My daughter when we received bad service from PANDORA!

My daughter when we received bad service from PANDORA!
This picture was sent to PANDORA! to highlight the grief they had caused - see the PANDORA! complaint below

Thursday 27 August 2015

South Gloucestershite Council

Evening all. A few months back I got a parking ticket after parking for a whole 2 minutes on double yellows whilst making a request for a repeat prescription from my GP surgery. I was a bit miffed about it - yes, I know the law, and no I don't think that I am above it, but I also don't believe all things in life are black and white and I just felt that my treatment (i.e. a fine) was a little harsh. I mean, if I'd parked there, causing obstruction to other vehicles and pedestrians and in the meantime buggered off for an hour to do my shopping, then yes, lock me up and throw away the key. But TWO minutes? Really? Anyway I appealed the fine - which was unsuccessful, So after some deliberating, I figured what better way to get my money's worth from the fine imposed by my local council (South Gloucestershire, by the way), than to take part in a little civil mischief and disobedience?

I was utterly frustrated by the bureaucracy and the faceless and inhuman (not inhumane - I'm not a drama queen) way I had been treated.

I thought that the local governmental department that probably best exemplified this Orwellian shower of shit, would be the planning department - I had visions of the Circumlocution Office from Little Dorritt by one Charles Dickens. It seems little has changed in some 150 years...



To: South Gloucestershire Planning Applications
From: Steve Crowley

Dear sirs,

I was boggled by the sheer volume of options in this bureaucratic mess of bureaucracy.

So, to help, perhaps you can..... Help.

I wish to erect a Wiccan Temple in my back garden. Nothing big. Maybe 10ft by 10ft by 10ft, with a chimney extending to 20ft. It will only be used for animal and on occasion, human sacrifice to the God of Pedantry, Gerald.

I am sure I will need some form of planning permission so perhaps you could advise me on the initial steps in the process?

The Temple will be used mainly during daylight hours (it is customary for sacrifices to be made during hours of darkness but I fully appreciate I live in a residential area and the blood curdling screams of victims might disturb neighbours' sleep, and I'm sure the God Gerald won't mind, so long as he gets his fill of weasel and fair virgin)

Anyway, please let me know what forms need to be completed?

Kindest regards



_______________________________________________________

From: South Gloucestershite Council
To: Steve Crowley

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your email. I have forwarded it on to the relevant section within the Planning Department for you.

Kind regards,
Arthur Clennam
Business Support Assistant
Business Support Team


______________________________________________________

Sure enough, the correct department contacted me:

From: South Gloucestershire Council
To: Steve Crowley

Thank you for your recent enquiry.

I have to advise that should you wish for confirmation as to whether your particular proposals need planning permission there is a charge of £90.00 for this service.

I attach the relevant form for your convenience. If you submit the enquiry this will then be passed to a planning officer for consideration and a written response will be sent to you.

Alternatively you may wish to visit our website www.southglos.gov.uk/planning where we have provided advice on the need for planning permission for a number of different types of development. This includes information on the planning regulations.

Should you only wish to know whether or not the permitted development rights are intact on your property, there would be no charge.

Kind Regards
Planning Support Team
(anonymous, apparently)

_______________________________________________________

£90 to ask a question about planning?! Robbing bastards:

From: Steve Crowley
To: South Gloucestershire Council
Thank you for the reply. I will go ahead and erect the erection regardless. Paying £90 for a question seems like daylight robbery and a liberty. Much like your policy on parking fines.
I have also been asked by Wiccan High Command to source a suitable traffic warden for sacrifice. Would you be able to offer any names? We need a subject for next Wednesday for what we white witches call 'Midweek Equinox'.
Kindest regards

_______________________________________________________
And South Gloucestershite Council weren't very happy about my reply:

To: Steve Crowley
From: South Gloucestershire Council

Dear Mr Crowley

Thank you for your email which has been passed to me by my colleagues in the Planning Service.

The content of your email is wholly inappropriate and will not be responded to by officers. You are clearly unhappy with the advice that you been given. You have a choice about using the advice service that is offered by the Council and I note that you have chosen not to use that service. You should be advised that Planning Enforcement action would be taken against any development that is built which contravenes  Planning Policy.

