Seeing Red Over Yellow

‘BOMBARDED with videos of the police chasing villains with sirens wailing and blue lights flashing and Crimewatch re-enactments of criminal acts, we the people have learned two things.

‘Would the owner of S675 LYG please move their car? I want to park there.’

Firstly, the police car giving chase is every bit as much of a menace to the general public as the fleeing joyrider.

Secondly, no crime reconstruction necessitates an actor dressing up as a cop – because the police arrive too late or not at all.

And so to today’s story in the Sun, where one view of the incident shows an unnamed traffic warden issuing a ticket to a car illegally parked on double yellow lines.

The people of Barbourne, Worcestershire, are as used to such scenes of highway robbery as the rest of us.

It is only when the camera belonging to local resident Sandra Ash pans back that we see the full picture, the one that puts the law in the frame.

In front of the ticketed car sits a large, blue four-door Mercedes, also stopped illegally.

Our camerawoman asked the warden why he wasn’t giving that car a ticket as well. ‘Oh, because that’s mine!’ he answered.

He then drove off with what the Sun calls ‘a cheery wave’.

Cue Sandra to fetch her husband Andrew from indoors. ‘I realise wardens have a job to do,’ says he, ‘but talk about one law for them and another for us. It made my blood boil.’

He continues: ‘It seems these people are given a uniform and think it gives them the God-given right to bend the rules.’

Of course, he is wrong. The power to bend the rules is given by a far higher power than God – it’s granted by the local council.

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Posted: 6th, June 2003 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink