From a local newspaper covering Basingstoke comes a story about parents-cum-vigilantes patrolling school drop-off points and hassling those who park illegally or dangerously there.
On the one hand, you have to applaud them – parking illegally, dangerously, or just inconsiderately outside schools is a major problem throughout the country.
But you can’t help detect a certain amount of hypocrisy – fuelled by the spin given to the story by the newspaper – when you consider that 99.9% of the offenders in question are… PARENTS DROPPING OFF/PICKING UP THEIR OWN KIDS!
I’m sorry, but that’s the truth of it.
I see it every day. I’ve mentioned before the fiasco near Hollygirt School in Nottingham – it’s a private school, where the rules that normal people have to adhere to don’t apply. Just outside the school, on Cranmer Street, is a chicane system on a bend. It has signs at each end to tell you to give way to oncoming vehicles because you can’t see clearly.
The luvvies who send their kids to Hollygirt use the chicane for parking – and on both sides! Half on the pavement, half off. First thing in the morning it is lethal down there. And to make matters worse, there is a full-size Premier coach/school bus which parks there every afternoon to pick the little darlings up. And it will park wherever it can if someone is already in its usual place on the yellow lines.
But let’s not just blame Hollygirt. Every school in the land has the same problem. Women in 4x4s they can hardly see over the steering wheels of parking on bends and blocking junctions.People stopping on the zig-zags because they obviously don’t apply to them picking up their kids, do they? School buses doing whatever they damn well want, wherever they want, for as long as they want (I’ve seen one double decker around here which has dropped a kid off at a junction in a village, then reversed out minor-to-major so it didn’t have to waste time turning around somewhere safe).
At some point, a school bus blocking the road ceases to be the safe haven it is intended to be, and becomes an annoying obstacle other drivers will try to get round – which then puts the kids in greater danger than ever.
So as I say, it sounds great in theory – but I wonder how many of the vigilantes are guilty of the crimes they are now standing up against?