New Rules To Prevent Rogue Clamping

Wednesday, 14. July 2010

A friend of mine was once clamped in a car park for not having a ticket displayed in her windscreen (she accidentally put it in her purse – daft as). As a result another friend came to the rescue at 2.00am with his tool box. After about 4 hours and several hacksaw blades later she was finally free to drive home. Not something I approve of, obviously, but it made me a little more cautious about where I park my car and I certainly never leave it where there is a huge sign pointing out that I could be clamped. Duh! But of course this hasn’t been the source of distress for most people that have been clamped. It’s the rogue clampers that don’t have any visible warning signs, they simply turn up and clamp you then impose a fine of around the cost of a medium priced car to remove the clamp. The good news is that the Transport Minister, Norman Baker, is about to take firm action against these cowboys. Incidentally, whilst referring to these rogues as cowboys, why do we call bad tradesmen cowboys? After all my heroes when I was growing up were John Wayne and Roy Rogers – both good guys and when it came to dispatching the bad guys such as land robbers, rustlers, gun slingers and Indians I think they did a pretty good job, so can anyone tell me where this less than complimentary use of cowboys came from? I digress. The home office plans, if enforced in law, will require all clampers to be registered with the local authority and will only be able to issue parking tickets. I assume from this that we’ll have to change their names to ‘ticketers’ rather than clampers as it seems they will no longer be able to clamp you. The truth is that this problem has been bubbling away for years and whilst various Transport ministers have said, often in very strong terms, that they will do something about these disgraceful companies, to date absolutely nothing has been done and we still hear of pregnant women and disabled people, needing to park close to wherever they are going, being clamped for parking on land on which no warning has been given, then taking several hours and several hundreds of pounds to have the clamp removed. Let’s see what Norm and the new Government do about it as the new friends of the motorist. Any views on clamping, let me know. By Graham Hill