Aside from the fact that Councillor Richard Kingstone has done absolutely nothing to assist with, or bring about the recent enforcement (as shown above) by the police on cars being in pedestrian areas. Kingstone asserts that the Police are ‘now taking action’. He knows full well that the police have no intentions of regularly keeping this up. It is a one off event until the noise around this issue builds up again. Police strategy involves a quick blast of enforcement on an issue causing them bother, before they move on and ignore it for a bit. All in the hope that enough people will be aware of the actions they took and stop being naughty.
Of course, everyone knows it doesn’t work that way. There are too many special entitled self serving people in this town and across the country that simply don’t care and will never follow any rules because ‘why should they’. Rarely do these awful people come up against any pressure to change their habits from regular people, who rather hope that the police might do something about them consistently and regularly. The reason we have entitled law breakers is simply because the police have no inclination to do anything about them.
Or course, the pedestrian area in Tamworth is often complained about on social media, by keyboard ‘experts’ who lack even the basic knowledge on the matter. Those that complain Market Street has become a car park, ignore the fact that the area is only pedestrianised at certain times. It has been like that for a very very long time. No-one used to moan about this until food delivery service drivers started parking outside the restaurants to collect orders. Naturally the aforementioned entitled people took it as their cue to park outside too, because they are special of course.
The first sign people ignore is this one:
This is just before you go past Wetherspoons further into Bolebridge Street. It’s quite clear isn’t it. Unless you’re loading, a bus or a taxi then stay out. Entitled people ignore this and carry on, because that’s what entitled people do.
The second sign and the most misunderstood and ignored by everyone is this one:
Now, let’s not forget you only see this sign on the entrance to George Street as a driver if you’re a taxi, a bus, loading for a business or you completely ignored the first sign because you’re entitled. Let’s face it, entitled people are rarely the sharpest tool in the box, and if they ignored the first sign they’re not going to understand this one even if they see it.
The sign states, you cannot drive vehicles up George Street with an exception for Monday’s Wednesday’s Thursday’s Friday’s and Sundays if you happen to be loading for a business on those days from 3pm untill 11am. Loading surprise surprise includes takeaways giving their drivers orders. Tuesday and Saturday are still no vehicles. Now, it isn’t the clearest of signs, but let’s not forget that you shouldn’t even be seeing that sign if you weren’t meant to go past the first one. Delivery drivers and businesses that offer takeaway food know their rights and their drivers are perfect well within those rights to collect their orders.
See that little sign at the bottom with the ‘At any time’. Well that is the clincher, it means no waiting (i.e parking) at any time. Entitled people naturally ignore that anyway and takeaway drivers sometimes take the Mick and stay there waiting for orders instead of picking up those ready to go and moving on (wondering why they get tickets). Clueless people get themselves in a tizz on Facebook because they don’t understand that loading is not the same as parking, let alone the actual restrictions in force anyway.
It gets slightly more complicated when you know that the police will only deal with a vehicle driving up that street if it is moving, for anyone parked up and not loading, it’s down to the civil traffic wardens to hoof them off, and they get abused by entitled people when they do. It’s also a one way just to top everything off, cars are not allowed to come out back the same way.
Fact is, this whole thing is a huge deal to people who get very upset to see cars parked outside of the takeaways even if they’re legitimately there. People complain about the bollards being down when they are legitimately down to enable legimate loading. A few entitled people make the situation worse, speeding up the road as if they own the place, and they are the ones who should be dealt with, but they rarely will be other than the few examples the police like to crow about on Facebook.
Unless Staffordshire County Council shut off the entire area to traffic (impractical for buses taxis shops and delivery takeaways), or there’s a consistent police presence dealing with the entitled people of this world, then this situation is never going to go away. Bollards just won’t cut it on their own, despite people identifying them as the be all and end all. Don’t expect the entitled people to change their ways either, that ship sailed years ago.
