Sick to ticket ambulances

Published: 19 May, 2011

• THE ticketing of the M&L ambulance transporting the kidney dialysis patient shows that there is no common sense when it comes to issuing parking contravention tickets, especially by private companies (Fined for picking up kidney patient, May 12).  

The comments by the London Parking Control Limited (LPCL) spokeswoman are inept and insulting. She said: “M&L are simply a transport company…” Buses, taxis, couriers, Royal Mail and many other companies can be classed as transport companies but an ambulance; you have to be kidding.  

The Oxford English Dictionary defines an ambulance as: “a vehicle equipped for taking sick or injured people to and from hospital, especially in emergencies.”  

As we know, hospitals do not have all clinics under one roof. The dialysis clinic in Mandela Street is a prime example of this. M&L vehicles are ambulances that carry patients, as in the case of the one that was ticketed. 

I don’t know about you, but having to have dialysis means that you are usually waiting for a kidney transplant and that means you are sick and having dialysis is a necessary, life-saving, procedure.  

This is not the first time LPCL has been in the news at Mandela Street clinic. 

To solve this urgent problem, either a parking space for ambulances is put in (why one isn’t there already is beyond me) or just use some old fashioned common sense before ticketing or clamping. 

I wonder how the LPCL people would react if it was one of their own family in the ambulance? 

DF GOWERS, Broxwood Way, NW8

Insensitive

• THE persistent targeting of ambulance drivers by Camden’s parking wardens is an insensitive approach to enforcement. 

But they also love to descend like flies around a lump of dung on any BT van parked on a single yellow line for five minutes. 

All the Mornington Cars mini-cabs that park all day long on single yellow lines at a junction are ignored or considered to be exempt, presumably as they display pre-booked only, private hire signs. 

If the council need to increase revenue from parking charges and fines they ought to use removal trucks for all the nuisance car club vehicles that are left illegally parked after use in a loading bay or a residents’ permit bay indefinitely. 

A £40 penalty charge notice is not a deterrent for heavy goods vehicles and coaches with trailers that regularly park all day and night on double yellow lines in Crowndale Road at traffic junctions, thereby causing traffic obstruction on a priority bus route, or when coaches commandeer the three “unloading-only” pay and display bays outside the Purple Turtle bar.

Wheel-clamping is the only penalty that would deter these cowboys from flouting parking restrictions with impunity.

JAMES REDMOND 
Mornington Crescent, NW1