My appeal against a fine for stopping for a few seconds on a faded zigzag line in a dark, deserted suburban street has been rejected, unsurprisingly.
What is more surprising is the letter I received telling me about this. It was signed by someone called Okiemute O, and where his signature ought to have been there was a big X. Mr O is the Representation and Appeals Investigation Officer at Lambeth Council, according to the blurb by his ‘signature’.
I have no idea why this senior bureaucrat funded by the taxpayer cannot give his surname on official letters. Possibly he is cultivating a sort of mystique. Possibly he fears that if he gives his full name I will go round to his house and complain to him in person about the ordeal he is putting me through. Possibly he cannot write.
In any case, it is very disorientating. Mr O informed me that my appeal had been rejected and I must now pay even more money as a result. It mattered not that I had only stopped on the faded line for a few seconds and that as soon as I realised what I had done I got back in the car and drove away.
It moved him not that I had pulled over in an emergency because of a splitting headache.
There was to be no mercy because I had ‘disobeyed’ a rule. There then followed a very harsh lecture on the moral turpitude I had shown. Pointing me to the Highway Code, he said: ‘Such rules are identified by the use of the words MUST/ MUST NOT.
‘You MUST NOT stop or park on a pedestrian crossing, including the area marked by the zigzag lines (see Rule 167).’
Well, thanks for the explanation, but I know what ‘must not’ means. And I have been observing the Highway Code for a good few years now. But nowhere in the Highway Code does it say: ‘You may not make a slight mistake reading parking signs which harms nobody and if you ever, ever, dare to stop for a few seconds on a bit of faded zigzag line that you can’t see in an empty street in Norwood at 8 p.m. because you desperately need to buy some painkillers, know that the parking enforcement powers of this great nation will pursue you unto the gates of hell and extract the maximum penalty from your sorry ass for this vile offence.’
Which is what Mr O was doing. He informed me that because I had appealed I would now have to pay £120 instead of £60.
Then, in the next paragraph, after he had let me sweat about this for a few heart-stopping seconds, he informed me that he was going to offer me a small stay of execution. Because I had appealed within the period I could have paid the reduced rate I would, after all, be allowed to pay £60.
However, if I persisted with appealing to the independent adjudicator, and if that appeal was rejected, I would be made to pay at least £120, and probably £180.
If I still didn’t pay up after that, he would apply to the county court to recover an amount of money unspecified. I’m not sure at what stage he would send someone round to my house to break my legs but I feel instinctively that this sanction exists somewhere down the line.
Mr O then informed me that if I wanted further information about this tinpot extortion, sorry, penalty charge notice, I could telephone him on an 0845 number.
So I did. After a very long time going round a circular system of options, a bored sounding woman answered the phone.
‘Could I speak to Mr O, please?’ I said.
‘Mr who?’
‘Mr O. He’s written me a letter and says to call him if there’s something I don’t understand, which I don’t.’
‘Well, that’s no good, is it?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not. Do you know Mr O?’
‘No.’
‘So how come he can write me an official letter and hide his identity?’
‘It doesn’t seem proper, does it?’ she said, languidly.
She suggested I send Lambeth Council an email complaining. I may as well send the man in the moon an order for two portions of egg fried rice.
I tell you what I am going to do, though. In all future correspondence with Mr O, and indeed Lambeth Council in general, I’m going to start styling myself Melissa K.
If I am to be treated like Josef K in Kafka’s The Trial I may as well act the part. If I am to be threatened with prosecution by a remote, inaccessible authority while the true nature of my crime remains a mystery, I intend to play the game properly.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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