Another week, another edition of the
Morpeth Herald. Anything this week to fan the flames of uninformed car-user resentment? Do pigs swive enmired in their own filth?
Two headline articles on the front
page, no less: traffic wardens and traffic lights. We'll return to traffic
lights another time, maybe. At some point we should take a broader look at
parking issues in Morpeth, and the car-user lobby mantra that there must
always be more and it must always be free, but not today, eh?
“Parking fines earn town cash cow
label” is the headline. The article leads with “Morpeth is
being disproportionately targeted for parking fines, it has been
claimed.” Note the passivised verb form concealing the identity of
the claimant. Nelson Mandela was it, or a bloke in the pub? Might the
Herald itself be the source of this whine? “The town has been
dubbed a 'cash cow'” by similar source unidentified: Carlos Tevez, Jim Bowen? OK, so eventually, 12
paragraphs after presenting this sound-bite as disinterested and
authoritative, we learn that our cash cow labeller is someone called
Peter Jackson. “The Peter Jackson?!” I hear you
gasp, “whose ground-breaking doctoral thesis on the uses and abuses
of public space has revolutionised thinking around personal transport?”
No, sadly, not him.
The gist of this bleat is that since
the introduction of Parking Enforcement Officers in Northumberland,
some Morpethians have been done for illegal parking. Not as many as
in Berwick or Hexham sure, but more than in some other towns. Proof,
if proof were needed, that Morpeth car users are unfairly victimised,
bearing the brunt of the war against the motorist, a Rorke's Drift to
the Council's Zulu hordes.... You can probably fill in the rest.
Curious, I took a mid-day walk into
central Morpeth to discern the extent to which plucky car users have been
ground beneath the jackbooted heel of the Council's “over-zealous”
hit squads, into reluctant compliance with oppressive road traffic
law. Not at all, is the answer. On a short stroll up Bridge Street
and halfway up Newgate Street I witnessed circa twenty driving
offences that would earn the car users a fine and/or points on their
licence, were enforcement not so... under-zealous. Cars parked in
loading bays though conspicuously not loading; cars parked in
disabled spaces without displaying requisite badge; cars driven and
parked on pavements; cars parked on double yellow lines; cars parked
across dropped kerbs; car users on handheld 'phones; a car user texting
while car using. A royal flush of car user violations observed in a few minutes within 150yds of
central Morpeth street scene. Plainly, the incidence of parking fines and prosecutions for dangerous driving falls way short of the
incidence of parking and driving offences committed by plucky,
hard-done-by Morpeth car users.
Brazen dock-side trollops offering up
their tight, aching dugs to the punter's horny handed caress, these
brassy motor-strumpets must want to be milked. Why the Morpeth Herald
should take such a prurient interest in this voluntary commerce
between consenting adults is unclear..
Except it isn't always
consensual.
If you can make it through the first 18
paragraphs of motorist exculpating froth in this front page report
you encounter in paragraph 19 what should have shaped their headline,
and has shaped mine: “abuse of officers by the public has been much
worse than expected, with extreme uses of bad language and personal
insult experienced regularly, and even death threats being made”.
Were you familiar with the Morpeth Herald's output over the years,
persistently kindling and fuelling and fanning the flames of car user
resentment with slanted car-centric ooze, perpetuating the myth of private car user hegemony over urban public space as right and necessity, you'd wonder at
their reluctance now to claim at least some of the credit for the thuggery encountered by council officers.
Won't the editorial team take a bow?
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