180 replies to this topic

[matt050990]

Sadly, I think society has become too intolerant because of the common abuse of the blue badge. It's everywhere. There was a programme on a little while back (Parking Wars?) or something where they had a Council bloke who just knew when a badge was being abused and would lurk about catching people. He hung around waiting for this woman parked on double yellows in London who then jumped up and down saying she'd taken the holder to hospital or something but was then late for work so just had to keep on using the badge etc etc. Just wouldn't hold her hands up and admit she'd done something wrong. She got towed away. Unfortunately, it's all those a******s abusing the system that cause genuine users to be eyed with suspicion.

I'm afraid that's the story with most of this country. People abusing the system and ruining it for everyone else.
Look at the benefit system, if you ever work in your life and you try to get benefits for whatever reason you won't get anything. You leave school, get knocked up, get a drug problem and never work a day then BINGO they can't stop throwing stuff at you.
I work 6 days a week to keep my family afloat, fair enough I could probably do less but I like the nicer things in life, but then you get scumbags who never worked a day in their life get to spend all day at home with their kids, get everything paid for them and then have the cheek to moan that they are hard done by!

Sorry it's a little of topic, once i get started I get a little carried away.

[will_]

I have waited in a parent & child / disabled bay but I'd only do so if there were plenty more spare.
Tis bad how people use their disabled mothers or wife's badge even though they are not in the car, but such is life.

[megamini_jb]

Sadly, I think society has become too intolerant because of the common abuse of the blue badge. It's everywhere. There was a programme on a little while back (Parking Wars?) or something where they had a Council bloke who just knew when a badge was being abused and would lurk about catching people. He hung around waiting for this woman parked on double yellows in London who then jumped up and down saying she'd taken the holder to hospital or something but was then late for work so just had to keep on using the badge etc etc. Just wouldn't hold her hands up and admit she'd done something wrong. She got towed away. Unfortunately, it's all those a******s abusing the system that cause genuine users to be eyed with suspicion.

I'm afraid that's the story with most of this country. People abusing the system and ruining it for everyone else.
Look at the benefit system, if you ever work in your life and you try to get benefits for whatever reason you won't get anything. You leave school, get knocked up, get a drug problem and never work a day then BINGO they can't stop throwing stuff at you.
I work 6 days a week to keep my family afloat, fair enough I could probably do less but I like the nicer things in life, but then you get scumbags who never worked a day in their life get to spend all day at home with their kids, get everything paid for them and then have the cheek to moan that they are hard done by!
Sorry it's a little of topic, once i get started I get a little carried away.

It's shocking what they get. I saw the last part of a benefits programme few weeks back and the skanky lady on there was moaning because they stopped the money. The benefits people sorted it out and then the family went to celebrate because they would be getting their money again!! Something like £600 a week... Yes a week! ******* stupid. They all could easily be out working though!

Edited by megamini_jb, 30 June 2014 - 06:46 AM.

[matt050990]

I was on the train home from work the other day when I overheard a scummy couple moaning about their money.

They were complaining that due to the new bedroom tax that they are losing some money as they have 2 spare rooms and now they can only afford to go on holiday to Turkey twice this year!

This country needs a good shake up to sort this mess out but im afraid it may be beyond the point of repair.

[Miniminx71]

Don't get me started on benefits! It's all a sense of entitlement these days. Our local primary has just decided that it is going to introduce a uniform for the kids because some were turning up looking either like little prostitutes or little gangstas. £1.50 for a polo shirt, £2.00 for a jumper and about £4.00 for trousers/skirt - all from ASDA. Immediately, the benefits bunch are screaming it's unfair, that the Council should pay, it's going to affect their income etc etc. All shouting through a cloud of fag smoke. When they were told they had to buy the uniform, they complained that the authorities "don't care" about them or their children and how they might suffer from having to spend a tenner for their children which they really believe the taxpayer should spend on their behalf because they're entitled to it. If I hear the word "vulnerable" one more time where these people are concerned, I'll scream!

[Badboytunes]

I dont care about parent and child bays....... My parents never had them when I was a child and my parents and their parents before them coped well enough. If I see one I WILL use it if there are no other spaces. If you choose to have kids or a 3 door car with big doors thats your issue im afraid,

 

Howeve, disabled bays should be used by the correct people. Disabled people dont choose to be diabled. People with kids choose to have them.

 

Feel free to flame me, I wont change my ways......

[The Matt]

I could get an inflatable kid, or a stuffed one and just leave it in the car whilst I go shopping?

 

Joking aside, I don't really think the issue is that parents need specific parking spaces.  As said above, parents have managed with kids in their cars for years and years.  The problem is that cars are getting bigger and bigger and when a mummy heads to a parking space in their Chelsea Tractor, then badly parks it, they do need more space to get the little darlings out of their cars!

 

Don't even let me get started on the subject of the parking outside our local school.  Never have I seen so many 4 x 4s in the middle of a village at one time.  Doors swung open into the oncoming traffic as they drop the darlings off at school.  Then of course they have to do the "hi, yah oh yah, hi yah" chats that they all have after they've stopped all the traffic.

[M J W J]

I could get an inflatable kid, or a stuffed one and just leave it in the car whilst I go shopping?

 

Joking aside, I don't really think the issue is that parents need specific parking spaces.  As said above, parents have managed with kids in their cars for years and years.  The problem is that cars are getting bigger and bigger and when a mummy heads to a parking space in their Chelsea Tractor, then badly parks it, they do need more space to get the little darlings out of their cars!

