U - Turn Too Far As Government Scraps Ban On Hospital Parking Rip Off

[MrPin]

I avoided hospital parking charges by turning up for my operation on a motorbike!

[Dorkins]

So a completely trivial and instantly forgettable amount then? Are parking charges at NHS hospitals really the first thing anyone here would spend money on abolishing if there was some spare? Just why would anyone expect the taxpayer to pick up their parking bill, particularly if the consequence would be a lack of parking space?

A place to park - £2 ph. A four-hour wait in A&E while in severe pain - priceless.

(I am aware that some believe the reason for the charges is to provide a generous profit margin rather than to help fund the NHS. This is a separate problem, and one that would need solving if real. Similarly, their phone charges might need looking at.)

Just think about what you're paying for. You're paying £2 per h to occupy 12sqm or 17p per sqm per h. Say you were renting a 100sqm house for £500 a month, that works out to 0.6p per sqm per h. You are paying 30 times as much for a small patch of tarmac as you pay for a house with windows and a roof and a working boiler. Never mind that this is land owned by the state, never mind that nobody wants to go to the hospital and only goes because they have to.

It's exactly the same as the Starbucks effect. £2 or £3 is a crazy amount to pay for some coffee dissolved in hot water and bears no reflection to the cost of what you are actually consuming. The price you are paying is pure rent. Overpay for coffee here, overpay for parking there, overpay at the chip shop and the cinema and on the train ticket and then wonder where all the money goes.

[acidreign]

Brighton have a variation on the "no change given" parking meters. Lets say parking is free from 6 pm until 8 am. You arrive at the meter at 5:40 pm and put in the minimum £1 for a one hour stay--no change given. They extend your time to 8:40 am the next day. Utterly useless to the driver but it appears Brighton are getting ready to defend some law suits for charging for an hour when the customer only wants 20 minutes.

Are you referring to hospital parking here RB?

Reason I ask is that about 3 years ago I used to live in Brighton with a BN1 postcode. If you know the area you will know very well what a disaster it is to park around there (within 5 min walk to the train station). Anyway, the quote above also applies to city parking which I thought was rather useful. Especially when I had 'eventually' got the car parked up, it saved me getting up too early to top up the next morning if my ex-girlfriend and I were out that night

For any free parking I had to leave my car over past Grand Parade which was a right royal pain. Then after 1-1/2 years the residents parking finally come through, 2 months before we were due to leave... Typical.

[Guest Noodle]

Just think about what you're paying for. You're paying £2 per h to occupy 12sqm or 17p per sqm per h. Say you were renting a 100sqm house for £500 a month, that works out to 0.6p per sqm per h. You are paying 30 times as much for a small patch of tarmac as you pay for a house with windows and a roof and a working boiler. Never mind that this is land owned by the state, never mind that nobody wants to go to the hospital and only goes because they have to.

It's exactly the same as the Starbucks effect. £2 or £3 is a crazy amount to pay for some coffee dissolved in hot water and bears no reflection to the cost of what you are actually consuming. The price you are paying is pure rent. Overpay for coffee here, overpay for parking there, overpay at the chip shop and the cinema and on the train ticket and then wonder where all the money goes.

Good post.

Your intuitive analysis of the cost of convenience living in that post is superb. As soon as you break away from this dependency, suddenly you have savings.

I learnt much from a friend that owns a restaurant. A 60p cup of coffee actually costs him 2p to make. He likes selling coffee. I got it down to bulk buying, bulk cooking, freezing, everything possible to maintain a comfortable standard of living without spending more than about £30 a week now. Although it does help living where I do, utility costs are about 20% of those in the UK and housing is extremely cheap and without council tax.

[dissident junk]

I don't know about other regions, but part of our problem up here is that hospitals were sited and built at a time when there were no cars. The upshot of this is that there is simply not enough space around our two major local hospitals for decent-sized carparks and they are next to now extremely traffic-heavy A roads (which would have once been the main road into town and not so jammed up with traffic).

The other thing is that car parking and the cost is becoming an issue for low-paid hospital workers, as staff carparks are severely over capacity as well. My MIL, who works in the NHS, says that sometimes staff, including herself, can't get a spot in the staff carpark and there are no other off road spots, they end up having to park in the visitor's carpark and pay, then check every hour to see if something has come up in the staff carpark. Sometimes, one or two of them have ended up having to pay for ten hours of hospital car parking in a day and it has worked out at as being the equivalent of three hours of that day's worked wage.

It is easy to say "car pool", but that's not so easy when your job is shift-based.

[Tiger Woods?]

Which just goes to show that Maggie was right - there is no such thing as society.

[Dorkins]

Good post.

Your intuitive analysis of the cost of convenience living in that post is superb. As soon as you break away from this dependency, suddenly you have savings.

