Saturday 8 August 2009

Er, what?

So, there's a local attraction I go to from time to time. I've never gone in to the attraction, but probably would have eventually done so, however, they have a delightful tea shop, which has seen the contents of my wallet many times over the years. And today, I was between dealerships and was in the general area, so I thought I'd stop off for tea and scones. I drove in, made a U-turn and drove straight out, however. Care to guess why?

Well, they've decided to start charging for parking.

Now, I know times are tight and people need to up-sell and cross-sell, but instead of getting a tenner off me for food, they now will get bugger all. And instead of getting a tenner off me every month or so like they used to, they will now never see me again.

Way to go, fuck knuckles.

10 comments:

Dr Evil said...

A bit like hospital parking except of course you often have no choice, if you are a visitor or a patient. I find this quite outrageous bearing in mind the taxes we are forced to pay. Same for local council parking. It should be free. It might encourage more shoppers. I shop at an out of town mall with a Tesco and of course free parking. I rarely go into the local city because of the car park charges. If I had a business, was paying business rates which don't include refuse collection, plus of course sky high rents and the bastard council car parking (charges, little Hitlers, fines et al) was putting off shoppers I would be pretty pissed off.

Unknown said...

Fuckin' right, squeeze the motorist till their pips squeek! You can tell I ain't got a car but even I recognise everybody wants to fuck you over...do you fight back???

You need an organisation to stick up for you motorists...AA, RAC anyone?

Anonymous said...

OT, but this utube video about Brown's bottom is interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzVhzoAqMhU

Damo Mackerel

Mark Wadsworth said...

Who's charging for the parking? The local council or the owners of the tea-shop/attraction.

It does make a difference in deciding what the correct free-market solution is.

PS, I was horrified to notice that one of my local supermarkets charges for parking (because technically it's a local authority car park) all of 20 pence for half an hour, what's the f***ing point of that? It's more the hassle than the money.

Joe Public said...

Well done Obo.

Our local council decided to start car-park charging for visiting a small parade of shops that used to thrive.

The place is now nearly deserted; the capital cost of the charging scheme is wasted, cos there's bugger-all revenue; and, 1/2 the shops have closed so there's no rent & no rates.

In fact what parking revenue is now generated, is less than the cost of emptying the cash box & maintaining the equipment.

Pure, economic genius.

Curmudgeon said...

"You need an organisation to stick up for you motorists...AA, RAC anyone?"

Association of British Drivers.

It's a vicious circle - if they had more members, they'd have more influence. Too many people just moan about anti-car policies but aren't prepared to do anything about it.

Dick Puddlecote said...

You need an organisation to stick up for you motorists...AA, RAC anyone?

Oh yeah. The organisations who are calling for a lower drink driving limit for all because some are ignoring the larger one.

Those stubborn bastions of motorists, eh? ;-)

Anonymous said...

Fucking hell, Oboe. Uprising of I bredrin in Birmingham and you aren't even covering it. Wake up.

Steve Antony Williams said...

In my local town (Biddulph) there is a car park with a Co-Op supermarket on one side, and a Somerfield supermarket the other. Because the car park belongs to the council and not the shops the council decided to introduce car parking charges.

Ok so it's only 20p, but it's not been running that long, and guess what ?? The car park made a loss in its first year, so guess what ? You guessed it, they're going to put the price up ....

Is it just me or can nobody else see something glaringly obvious, eg take away the car parking charges and you won't make a loss ....

Biddulph is a 1 horse town anyway, and the shops are struggling so somebody at Staffordshire Moorlands District council thinks raising the car parking charges is a good idea.

Steve

Curmudgeon said...

People will all be driving to the Tescos in Congleton with free parking, then. Or whatever supermarket there is in the other direction. How to kill a town - impose parking charges.