Real life | 14 May 2011 | The Spectator

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).’