HEADS SHOULD ROLL AT BROXBOURNE COUNCIL

On June 29th I posted on the increasing number of quasi uniformed people patrolling our streets enforcing something or other on behalf of some council or other.  The wages for such employees are around minimum wage or not much higher and the educational requirements are commensurate with those rates of pay.  Discretion, judgement and good old common sense  are not necessarily part of the job description. Is it any wonder therefore when their jobsworth attitude leads them to situations where they are little more than robots doing what they are programmed to do; no more and no less.  However it is almost beyond belief that paid officials at Broxbourne Borough Council failed to take a realistic position on transgressor Luke Gutteridge and pusued him as a greyhound pursues the hare only for their case to be thrown out of court by magistrates at Stevenage.

It was precisely this type of authority gone mad which has led to the widespread disdain for traffic wardens even although we are all aware that some parking control is required in our towns and cities.  Only last year I was ticketed for parking precisely one minute into a time prohibited zone with ambiguous signage.  Like over 50% of others my ticket was overturned on appeal. Now recent pressure at Cabinet level has required traffic wardens to allow discretion to be applied in such circumstances.  Similarly there can be no reasonable  citizen who does not consider litter dropping a disgusting feature of our environment and that sanctions must be in place for those who disregard the advice to "take it home".  It is, however, giving powers of ticketing with financial inducements for those poorly paid council employees to issue as many as possible, without an emphasis on discretion which brings once again all those quasi uniformed little hitlers into the headlines.  Considering the reduction in cash receipts upon which councils have to balance their books those council tax payers in Hoddesdon should be demanding the heads of those officials which allowed this debacle to hit the buffers to the tune of £8,000