That could be a song title by an experimental, post-punk, alternative rock/dance band. Instead, it readily describes a woman from Birmingham who has gotten herself into debt over a trivial matter.
Don’t let the title of the Birmingham Mail story fool you (link removed, article no longer exists). This is no miscarriage of justice or anything. What she did was crystal clear, and it begins with her parking on a yellow line – something for which she would have correctly been ticketed and fined for doing. If she’d have paid the fine immediately, it would have cost £30. But that was too simple. The following can be gleaned from the news report:
- at the time of the offence, she didn’t have a parking permit for parking outside her home
- in any case, she parked on a yellow line, which had nothing to do with the permit
- it isn’t clear why she didn’t pay, even though she admits she was at fault – so the bill rose to £60 after 21 days
- she “ignored things”
- she hadn’t told DVLA of her change of address (that’s illegal, I believe) and correspondence was therefore being misdirected
- bailiffs turned up at her old address 8 months later and only then did her previous landlord contact her
- she set up a monthly scheme with the bailiffs and defaulted immediately
- she continued to ignore the situation
- the bailiffs turned up two weeks before Christmas with a bill of £400
- her partner told them to take the car – worth £100 as scrap – but refused to hand over the keys just to be awkward
- again, the bailiffs backed off, but are due to return this week with a new bill of £600
Even though her explanations are peppered with “I was at fault” or the like, she is still rattling on:
“This is my home,” said Sam, “And I am being charged over £600 for parking outside my home.”
No, you’re not. You’re being charged for parking on a yellow line and ignoring all attempts to get you to pay the fine. You’re lucky you’re not in court for failing to alter your vehicle registration documents (which carries a possible £1,000 fine by itself), particularly since it can be done very easily – if you actually have the log book in the first place, of course. Legally, failure to update your address leaves you entirely at fault for any fines and fees which accrue due to correspondence going astray.
But the bottom line is that this is an absolute non-story. For a start off, it is obviously sanitised to make it look one-sided (you can imagine the underlying attitude towards being fined for “parking outside my own house” which surfaced when the original ticket was first issued). However, Birmingham City Council has halted all bailiff action, and has given the woman the means to submit a declaration to the Traffic Enforcement Centre and have the charges revoked. All she would then have to do is pay a £70 fine, though I suspect she would even screw up that simple get out of jail free opportunity (in spite of having said she wishes she’d paid up earlier). She can still dispute it, and I suspect the effort on her part being necessary to close this off will prove to much for her to accept.
Of course, someone somewhere is going to have to foot the bill for all the leg work involved here, and taxation is something I assume that even people like her have to partake in. Hence the title of this article.
I think we have our first contender for the 2017 Darwin Awards.