We all have
traffic warden stories! Wouldn’t the world be a better place without them?
My worst
moment was when a warden in Nottingham gave me
a ticket for placing my mother’s disabled badge the wrong way up! And only last
week I had to impersonate an aging Ussain Bolt as a warden was in the process
of booking me when I was on my was back from the pay machine..
So it must
have seemed like Christmas had come early when Aberystwyth in mid-Wales decided
to do away with them. What wisdom? What a place to live?
After just
a year the wardens are back after the parking system seems to have descended
into chaos. Cars were regularly parking on yellow lines, in loading bays, in
disabled bays and on pavements. Cars were left parked for days on end.
Residents began to avoid the Town Centre as parking was becoming too stressful.
Who would
have thought that traffic wardens would be welcomed back like returning
heroes??
Of course
the parking laws themselves were not changed. It remained illegal to park in a
disabled bay without the badge. But what was lost was the means of enforcing
the law. It became a disorganised free for all.
Any first
year law student will tell you that one of the reasons we have laws is to
enable a society to function within a secure structure. But those laws become
meaningless if there is no effective means of enabling them to operate.
Over the
last few months we have seen the most devastating cuts in access to justice in
a generation. Legal Aid has been virtually wiped out. Alternative means of
funding cases, such as no win no fee agreements, have come under severe attack
making them far more difficult to use. We are expecting many people to be
derived of legal advice and a huge increase in people having to pursue their
own cases. The court service, already stretched, will simply not cope.
Many will
be deterred from pursuing justice altogether.
Any society
which does not have equal access to its justice systems regardless of wealth
risks chaos.
Let the
Welsh traffic wardens be a lesson to us all!
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