April 20, 2011

Horse 1177 - Disabled Parking Cheats

One particular Saturday morning whilst in the carpark of a certain supermarket, I encountered a lurid orange notice which had fallen off of someone's car which read - Laziness Is Not A Disability.
I really love the idea of this. Although I don't have anyone in my family who suffers from a disability, it really gets my hackles up to see people parking in places that have been specifically set aside for those who are less mobile.

Suffice to say that I found a deeply amusing sense of joy and schadenfreude when this same car which was parked in that spot without a Mobility Parking Permit, encountered the wrath of the parking inspectors and had it's wheels clamped - Score!

Yesterday I saw something in Mosman equally disturbing. There was a red Jaguar XKR with a terribly pretentious number plate "JEDI" on it, which also bore a  Mobility Parking Permit.
Admittedly it is possible that the Permit was obtained legitimately, however I tend to doubt the likelihood of someone with genuine mobility issues stepping into and out of a very low slung sports car; especially condsidering that the owner of the vehicle was a man who was more orange than the contents of a Fanta can and was running to some vitally important business meeting.
Again I love the sense of justice that someone had, when on my way back from lunch the car had a message on an A4 sheet taped to the windscreen which said "Disability, claim you have. Lying I think you are." and a picture of the the ancient and revered Jedi Master Yoda underneath.
I sense balance is being restored to the force.

Life is already difficult enough for those people who have a disability of one sort or another. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean that it's not there; for that reason I think that a tremendous amount of restraint should be shown, because you simply don't know people's circumstances. However, when it is obvious that people are abusing the system, then I think that we should start brandishing our collective pointing finger of shame and say "SHAME ON YOU".

Now if I could just do something about the poxy BMWs and Mercs with those permits... there seems to be an inordinate amount of "disabled" people in Mosman. Well, people who have the permits anyway.

1 comment:

Rob West said...

Very good post, something I can relate to strongly, I am disabled and need disabled parking bays.
I used to have stickets that had a tick list on "reasons you're a twat" "barking in a disabled bay with no badge"