The Vol-in-Law and I have just completed one of our annual Yule-time rituals. The paying of the parking permit.
Our parking permit expires around the end of December - and since we have no off street parking and we must pay to park in front of our own house (£66 or around $120 a year). I don't mind the permit cost for my borough - as in most things - provides pretty good value for money in terms of parking. Many other London boroughs charge far more.
But in the run-up to Christmas I often tend to forget to renew the permit and one year this resulted in some fairly staggering parking fines. Wandsworth gives a grace period, but when that's over, Wandsworth becomes the borough of total law enforcement. Firm but fair, if you park illegally - you will get a ticket. Those of you who enjoyed parking at the University of Tennessee will remember the student parking Nazis who revelled in ticketing for the slightest violation - or just ticketing because your car was there. I won't say that Wandsworth ticketers are quite so nasty as their comrades across the pond, but they do work on a similar quota system.
So, it was with some stress and anxiety that I "remembered" that we hadn't renewed our parking permit. We're cutting it pretty close now in terms of renewing by post, so I thought we'd have to make a little trip up to town hall and queue with the other supplicants for a new permit. But the Vol-in-Law phoned through and they told us that we'd have plenty of time to receive our new permit - what with the 7 day grace period. He's run out just now to post our application - (a necessary thing in the UK since letter carriers won't collect your mail for sending in the same trip). Let's hope it arrives in time.
UPDATE: It did arrive - before the end of the grace period. The Vol-in-Law installed the sticker in the car and we remained ticketless.
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4 comments:
Does paying to park on a public street in your own neighborhood guarantee you a parking space?
Ha! As if.
Actually, it's not too bad - and if we didn't have some kind of resident permit system we'd be overrun with people trying to park at the big teaching hospital which is practically across the road from us.
I take it the hospital has no carparks or garages? Or course, they would probably charge to park making free, onstreet more attractive.
You may be aware that all the large medical facilities in Nashville have completely stopped charging for parking in their lots and for most garages.
There is parking at the local hospital, but it is very expensive. Unlike US hospitals which can recoup costs on $12 tylenol, the NHS has very limited ways of bilking the patient. This is done through exhorbitant parking and a particularly punitive in-patient telephone charging system (to phone in to a bedside phone costs $1 a minute).
Also - because our hospital is technically in inner London - parking will always be at a premium - not even hospital staff have enough parking - they pay for staff permits which are allocated by a lottery system (I'm told).
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