OK. I admit it. I panicked when I couldn't get a ticket out of the machine in one of Sudbury's short-stay car parks the other Saturday. But I wasn't alone. I pressed the button, others pressed the button, but no tickets came out.
"No tickets until Monday" was the message displayed. "Damn thing's run out," commented another worrier, before someone kindly pointed out to us that after 1pm on Saturday tickets are not required.
Just shows the fear and trembling that hits when y
ou drive into one of short-stay car parks. So anxious to avoid getting a fine that you just don't see the notices by the machines.
I have no objection to the principle of displaying a ticket, but I just hope that when I need one there will be some glue on it to stick the blasted thing to the windscreen.
Nothing worse than coming back to your car and finding a parking ticket on the outside of the windscreen because the non-pay and display one has fallen off the dashboard ... although I guess that would make someone's day.
I can't help but feel Babergh didn't endear themselves to us at the outset by their arrogant and high-handed attitude towards the confusion this change has caused for a number of people in recent weeks ... including me.
Some time before the machines whirred into operation, we knew parking tickets were coming, but a few large temporary signs at the entrance to the car parks during the first few weeks might just have helped.
Finding a penalty notice because you forgot to take a ticket where a ticket hasn't been needed before obviously came as quite a shock to a number of people.
Babergh's comment that there was always going to a bedding-in process "until people realise they can't abuse the free parking spaces or they will be fined" was a disgrace.
The vast majority of people do not, and did not, abuse the system. We've been asked to change long-ingrained habits, and Babergh should have been a little more sensitive to that.
The machines, of course, are just another step along the road towards charging. The last time I suggested that charges were coming, Babergh dashed off a high-horse letter accusing me of being a conspiracy theorist, saying it has no plans whatsoever, cross my heart and hope to die.
But those machines haven't been installed for fun, and if Babergh doesn't bring in charges before it expires, whatever new authority takes over from our masters in Hadleigh in a couple of years will. Count on it.
