - and I must hedge this with "allegedly" because you know what taxi drivers are like - the Council has refused to refund anyone unlawfully charged and has made an out-of-court settlement with the chap who took them to the High Court in order to keep the matter under wraps. Typical Tory council!

As you can imagine, I get quite a few tickets in the course of running around Hackney attending committee meetings with the vegetables and public meetings with the peasantry. So when I got home I had a look at a ticket I forgot to pay in early August... and guess what? Yup. Just a date of issue and a time of offence, but no date of offence.

I can't believe my luck. I must get in and claim refunds from Hackney for the last bunch of tickets. Obviously our Labour Council won't behave in the same underhand manner that has been alleged of Havering and they will be happy to refund everyone's hard earnt cash in this instance.

In case anyone doesn't believe me, here's a picture of a ticket I picked up in Hackney on 3rd August. I've blanked out the details so that damned spoofster doesn't find out my car make, colour and reg and get up to mischief. I've got photocopies of all my tickets (I didn't spend 3 years at Bristol University for nothing!), so I should be OK.

So many thanks to Jim Byrns. Although, Jim, I did think your comment: "I had that chap Pipe in the back of my cab once" was a bit too much information.