Parking Issues in Great Britain
Great Britain is a small island with a population of 60.000.000 to give you some idea how small Great Britain is you can fit it six times in the Provence of Alberta in Canada. The highways and small roads in most major towns and cities are chocked with cars, many families will have at least two cars more if the siblings are still living at home with there parents.
Therefore, it is no surprise that there are parking issues. In many of the large cities, there will be parking for shoppers in or near the large shopping malls. The problem though is that many of the shopping malls have contracted out the car parking to major car parking companies, these companies charge at least 20 for the shopper to park all day, making it an expensive shopping day.
In all the towns and cities the local authority outlaw street parking, there are a few street parking but again the local authority discourage the car owner from parking by charging extortionate amounts of money, an example of this can be found in London where to park by the kerbside is charged at 20p every five minuets. Payment can be made at parking meters.
Go over the allotted time and you will find that a parking warden will have put a parking ticket on to your car window for a sum of 60 to be paid in the next 14 days. If you do not pay in those 14 days then the charge will go up to 120 and so on until you are taking to court and fined 500. If no further payment is made then the court will send bailiff's around, your car will be confiscated and after a period will be sent to the wrecker's yard and you will still have to pay the fine and court costs.
No wonder the British motorist feels victimised by the very people that they have put into power. I seems that the British motorist is seen as fair game by the authorities to make as much money as they can out them.
This hits the British tourism in a big way. It travel extensively all over the world, when talking to people from the countries that I travel too, the feedback that it get is that coming to Britain for a vacation is seen as a big no. the reason for this is the car parking charges that they have to pay if they hire a car. I seem that Britain is the capital of car parking charges.
Now we have local authorities taking the London view of the congestion charge, this is to discourage the motorist from using there car in cities, by charging a small charge every day for driving in to the cities they hope to cut the congestion in the said cities. Of course this does not work people still have to get to there jobs and with other systems of travel in a decayed state the motorist still drives to work and is charged 8 a day for the privilege. Fortunately the people are fighting back on this system in my city of Manchester we have forced a referendum on this issue and for the moment the council have put this system on hold. And rightly so.
