By Glenn Swanson
March 7, 2008 -
Wait, it's worse than that… The Bath Chronicle reports that Ilya Galic drove into the spa town and parked in a pay-as-you-go parking lot. He fed a ticket machine £1.20 ($2.38) for his one-hour stay. The meter only registered £1, missing 20 pence (about 40 cents). Galic complained to the parking attendant, who told him the machines often “went wrong,” and promised to sort out the matter. Just to be sure, Galic phoned the parking office, who told him someone would look it. Last month, Galic received a letter demanding a £353.74 ($701) parking penalty payment. A bailiff turned up at Galic’s house to claim one of the family’s cars as payment for the debt. When Galic asked the bailiff to leave, he called the police. Four policemen arrived at his Newbridge home. The bailiff eventually “settled” for £410.99 ($815.52), around six weeks worth of Galic’s pension income (which covered assorted additional fees). A council spokeswoman was unmoved. The authority had not received any complaints in writing, so that’s that.
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POWERED
March 7th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I would say yet another reasons subjects have it worse than citizens, but I’ve seen plenty of this same nonsense here on our side of the pond. *Sigh*
March 7th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Ah, but will Ilya really take it lying down? Certainly he will fight. I personally believe in treble damages. If someone screws me in an a really big way, and I can’t get a decent resolution, then I make sure they take a hit for three times the amount. It’s not hard to do.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I guess it’s ok for the government to steal from it’s citizens, I mean subjects over their. Unjust governments pay the price in due time.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
See what happens when you trust a bureaucrat when they tell you something?
Oh yes, and “We’re from the police and we’re here to help (the state to take away your property/money)”.
Yeah, they “needed” four bobbies (cops) to intimidate and ensure they can overpower an old man, right? Right. Such manly men…..
Isn’t this kind of thing also known as “extortion with menaces”? Oh right, sorry, that’s only if a NON-government person does it.
Thank God I left the UK. Trouble is, we’re only about 5 years behind the UK in all of this nonsense here in the states.
On the other hand, we occasionally see some small hope that things are changing for the better over here and hope that our British cousins can start to see reason and take their country back from their overlords, too. I’m referring to how CT has decided to reject speed cameras. Pay particular attention to the state legislator quote of Ben Franklin.
March 7th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Most of us Brits know that democracy should be better than the ‘we get to vote for the people who then screw us over’ version we have; but being Brits we’re too apathetic to go out and insist that we get something better!
Will it ever change? I’d like to think so but I don’t expect it to - successive governments have been robbing us blind for hundreds of years!
Is it really that different in the US?
March 7th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
I thought that SOP for this sort of thing was to drive your tractor into town and spray the mayor’s office w/cow manure.
Or is that Deutschland?
March 7th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
What the hell is going on in that country? England’s citizens are happily pissing away their freedom to Government bureaucrats. What a waste of a great country.
March 7th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
The whole story doesn’t make any sense. I don’t believe it. I bet ya there is much more to it which is not covered by the paper because the real story would not sell.
March 7th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
incitatus :
March 7th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
The whole story doesn’t make any sense. I don’t believe it. I bet ya there is much more to it which is not covered by the paper because the real story would not sell.
You could be right, but what’s so hard to believe about a beaurecrat insisting that he is right and you are wrong? Or, does that only occur in the US?
March 7th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
incitatus Truth is stranger than fiction, especially where government beaurecrats are concerned.