Regards

Flora

Flora Finching
Departmental Complaints Representative
Department of Environment and Community Services
South Gloucestershire Council


__________________________________________________


From Steve Crowley
To: South Gloucestershire Council

Thank you for your email.

I am sorry that you feel my email was inappropriate. I completely understand that you may not subscribe to my Pagan beliefs. I on the other hand am most respectful of all other religious beliefs and embrace diversity of culture in the local community.

If you cannot acquiesce to my request for a Wiccan High Temple in my back garden, could I instead erect a mock Wiccan Temple in the form of a Rabbit hutch and run in my garden without the need for planning permission? I attach plans for the proposed erection.

Kindest regards



________________________________________________________


For some strange reason, I didn't receive a reply so had to chase the council:

From: Steve Crowley
To: South Gloucestershire Council

Hi - I do not appear to have received the courtesy of a response to my previous email.

I trust a reply will be forthcoming.

Kindest Gerards


________________________________________________________


From: Steve Crowley
To: South Gloucestershire Council

Dear Mr Crowley,

It was not clear from your email that you required a response and I am sorry if you were expecting one. The information that you provided would not be accepted by the Planning service. If you wish to submit plans and require advice then there is information available on the Council’s website.


Regards

Flora

Flora Finching
Departemental (sic)
Department of Environment and Community Services

_______________________________________________


From: Steve Crowley
To: South Gloucestershire Council

Thank you for the reply. It is most appreciated.

It was quite clear that my previous email required a response. This was evident by the inclusion of the following sentence:

"If you cannot acquiesce to my request for a Wiccan High Temple in my back garden, could I instead erect a mock Wiccan Temple in the form of a Rabbit hutch and run in my garden without the need for planning permission?”

You will note the punctuation mark at the end of the sentence denotes a question. I appreciate this basic grammatical tool probably did not escape your learned attention and you instead assumed the question was rhetorical? (this question mark just typed, IS now rhetorical, so please do not reply to that question directly, unless you feel particularly compelled to do so). 

In any event, thank you for the appropriate link advising me on planning applications - I cannot find specific reference to planning applications of glorified rabbit runs per se. Can you point me in the right direction? There is a section for ‘sheds and outbuildings’ - would this be the most appropriate category for my plans? I am worried about including my plans for a rabbit run in a category titled ‘sheds and outbuildings’ since my rabbit run will not house gardening equipment, furniture or off cuts of laminate flooring that will most definitely come in handy “one day", as one might expect to find in a real shed. And neither will my rabbit run include a chest freezer full of stolen pork products from the local abertoir, random rusty parts from a 1985 Ford Cortina or the fetid and decaying corpse of a rat, as one would expect to see in a typical outbuilding. In which category should I include my plans for the rabbit run?

I look forward to receiving your constructive advices.

Kindest regards


_________________________________________________________


From: South Gloucestershire Council
To: Steve Crowley

Dear Mr Crowley

Thank you for your email.

If you would like advice about whether you need planning permission and/ or whether the proposal has Permitted Development rights there is information on the Council website:


You may also find it helpful to ring our contact centre on 01454 868004.

Regards

Flora Finching

_________________________________________________


I then decided to come clean about why I had been causing mischief and generally wasting the councils time, and at the same time, roping our newly elected MP into the argument as well:

To: South Gloucestershire Council
CC: Darcy Headley-Smythe MP

From: Steve Crowley

I’ve copied our new MP to Thornbury and Yate in on this - welcome Mr Headley-Smythe. As a Lib Dem I am a little disappointed you were elected - Steve Webb was actually pretty good at his job. Here’s your chance to prove to me why I was wrong about you.

Thank you for your email - much appreciated, and not at all helpful. Have you ever seen Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film, ‘Brazil'? Or perhaps read any Kafka - 'The Trial' for instance? You either have no idea what I am on about, or a wry smile just crept across your face...

Anyway - thank you so much for your time - please let me explain the raison d’ĂȘtre behind my recent string of emails:

Picture this - It’s a rather pleasant day in the Easter holidays. I have my son with me in my car as we make our way into my place of work, where I am about to give an Easter Revision session to some Year 11 GCSE students in preparation for their exams. I have no child care for my 8 year old son, so he is along for the ride.

