Residents Parking: Bristol's Poll Tax?

According to the evening post, opposition in Montpelier and St Pauls is rising to the point where civil disobedience is contemplated. Already we have an unnamed pensioner pushing for active resistance: "We need to paint out the lines and pull down the signs."

Well, being able to park outside your house is a fundamental right -and when you consider that the troubles in Northern Ireland grew out of a failure of the civil rights movement there, it is better to accede to such demands before they get out of hand.

Even so, hopefully the area will go for rasta colours on the kerbstones, not royalty.

We'd like to highlight a particularly insightful solution to the problem from "Pogo_T_Clown :

Given the tendency of communities to descend into NIMBYism when they're tasked with self-policing, I think this is a flawed idea. However, I do believe that it would create quite a burden for the council to determine the needs of each street in the city. As such, I would suggest a "Street-twinning" system where, for example, a street in Clifton would be twinned with one from Bedminster. The residents of the Clifton street could drive over to Bedminster and provide an objective view on the level of parking required. The people from Bedminster could catch a series of buses to Clifton and return the favour. This would save the council money and improve ties between the communities in Bristol, which could only be a good thing.

This is an innovative approach which we hope the leaders of The Parking Rebellion embrace.

The Troubles comes to Upper Cheltenham Place

The police ticketing of vehicles extends to more than just one taxi making it hard for passing cars, they have also visited the pavement of Upper Cheltenham Place.

This van T138RTA will go down in history as a vehicle to get a ticket purely for completely blocking the pavement of a quiet back road.

Where else is there to park a van in this area?

Similarly, the golf M554KAA which is always positioned here now gets to pay £30 for the right -a number which, amusingly, is not that far off the proposed annual residents parking fee had the area voted to become an RPZ.

It is going to be interesting to go by next week, next month, to see if there's been any change in driver behaviour, or whether it is an aberration.

Meanwhile, over in Brislington, residents are requesting police enforcement of parking and yellow-hatched-junctions. This is a dangerous trend.

You are now entering Free Monty

Leafleting cars on the pavements is one thing, are the police really going to turn on the car drivers and start persecuting them?

Oh yes.


This photograph is going to become one of those timeless pictures, the taxi NK55KYC given a ticket and a £30 fine for parking on the pavement of York Road.

Nothing like this has ever happened before. For Montpelier, this is as profound an event as it was in Northern Ireland when the army came in from the mainland in an attempt to impose order and provide an impartial police force.

The Troubles come to Montpelier #1

The whole Northern Ireland low-intensity civil war theme is such a source of content we have to keep milking it for all it is worth.

Today, The Troubles. If you talk to the unionists, they pine for the days before the Troubles began, when they could march their Orangemen marches and the Catholics would come out and join in and everyone was happy. If you talk to the nationalists, they tell you how they'd stay in their cottages on the Garvaghy Road, in fear of the marches. From their perspective it was their attempt to mimic the US Civil Rights movement -and the unwillingness of the opposing party to adapt- that led to them adopting that other popular US idea: firearms, and so The Troubles proper began. What is key is this: attempted assertion of legal rights led to 30 years of armed conflict.

Here in Montpelier, 20 Feb 2009, something happened that may well be as significant. The PCSOs are going round ticketing cars. Here is Brook Hill -three cars on the pavement have notes on their windscreens telling W763VBO and VA53LVC amongst others to stop parking there.

They are not alone. On the corner with York Road, more cars have leaflets

This is persecution. The cars WR56YZM and DY02UXL have historically acquired the right to park on the pavements and on corners. Yet, here, on Fairfield road, all around this quarter of the city, the leaflets are out. And more than just the leaflets, the tickets.

What has happened? According to conversation with the PCSOs someone -and we think we know who they are- has been complaining to the police about the issue, and the police -not Bristol Parking Services- has come out to act.

This is exactly the kind of assertion of rights that leads to trouble, or even worse, The Troubles.

The new Cause

There is a shadow over [London]Derry

Despite so much progress towards peace, a republican spinoff group that refuses to accept the peace settlement, Bogside Republican Action Group, has come out and threatened the British oppressors. That is, they have declared that TV license and parking officials are "legitimate targets".

This is such wonderful progress. Really.

Whereas before, the "oppressors" came in form of army helicopters, armoured personnel carriers and armed foot patrols by the UK Land Forces, and the issue under dispute was whether the 1921 partition of Ireland was accepted as legitimate, now the outstanding issue is whether parking on double yellow lines is a crime.

The best thing about this is that while the previous issue divided the country/occupied six counties fairly irreconcilably, both sides of the conflict now have a common enemy. Whereas before the Nationalists could not get many Unionists to embrace their viewpoint, parking is as much an issue in the British quarters as the Irish ones

Hopefully this adoption of a common enemy will create unity within the country. Perhaps even the classic songs of either side could be updated appropriately. The Orange Order's song, "The sash my father wore" could be updated to become "The 4x4 my dad drove me to school in"


Even that republican anthem of internment, "The men behind the wire", could have its lyrics updated.

Old: "Armoured cars and tanks and guns, came to take away our sons. But every man must stand behind, the men behind the wire."

New: "Derry city council parking enforcement officers came to ticket our sons for illegal parking. But every man must stand behind, the vehicles parked on the double yellow lines"

It is only through such modernisation of both group's narratives that peace and reconciliation can be achieved.

Apparently the local police are looking at the threat, and even Sinn Fein have condemned it -presumably because it is their council's revenue which is now threatened. Here on the mainland the concern must be how much ex-PIRA armaments the Bogside Republican Action Group has access to, and whether they have linked up with mainland groups with similar aims, such as Captain Gatso or the Association of British Drivers. Here on the mainland we've been isolated from the Troubles for nearly a decade, and it would be good if it stayed that way.