I learnt much from a friend that owns a restaurant. A 60p cup of coffee actually costs him 2p to make. He likes selling coffee. I got it down to bulk buying, bulk cooking, freezing, everything possible to maintain a comfortable standard of living without spending more than about £30 a week now. Although it does help living where I do, utility costs are about 20% of those in the UK and housing is extremely cheap and without council tax.

Yep. Convenience living is actually very inconvenient because it's so expensive, so you end up having to work harder to make more money so you can pay all the little £2 and £3 rents everybody constantly tries to stick you with. Living in Britain is like being a ripped-off tourist every day of your life.

It saddens me that the state is becoming one of the biggest rent extracters of all: £78 for a passport, £20 to renew your driving licence, £5.60 a day to use the state-franchised monopoly bus company in Slough (not where I live, just an example), council tax equal to an extra month's rent each year. Many of these things are not really avoidable costs and they are being charged at an extortionate rate.

Edited July 22, 2010 by Dorkins

[Realistbear]

Latest scam is charging people to pick up/set down outside of airports. Several are now doing it, the latest one is Belfast:

UTV news

Hmmm ... your pavement idea sounds pretty good. Best start buying up the prime bits now before canny investors get in there.

At Terminal 2 (IIRC) at LHR a sign giving directions to the unwary for drop off turned out to be the road into the jaws of a rip off--short term parking lot. Kit--I said to myself and promptly began backing up onto the main road. Another driver was doing the same thing. A large Merc pulled in behind me as I was reversing and gave me dirty looks until he realised he had been conned two and also put into reverse.

Thieving scum.

"People should not fear their government buy their government should fear the people."

Time for some social reaction to these scams I think. Such as the lynching of the clampers (well maybe not lynching but perhaps tazering in the sensitive regions), 10 gauge elephant gun for the speed cameras and so forth.

Edited July 22, 2010 by Realistbear

[Timak]

It is easy to say "car pool", but that's not so easy when your job is shift-based.

Indeed, in order to "encourage" staff to use "green" methods of transport to work by wife's car parking costs have increased 10 fold in 9 years!

The car park is a 10 minute walk from her lab and as her line of work involves mutli-day experiments she often needs to pop in and out of work at odd hours. Using anything other than a car is impossible but it ends up costing a fortune.

Also whilst filling up the car today it struck me that the £65 it cost me is a days post tax income for someone on £20k a year.

If you live 25 miles away from where you work you'll be filling up every 8 days or so, add in £3 a day to park and that is £89 every 8 working days. Quick calculation - £2670 a year on petrol and parking.

I can see why people don't bother!

[Alan B'Stard MP]

£100 million a year works out to 1/1000th of the NHS yearly budget of £100 billion. It seems an easy way to win votes by just saying 'make it free'.

But I'm sure the Tories see it as a place businessmen can make a profit.. and best of all taking an aspect of life and turning it into an economic transaction. With rents, taxes, middlemen etc..

I always find it an assuming correlation in internet-UK-ship-fcukery that those most in favour of printing money are those most opposed to the ideals of conservatism.

The day you decide to print aa3 is the day I choose to find my own money and utter a ya-boo-sucks to you.

[Dubai]

Time for some  social reaction to these scams I think.  Such as the lynching of the clampers (well maybe not lynching but perhaps tazering in the sensitive regions), 10 gauge elephant gun for the speed cameras and so forth.

It's started..... http://www.speedcam.co.uk/index2.htm

[theonlywayisdown]

This is the part where Cameron says we're all going to have help pay for the nation's debts...

[council dweller]

Wife works at the NHS sharp end.(large hospital) She pays 2,20 per day to park.

Some park at the park and ride then use a bicycle, a folding bicycle seems to work quite well.

Guess what, the local council are thinking about charging people who don't use the bus!

Seems like an end game, these charges will swallow an increasing percentage of our incomes leaving less and less on all else.

[Guest Noodle]

Wife works at the NHS sharp end.(large hospital) She pays 2,20 per day to park.

Some park at the park and ride then use a bicycle, a folding bicycle seems to work quite well.

Guess what, the local council are thinking about charging people who don't use the bus!

Seems like an end game, these charges will swallow an increasing percentage of our incomes leaving less and less on all else.

I wouldn't bother owning a car again in the UK.

It's only a small country anyway, can hire when really needed, home delivery of everything available now.

I realize many people need the things. Hey CD, what about getting the missus a bike licence, good excuse to get that SV1000S.

[Nationalist]

I feel that if we all invested in a small can of superglue we could turn this country into a much nicer place. The French don't have wheelclamping or petty charging because they can't see a padlock or coin slot without wanting to "mend" it. Minor civil disobedience can pay big dividends.