On the way, I need to pop to my GP surgery to request some repeat prescriptions for my various and quite interesting medical conditions. I am running a little late. I pull up into the car park - not many people about, plenty of spaces and a nice convenient spot not 10 yards from the GP surgery entrance which is the focus of my attention.

I park on double yellow lines, having considered the following facts:
a) my son will be staying in the car, 
b) my car will not cause any obstruction whatsoever
c) I will be gone not more than 2 minutes
d) For my son’s safety, my car will be in my view at all times as I only need to pop to the foyer of the GP surgery, fill in a quick form and hand over the reception desk.
e) I am a responsible and socially conscious citizen - I recycle, I help out those in need, I teach, I confront people who drop litter (sometimes to my detriment, as one person was quite aggressive towards me and I needed to call the police) inter alia.

I exit my car, make my way to the GP surgery, fill in the requisite form and return to my car - this process has taken approximately 2 minutes. As I return to my car, a Traffic Warden is taking photos of my vehicle (with child inside) and issuing a parking ticket. You can imagine how I felt - 'opportunistic' is only one of many words I would use to describe the Traffic Warden, whose actions are apparently condoned by South Glos Council since my appeal to their better nature fell on deaf ears. 

I mean, I know I was parked on double yellow lines, but I also believe that life is not black and white, there are many grey areas, and laws should be enforced in a similar vein. 

Laws are needed of course, but the Golden Rule of law should always be applied, i.e. that the reason behind the law should always be considered before considering guilt or punishment. So in my case for example, my car was not obstructing anyone or anything and I would have been gone no more than 2 minutes. 

Q: Why are the double yellow lines there in the first place? 
A: Because you want people to park in an orderly fashion when they go off to do their shopping for an hour or so and you don’t want people parking just anywhere and everywhere and causing obstructions to vulnerable members of society or emergency vehicles.

Q: Was my vehicle doing any of these things?
A: No.

Q: So why did I get a parking ticket?
A: Because the local council is a faceless and unaccountable bureaucratic facade which has long since forgotten why it even exists in the first place.

Indeed, Courts of Law often do consider such things. Unfortunately for plebs like me however, it seems that some people employed by my local council (the ones who are given a little bit of punitive power) are not following the spirit of the law, and instead are merely getting their own back on society for having been bullied at school (present company excepted, I am sure).

And so, I paid the £25 fine but feeling that such a miscarriage of justice had taken place against my good self, I decided to dabble in a little ‘civil disobedience’. I feel I have now had more than my £25 worth from South Glos Council and so will bid you a good day. 

Kindest regards.

PS: Oh, and perhaps you’d like to get together with your ‘Parking Enforcement’ compadres in that Kafka-esque nightmare of a Bureaucracy you call your Council Offices and think about how you could go about serving your citizens a little more constructively and compassionately, because I do truly believe that we can turn our community into a paradise on Earth, but it involves being human and working TOGETHER. Not AGAINST honest people trying to go about their busy lives in an effort to make a positive contribution to society.

PPS: I have decided after all, against erecting a Wiccan Temple, or a rabbit run. Please feel free to use my plans. I shan’t be needing them anymore.

___________________________________________________

I think that made my feelings pretty clear and found the whole string of emails cathartic and fun, even if I couldn't exactly claim a 'win'. It was good enough knowing my £25 paid for the fine was put to good use, wasting South Gloucestershires time. And for what it is worth, my local MP did actually try to help but was politely reminded by South Gloucestershire Council that an MP is not allowed to get involved with local government complaints as per Section 11.6 of The Operational Guidance to Local Authorities on Parking Policy and Enforcement issued by the Department of Transport in March 2015

I then received the following email from the delightful and charismatic Flora, in typically dry and impassive style:

From South Gloucestershire Council
To: Steve Crowley

Dear Mr Crowley

Thank you for your email, the content of which is noted.

Regards

Flora

Flora Finching
Departmental Compalints (sic) Representative
Department of Environment and Community Services
South Gloucestershire Council


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