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[sheerline]

I see on the news today that there is a legal challenge being brought to councils abilities to levy fines for parking. This caused me to cheer loudly  until I sat and thought about it for a moment. If it is won and they are no longer allowed to cash in on this little money grabbing scheme, what will they do about all that missing revenue?
The world will be their oyster so to speak as I reckon they will either simply stick all the council tax up to compensate for the loss and/or go raving mad with the green issue and start chipping and weighing all the refuse bins as a means of fining householders to rake in the lost funds.
So, if you get a parking fine (they will still exist) you will not only have to pay for that but will presumably also be coughing up extra council tax so now your losing out on an even bigger scale
One way or the other it looks as though we will be damned if we do or damned if we don't as we will lose out either way.     

[Reade Models]

The problem with all of these fines, charges, taxes etc. is that once they have been introduced by the jobsworths down at the local council offices, they become the 'norm' and something that the councils can't manage without?

Another one, this time the NHS...

HOSPITAL PARKING CHARGES!!!!  Taxing the sick!  I've had to attend a lot of hospital appointments recently and it's cost me a small fortune.  Urinal Bevan will be spinning in his grave - free at the point of delivery, NOT ANY MORE.

(Must be the tablets, can't stop ranting)

Malc

[DickyD]

Another one, this time the NHS...

HOSPITAL PARKING CHARGES!!!!  Taxing the sick!  I've had to attend a lot of hospital appointments recently and it's cost me a small fortune.  Urinal Bevan will be spinning in his grave - free at the point of delivery, NOT ANY MORE.

(Must be the tablets, can't stop ranting)

Malc

I've been doing the hospital appointments regularly since 2001 Malc and I haven't been able to work since 2004 and our General Hospital has the highest car parking charges of all the NHS hospitals in Britain.
Guess I'm just a lucky sort of person really.

[Reade Models]

Guess I'm just a lucky sort of person really.

Not quite sure where you are coming from with that one DickyD?  Lucky that your hospital parking charges are high? Or maybe lucky that you don't have to pay them?

Malc

[DickyD]

Guess I'm just a lucky sort of person really.

Not quite sure where you are coming from with that one DickyD?  Lucky that your hospital parking charges are high? Or maybe lucky that you don't have to pay them?

Malc

Just trying to show you how my luck runs Malc :'(

[sheerline]

A lot of the costs for hospital parking charges are down to our old friends...HSE! Listening to a discussion on the radio a while back, it would appear that not only does the very tarmac we stand our cars on have to be maintained but that HSE have insisted on lighting, road marking, cameras, electronic barriers as well as kerbs, verges, plants and signposts.... oh and the staff who wear caps and hi viz jackets.  According to the NHS this all has to have a rolling maintenance program which costs millions and judging by some of the lavish parking facilities I have seen it does not surprise me. Surely we don't need all that car parking infrastructure just to visit A&E or a sick relative!
It all smacks of cashflow Britain again and even if you are ill you still have to stump up. 

[Reade Models]

Sheerline

I heard the same discussion on the radio (must have been Radio 2)? An NHS 'manager' all for the charges - he really wanted to increase them...

It still doesn't alter the fact that the whole purpose of the NHS was that it was always intended to be free at the point of delivery (and whilst I'm no socialist, I will always admire Mr Bevan for his work in founding it).  In my own humble opinion, all of the costs that you mention should be carried by NHS budgets - even if it does cost ultimately us taxpayers more?

What really winds me up is that they also charge nurses and other hospital workers who can ill-afford it to use these car parks, and this must cause a painful dent in their already inadequate incomes?

Malc

[alan colson]

My daughter was training to be a nurse and whilst working at one hospital in Sussex she had to pay for a permit to park. Another person I work with told me that his wife who is a nurse now leaves for work earlier than she used to so that she can park in a nearby street and walk in to avoid paying for parking, again this is hospital in a different area of Sussex.
Alan

[Umi_Ryuzuki]

Here, Washington state voters voted out the vehicle registration fees based on automobile value.
The fee went from a percentage, to flat $35-50 dollar fee...

Then they began complaining that the roads were not being repaired...

Then they complained when the gas tax went up... must be $2 a tank in some cases...

Can't make anyone happy for a fee..  ::)

[DickyD]

My wife works at our local general hospital and has to pay for a permit to park within the hospital grounds. If you live within a 5 mile radius (as the crow flies) from the hospital you get no permit. Without a permit it costs nearly £20 a day to park. There is no parking in any streets nearby as they are all resident parking only.

[alan colson]

DickyD
Makes you wonder why these nurses carry on their good work doesn't it. So many people say how underpaid they are and yet they get TAXED yet again in a round about way for parking. By the way my daughter was only a student nurse and by the time she had paid for the car she was buying and put the fuel in it (which was taxed), paid road tax, insurance etc. she had no money left, myself and wife had to subsidise her and feed her.
Alan

[Reade Models]

Alan

If there was a National campaign to get these hospital car parking charges scrapped - perhaps a Downing Street petition? I for one would certainly sign it.

Such a move would be highly popular with the retired 'middle England' voter and might just give a drowning Gordon Brown a straw to cling on to?

______________________________

I can't help but be rather bemused by Umi's $2.00 tax on a tank full of gas (from an earlier post) When we pay at least that much on every Litre! (At something like 4.6 Litres to a gallon)!  In American terms, a tank full of gas for my Mitsubishi Shogun costs around $200 (give or take) at today's LOWER prices...

Malc

[dougal99]

In the interests of accuracy (and to show what a clever clogs I am) thers are only 3.6 (ish) litres to a US gallon. Having recently been in the US I got involved in detailed conversation on the relative costs of gas/petrol and this point came up.   :angel:


I'll get back in my box now.

Doug

PS there was an advert over there for 4 new cars that did 32 to the gallon !

[Reade Models]

1 gallon [US, liquid] = 3.785 411 784 liter

I hadn't realised that the US gallon was so much smaller than the Imperial gallon:

1 gallon [UK] = 4.546 09 liter

Malc

[David_S]

1 gallon [US, liquid] = 3.785 411 784 liter

I hadn't realised that the US gallon was so much smaller than the Imperial gallon:

1 gallon [UK] = 4.546 09 liter

Malc

You would if you'd ever been involved in buying the expensive, imported American glow fuel for model planes; the gallons seem awfully small if you're used to UK measures. It also goes some way to explaining the reported high petrol consumption of American cars. Not everything is bigger and better over there, it seems!

[bigfella]

Hi All

In a previous life I worked for a car parking company here in Australia. Although the car park I worked at was at a Gold Coast shopping center some of the other guys I knew worked in Brisbane at one of the car parks at a Hospital. The average take on a shift at this car park was $10k (yes ten thousand dollars) and a shift was only 5 hours.

The Gold Coast Hospital does not even have a car park. You would think that a hospital which serves a city with a population of 400,000 residents would have at least provisions for parking. Not even the staff have parking which came to a head recently when a couple of night nurses were attacked walking to their cars which were parked far away on side streets. Just not good enough as nurses are the unsung heroes and should be treated much better by governments.

However I have learnt that there is a lot of money to be made in parking without much outlay. Some car parks on the Gold Coast are nothing more than vacant plots of land and they make so much money and it is park at your own risk.

Regards David

[regiment]

hi all i am one of the lucky ones dont pay hospital parking  charges yet    77  yrs  good health no car bus pass instead  regiment

[craftysod]

hi all i am one of the lucky ones dont pay hospital parking  charges yet    77  yrs  good health no car bus pass instead  regiment

SOD getting that 4 foot boat of yours and all on the bus  LOL