Standing Room

6 June 2009

It’s always the smallest thing that tips one over the edge.

I blew my nose and stood up. ‘I’ve got a mobile, I’ll do it for you.’ I held her crutch while she found her credit card. ‘If I give you cash, is there any way I could use your card? Mine doesn’t work.’

‘I think we have a partnership,’ she smiled wanly.

It dawned on me that pay-by-phone parking is an ageist infringement. It’s staggeringly impertinent to assume that every citizen owns a mobile phone and it’s particularly insensitive to impose this method of parking outside hospitals. I feel exactly the same way about the existence of all exorbitantly overpriced NCP and hospital-run car parks. They’re basically just profiting from misfortune and out to make a fast buck. Both visitors and patients tend to arrive at medical establishments in varying degrees of panic and the last thing they need is to fret about how they’re going to get rid of their car.

If politicians really want to ‘make nice’, I have a simple solution. I propose that every penny of our money they’ve squandered on fraudulent expenses goes towards setting up a free, nationwide, hospital valet-parking system. It’s payback time. Only this time we’d all benefit. Dave — over to you.