 

Don't even let me get started on the subject of the parking outside our local school.  Never have I seen so many 4 x 4s in the middle of a village at one time.  Doors swung open into the oncoming traffic as they drop the darlings off at school.  Then of course they have to do the "hi, yah oh yah, hi yah" chats that they all have after they've stopped all the traffic.

We have exactly the same problem. I know to avoid rosehill road in shropshire between 8:30 and 9 and 3:30. You will not be getting anywhere very fast. Worse still I have seen people park in the disabled car space outside the school, collect their kid who is happily skipping along, drive less than half a mile down the road and then pull into a driveway.

 

On the subject of blue badges, to be honest my Gran rarely uses her badge as everytime we go somewhere and pull up to disabled spaces they are usually full (hospital comes to mind) or often we can drop her off nearer to the entrance than the disabled spaces are and then just drive off and park up in the normal car park. This works as long as there is somewhere she can sit for a minute until we get back to her unfortunately at shrewsbury train station this doesn't work so we do have to use the spaces.

[The Matt]

Yep, half of the mummies live IN the village, one of them regularly drives her kids to school, 1/4 mile there, 1/4 mile back. Bizarre!

[Ben_O]

On the subject of benefits, My Brothers mother in law has a mobility car which is for gratis. She doesn't pay a thing.

 

Everytime i see her or my brothers wife, they are both always moaning about how terrible the car is. That it is slow, unresponsive and that they wish they had chosen a better car.

Hang on a minute, I have very little money and drive a cheap old banger that i bought with my own money which although is slow, unresponsive, scruffy and usually needs something fixing on it, gets me from A to B without any dramas.

I don't moan about my car at all and am just thankful that i don't have to walk. I would love to be able to afford a newer car or even better have a brand new car GIVEN to me.

 

It makes me so mad when they sit around bleating about how terrible the free mobility car is. If you don't like it, surrender the thing and buy your own bloody car!

 

Ben

[skinnyminny]

Stuff like this is why I like the idea of becoming a hermit more and more. Backwoods of Canada anyone?

[AVV IT]

 Joking aside, I don't really think the issue is that parents need specific parking spaces.  As said above, parents have managed with kids in their cars for years and years.  The problem is that cars are getting bigger and bigger and when a mummy heads to a parking space in their Chelsea Tractor, then badly parks it, they do need more space to get the little darlings out of their cars!
 

Whilst you can often "manage" in a normal space, getting a small child into a car seat and then putting their seat belt/harness on requires the door to be open wider than usual. If the child is under 9 months and in a rear facing seat that you lift in and out if the car, then it's even worse, as you need the door open even wider. Time and time again I've parked in a normal space and returned to my car only to find that some idoit in a BMW has parked badly next to me and now I can hardly get the rear door open, let alone get the car seat back in again. Once I came back to find that this had happened on both sides, and as I was on my own, the only way to get the car seat back in the car was to pull the car out of the space first. I couldn't really leave my baby son on the floor of the car park whilst I did this, or put them on the roof/bonnet either, so I had to resort to putting him in the boot whilst I moved the car out of the space!

Yes cars are getting bigger in some cases, (not just the Chelsea tractors belonging to the school run mums, but also the Audis belonging to the idiots that park too close to your small and perfectly parked hatchback), but the other issue is that land prices have rocketed in recent years, and many retailers are actually making their parking spaces as small as possible now, in order to get more cars/customers in and devote a bigger area of their land to retail floor space. The situation is made worse as supermarkets in particular keep upgrading/ extending their stores to make them bigger by building on their car parks (Turning a normal Tesco into a Tesco Extra etc) they then have a bigger store that requires more parking, but a physically smaller car park, so they have to compensate by making the spaces smaller.

Basically, if you have small children then parent and child spaces just make life so much easier, retailers know this and because those with children tend to spend far more in store than those that don't, retailers provide these spaces in order to encourage parents to shop there.

Thankfully I don't tend to have to use them much, click and collect means I generally don't need to park in the first place, and if I do then a normal space is plenty big enough for two children to get in and out of a mini!

[Miniminx71]

When I see a Chelsea tractor weaving around not indicating with the sign "Back Off! Baby on Board" in the rear window, I want to find an old Transit and sit on its arse everywhere. Order me to back off ...

[MaxAndPaddy]

Simple answer to all this is ...''Arm Chair Lager Shopping''

 

1. Grab a lager

2. Sign in online to supermarket of choice

3. Drink lager

4. Click on the nice pictures of food ...add to basket

5. Order more lager and ten tonne of stuff you didnt know you needed to buy

6. Pop out next day to supermarket and buy the stuff you did need to buy

 

[AVV IT]

I've never really understood the baby on board sign thing! I was under the impression that the concept was originally designed to advise the emergency services that there was a baby in the car, so that in the event of a serious collision in which the driver/parents were unconscious/killed, the emergency services would know to look for a baby in or around the vehicle. (With the idea being that you only display the sign in the car when the baby is actually in the car and that you remove it when they're not.)

Over the years though, this seems to have evolved into some sort of "don't drive into me because I have a baby on board " sign!!
Eh?? You mean because you've got a sprog on board, I should try not to crash into you, where as of course normally I'd be more than happy to??? Surely that's a bit of a flawed concept, in that displaying a sign on the back of your car for those behind you to read is more likely to make them drive closer to you in the first place in order to read it??

In reality I think they're little more than a way for new parents to boast to the outside world about their fertility...... Weird!!