NCP has or will certainly be awarded the contract to issue citations in the City of Edinburgh. Central Parking’s contract for the past five years will not be renewed. No, don’t panic, the great founding document of Anglo Saxon law is secure. I was just letting my headline writing skills run amuck.
The Scottish Press is already starting in on NCP, and they haven’t even written a citation yet. Central is getting it in the neck, even though they are "out". Sigh. The Brits just love to hate parking attendants.
I do tend to agree with one comment, however. How does NCP hope to do a substantially different job than Central. After all they are using the same people to patrol the streets. Oh sure, they have the best training program on the planet and will whip those Central guys into shape. Yeah Right. I will be shocked if in six months we don’t see the same article with a few name changes.
Read the article if you like — its just more parking bashing. Typical of the mainstream UK Press.There’s another list of horrible abuses of citation issuance (hearse, ambulance, blood transfusion van, handicapped parker whose decal had slipped, etc). Any of these sound familiar? If you think you have heard most of them before you have.
The problem isn’t the people, I think. Its the attitude of all involved. The city wants the money and doesn’t really care how it gets it. The operator uses management tools like "GASP" quotas and counseling to get their "wardens" to write just over one ticket an hour and the wardens want to do a good job so they perhaps apply the rules without any discretion. Of course the parking public think that "you can park anywhere you like, for as long as you like, for free" is part of the Magna Carta.
JVH
