Yep, another case of CC: instead of BCC:

Of course, it’s not a Full Corbett, because the Met has actually apologised, and will write to the people involved, explaining what happened. Let’s hope they use BCC this time…

Following a request from his legal advisers, I am retracting these comments forthwith, and have deleted the original post(s) to reflect this. I apologise for any harm caused.

(This retraction has been approved by Gore Grimes Solicitors. My personal view hasn’t changed, but legal stuff prevails over personal opinion, it seems. Maybe next time he’ll remember about BCC)

Parking in Woodford though is – to say the least – weird.

The car-park on Chateris Road is owned and run by Redbridge Council, and it’s pay-and-display. I use RingGo to sort out the parking, and that makes things even easier – use the iPhone App to pay using my linked credit-card, and job done. £4.80 per day to park – that’s it.

Because the weird thing about the management of this car park is that the ticket machines don’t actually work at all ’til 9am. They won’t accept money, they won’t do anything. You can’t even pay online or by phone until 9am. I tell people this at least three times a week when they’re trying to get a ticket.

It’s the weirdest and most customer-hostile method of operating that I’ve ever seen. Although, on a more cynical note, I wonder if the reasoning is that if people think the machine’s broken, and don’t pay for a ticket, maybe it makes more financial sense (to the council) when they end up with parking tickets for £30 or £60, instead of paying the proper £4.80.

Currently, a weekly ticket costs me £45 , and parking at Bury Station is £12 for the week (or £3.50 per day…), so my weekly costs are £57.

Having looked around, the next station along, Thurston, is much the same distance from home, and the parking is free. So I thought I’d have a look at the cost of the ticket.

A weekly ticket from Thurston to Cambridge is – wait for it – £77. Yes, £32 more expensive for one station more. It’s not even that much of a distance…

View Larger Map

The actual route is the dead-straight run between the two, not the highlighted route.

Even more bizarrely, a weekly ticket from Thurston to Bury is – um – £14. Still more expensive than parking at Bury station, but less than half the price of the extended weekly ticket from Thurston->Cambridge.

I’m sure there’s some logic there somewhere. But damn if I can find it.

Parking Contract

Everybody is familiar with the notices displayed in car parks. The gist of them is that by parking you are entering into a contract which obliges you to pay a sum of money if you breach the terms of the agreement. These notices are enforced by contract law and are very different to the legitimate PCN (Penalty Charge Notice) tickets that public officials can issue, which you have to appeal properly if you think you’ve been ticketed unfairly.

This got me thinking. If I can be said to have entered into a contract by simply being near one of these signs, so can they. It should cover off enough of the angles of attack, fines, clamping, towing and so on

Excellent stuff.

Anyway, registration should’ve been easy, ’til it came time to enter in the Clubcard number. Take out the plastic proper card – embossed with my name – put in the number and the postcode. No, postcode not recognised as the one linked to that card. Um. I tried about four postcodes, just in case I hadn’t got round to registering a new address. (I’d have been surprised, but there we go, it can happen) None of them were right. Oh tits.

So I ended up calling them up on the phone, trying to find out what’s going on.  And it turns out that somehow, someone else has now registered their name and address for my clubcard. It’s not even anywhere I’ve lived – the postcode they gave me was IG3, which is Ilford in Essex. Never been there, never wanted to be there. So why my card is registered there, God only knows.

I don’t mind so much – I haven’t been using the card much of late, and it’s no big thing – but it does add some levels of concern about why/how Tesco have allowed a live card to be re-registered to someone else in a completely different area.

Ah well.

So it’s really sad news today that xMarks has 90 days to live. I don’t know of a better service for synchronising bookmarks (and passwords) in the way that xMarks does, and it’s been awesomely useful for a very long time.

For me- and it’s a point they raise in that blog post – I would’ve happily paid for the service. Not loads – but £10 – £25 a year, certainly.

A very sad day.