Three traffic wardens for one car

I watched a pack of traffic wardens surround a car in Market Street, Oxford this afternoon. I guess only one gets the bonus and perhaps they had all raced to get there, the fastest getting to do the job while the others stood around and chatted.

Or perhaps it really does take three of them – one to do the reedin, one for the ritin and one to operate the camera, with the reward money divvied up between them.

Oxford Mayor’s Prius goes like the clappers

Whatever else you say about the Toyota Prius, it goes like the clappers on the open road. I had rather assumed that they needed a following wind and a downward slope, but I have just been overtaken by one heading north towards Oxford on the A34, and I was doing 70 mph.

Its numberplate was FC 1 which makes this the second traffic offence for Oxford’s Mayor in a few weeks – a recent letter to the Oxford Times observed that the mayoral car had been seen parked on double-yellow lines. Rules, of course, are for ordinary people, not councillors, especially mayors.

Photographing traffic wardens

I did a piece yesterday about a traffic warden who “ordered” a driver to delete photographs which he took of her. The source of that was an Oxford Times Online story which has since attracted some comments.

One is a useful note about precedents for such heavy-handed reactions, making it clear that policemen and their kind have no right to prevent photography or order deletion of photographs which have been taken. There are qualifications – private landowners or private functions can make their own rules, the police may have the right to keep everyone away from a major incident, celebrities may be able to bar publication in certain circumstances, organisations are restricted in respect of the personal data they can keep, there might be protection from extreme harassment, and there are probably certain defence installations where photographs are expressly prohibited by law.

Data Protection and public photographs

Oxford Times Online has a story about a man who, whilst being given a parking ticket by a traffic warden, spotted that she had herself parked on a double-yellow line and took a photograph of her. She “ordered” him to delete the photograph, saying that taking photographs of her was in breach of the Data Protection Act, and threatened to call the police when he refused to do so.

There are four distinct elements here – the alleged parking offence, the warden’s own parking, the Data Protection Point and the threat to call the police. Of those, three are easily disposed of.

Oxford park-and-rides to be free at last

The rumours are that Oxford City Council is planning to hand over control of the three park-and-ride car parks which it controls to Oxfordshire County Council, that all park-and-rides will be free, and that more spaces will be provided. The aim, of course, is encouragement to drivers to stay out of the city by offering them an incentive to park on the edge of town.

£13 million less to waste on roads in 2008

The Government has cut £13 million from the money which Oxfordshire County Council hoped to spend on transport schemes. In general one hopes for more rather than less to be diverted to one’s region by way of reciprocity for the huge sums one pays in tax, but this cut does at least spare us the sight of our money being thrown away before our eyes.

Welcome to Summertown

There used to be a notice at each end of Summertown saying “Welcome to Summertown”. There were various reasons for disliking these, apart from the vulgarity of that superfluous “Welcome to” – for a start, it doubled the amount of metalwork in a road already full of silly little signs.

The main reason, though was the mismatch between the proclaimed welcome and the reality. Here, for example is what you find if you actually try and visit Summertown.