STRANGE LOGIC..

It`s reported today in our local `newspaper,` the Kent Messenger, that parking fines collected by the local council totalled more than £200,000 last year.   This eye watering sum was the result of 8,680 parking tickets being issued to drivers across the council`s area.

Believe it or not, this is actually a reduction in revenue from the previous year, when close on £220,000 was collected.   Back in 2010 over £240,000 was collected from 8,731 tickets issued.   Now the local council employs no less than ten enforcement officers and two supervisors to enforce the council`s own parking restrictions and fines are set at £50 or £70 depending on the nature of the parking offence.   OK, there`s a 50% reduction if the fine is paid withing 14 days but it`s still a pretty hefty fine.

Now up steps the ubiquitous `council spokesman,` who said, "The money raised from parking fines goes towards meeting some of the costs of running the parking enforcement service."   Note  just `some of the costs.`  So it`s a deeply unpopular `service` that costs money and  I wonder if it has ever occurred to the council that if they did away with the parking fines there would be no need for all ten of the expensive enforcement officers and their supervisors.

Seems to me that sometimes councils impose fines just because they can, leaving the council taxpayers to pay for this kind of folly and then pay again if the folly is transgressed.  Sounds like a strange kind of logic to me.