I definitely have the worst luck with cars. My car is currently in a garage after the battery died and now the engine needs fixing, but it’s a different car related trouble that has got me extremely angry: traffic wardens and the council. I would like to know what is going on their heads that makes them want to scrounge money off a student.

Let me explain, on the 19th January 2010 I parked in the London Road car park. I was facing a bush so thought that my pay and display ticket would be most visible in the back window. Big mistake. The irony of putting the ticket in the one place I thought the traffic warden would be looking and in fact being punished for not displaying the ticket (even though it was on display in the back window, quite clearly too), is really very, very irritating. So I appealed to the council with a scan of the parking ticket and my pay and display hoping the challenge would be successful and we could all move on with our lives. But no.

Apparently the fact I bought a ticket and displayed it in the rear window is, in the council’s words, “irrelevant as it is for the failure to display a valid pay and display ticket that the Penalty Charge Notice has been served.” Attached are some photographs…and guess what, they’re both of the front. In the traffic wardens notes there wasn’t a ticket apparently after checking ALL the windows. Really?! I’m sure the warden would have checked the rear window. However I sincerely doubt they even bothered in all honesty, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was conveniently no pictures of the car other than the front.

As you can tell this is an issue that has caused me some stress, it’s like being told you’re a liar when you know fully that you are not in the moral wrong. It just seems like they’re trying to pick on me because there was no ticket on the front window (which isn’t specified as being a requirement, only that it is displayed), and any excuse to get money for the council is a plus. If you want to know if a student is going to pay the council for a fine that is undeserved in the first place, then I’m pretty sure you can guess this isn’t just going to blow over without a fight. Or you know, I could pay £25 to let it all blow over and give the council my charity. It seems like they need the money at the moment.