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"Here I go again"

Long time members may remember a couple of years ago, the saga of
Goatboy vs Ealing District Borough Council.
Long story short - they issued me with a parking ticket on a weekend, when I was parked underneath the sign stating "Mon-Fri 8am to 6pm". I disputed, they said tough, I refused to pay and it dragged on for weeks until a little sub-clause in the law resulted in them having to repay an awful lot of money back to people from the previous 12yrs that they had collected fraudulently.

So this morning I recieve a letter from Tower Hamlets saying because I had failed to pay a parking ticket issued on 5/7, the fine was now £100 for parking in Cheshire Street with an expired time ticket.
Fine.
Except I wasn't in London that day, I was at work.
In Harlow. Using my car for my post round. And the ticket was issued at 11am. In East London.
Work that one out.
Oh it's the correct registration number on the threatening letter, so there's no doubt about that issue.
So Goatboy phones Tower Hamlets to explain only to be met with a tidal wave of indifference and stupidity and the repeated mantra of "Complete the form provided and return it asap".
Don't worry I'll be doing just that m'dear.

So the options are either the traffic warden keyed the wrong license number into his palmtop thing OR somebody is driving around with a duplicate license plate on their car.
Phoned Essex Police to just let them know about a possible identity theft and their response?
"Tower 'Amlets will contact us and we'll liase wiv 'em if they need to"
"Right, so it doesn't bother the police that some 2weeks after a failed terrorist attempt in East London that somebody might be driving around with duplicate license plates in East London?"
"Nah"
"Ok, I've done my bit"

Completing the form and shall be sending with a statement from my area manager saying that on the 5/7 I was at work, with my car when this ticket was issued.
But having been through this exact dance with Ealing, I can predict the outcome, "Sorry sir, your dispute is not deemed to be sufficient to merit the cancellation of the fine"
And it'll go for another 5 months.
*sigh*

That doesn't change the fact that there are hundreds of fake license plates in circulation. In fact I saw a documentary a couple of months ago based around my area showing duplicate license plate factories in Ilford and Dagenham (East London by the way.)

It's quite possible that terrorists (or criminals in general) would use duplicate licence plates because if its details are logged at the scene of a crime or if it's used in an attack, the details will lead to an unconnected, innocent civilian and won't be traced back to the actual perpetrator...

if you didn't realise straight away that this is what Goatboy was referring to... I... I...

Goatboy wrote:
> "Right, so it doesn't bother the police that some 2weeks after a
> failed terrorist attempt in East London that somebody might be driving
> around with duplicate license plates in East London?"
> "Nah"
> "Ok, I've done my bit"

What's it got to do with the terrorist attacks? There are hundreds of cars with duplicate license plates and they're not all terrorists. Loads of cars round Ilford, Stratford don't even have number plates so I'm not suprised the police aren't worried.

Goatboy wrote:
> And I'm bloody praying nothing happens and I have 20 SWAT-style
> machine-gun armed coppers screaming at me to come outside.

I was in Victoria today and there were a couple of popo wandering around with MP5s and a belt of magazines. And it got me thinking, if I tripped over near one of them, and they thought I was lunging for them, how many bullets do you reckon they'd unload into me before realising their mistake? 60? Scary stuff.

You can't drive into central london without passing through an automated numberplate recognition camera.

Depending on where their boundaries are, there might be an easy way for police to check whether it really was a car with your numberplate.

Edit: Assuming you can get the information through the waves of indifferent desk-jockeys.


It'd also be a good reason for a terrorist to have fake plates, since whenever a 'marked' numberplate passes through one such camera, a rapid response unit haul ass faster than a fashion-conscious chav chasing a clown pendant.

Yeah i would contact the local cops near Cheshire Street and you should inform them that essex police did crap all.

Yeah probably.
Normally I'd just do battle with Tower Hamlets and be done with it, but my leftwing paranoia is wondering just how the hell my license plate turns up in the Bethnal Green area on a day when I'm at work.
And I'm bloody praying nothing happens and I have 20 SWAT-style machine-gun armed coppers screaming at me to come outside.

I was amazed at Harlow Police and their "Yeah, nothing we can do mate" attitude, and when I said about the area being involved in the business two weeks ago, there was an audible shrug.
Morons.

It might be a good idea if you can to contact the police in the area of where the ticket was issued, although you shouldn't really have to but just incase essex police do feck all.

That's a bit crap.

Especially since they have TV adverts tellling you "to watch out for identity fraud yada yada".

I read in the paper the other day, this guys car had broken down on a dual carriageway, so he pushed it off the road and went to go and call the breakdown service.

Upon returning, he'd been issued with a ticket and was forced to pay £100, it took 6 months for them to finally cancel his fine and apologise.

The transport/traffic/parking laws are just a load of ass, full stop.

Same applies to speed cameras, duplicate number plates can score you 3 points for something you never even did.