I carry in my car the unlisted mobile phone number of a man on a bike who owns a petrol-powered angle-grinder.

[council dweller]

I wouldn't bother owning a car again in the UK.

It's only a small country anyway, can hire when really needed, home delivery of everything available now.

I realize many people need the things. Hey CD, what about getting the missus a bike licence, good excuse to get that SV1000S.

Still got two old vehicles, we work in opposite directions and hours sometimes overlap. Both are maintenance free!

Wife and bikes don't go together, she's no sense of the danger of the things.

Should be able to buy a bike at any time, just need a bit of a shove. Considering Kymco 125, Honda CBF 600 etc.

[Guest Noodle]

Still got two old vehicles, we work in opposite directions and hours sometimes overlap. Both are maintenance free!

Wife and bikes don't go together, she's no sense of the danger of the things.

Should be able to buy a bike at any time, just need a bit of a shove. Considering Kymco 125, Honda CBF 600 etc.

Suzuki GSX 600F, looks good, goes well.

[council dweller]

Suzuki GSX 600F, looks good, goes well.

I'm sure it is but CBF 600 would be better for my 10 mile commute. Would do the odd carefree ride to the coast too.

[Realistbear]

Skoda named as best manufacturer in consumer poll

Skoda was once the butt of motoring humour, a car with the acceleration of an asthmatic tortoise, which wags said came in only one colour - rust.

But it has confounded its critics and been named as the best car manufacturer in a consumer survey published today.

The accolade awarded to the Czech manufacturer by Which? has completed the reversal in the company’s fortunes since it was taken over by Volkswagen in 1991.

Now Skoda even outshines its not only VW itself, but also the German car maker’s prestige marque, Audi.

Bit off topic I knwo, but waddya goin do?

[Realistbear]

I feel that if we all invested in a small can of superglue we could turn this country into a much nicer place. The French don't have wheelclamping or petty charging because they can't see a padlock or coin slot without wanting to "mend" it. Minor civil disobedience can pay big dividends.

I carry in my car the unlisted mobile phone number of a man on a bike who owns a petrol-powered angle-grinder.

I wonder how you could "repair" a clamper's vehicle?

Perhaps our culture has been so watered down now that there is no single group large enough to carry off effective civil disobedinece?

Hang on............................

[Guest Noodle]

Skoda named as best manufacturer in consumer poll

Skoda was once the butt of motoring humour, a car with the acceleration of an asthmatic tortoise, which wags said came in only one colour - rust.

But it has confounded its critics and been named as the best car manufacturer in a consumer survey published today.

The accolade awarded to the Czech manufacturer by Which? has completed the reversal in the company’s fortunes since it was taken over by Volkswagen in 1991.

Now Skoda even outshines its not only VW itself, but also the German car maker’s prestige marque, Audi.

Bit off topic I knwo, but waddya goin do?

Pre-WWII, weren't Skoda the biggest manufacturing concern in the world?

[Nationalist]

I wonder how you could "repair" a clamper's vehicle?

Perhaps our culture has been so watered down now that there is no single group large enough to carry off effective civil disobedinece?

Hang on............................

A true hero of the revolution would superglue a clamp on their own car and then claim that's how they found it. Then rent another car at the clamper's expense until they manage to get the clamp off.

You're unlikely to find a clamper's vehicle unattended, but if you did the door locks might need mending, or some quick-setting foam up the tail pipe would result in a very expensive repair bill.

[Guest Noodle]

A true hero of the revolution would superglue a clamp on their own car and then claim that's how they found it. Then rent another car at the clamper's expense until they manage to get the clamp off.

You're unlikely to find a clamper's vehicle unattended, but if you did the door locks might need mending, or some quick-setting foam up the tail pipe would result in a very expensive repair bill.

How about wheel clamp style hub caps? Same theory as inflatable decoy tanks.

[Nationalist]

How about wheel clamp style hub caps? Same theory as inflatable decoy tanks.

I believe there is at least one model of Range Rover which can sink down over its wheels when parked, "to allow ladies to alight", according to the company.

This would also prevent car removal since removal firms are paranoid about damaging vehicles and will only lift a car if they can attach units to all four wheels. They generally won't touch a car that has wide wheels, mudflaps or anything that might get damaged in the lift, since the contract they sign with the cops says they pay all damage claims.

[Realistbear]

I believe there is at least one model of Range Rover which can sink down over its wheels when parked, "to allow ladies to alight", according to the company.

This would also prevent car removal since removal firms are paranoid about damaging vehicles and will only lift a car if they can attach units to all four wheels. They generally won't touch a car that has wide wheels, mudflaps or anything that might get damaged in the lift, since the contract they sign with the cops says they pay all damage claims.

I wonder how much by way of "admin" fees the Police charge the clampers for being given free reign to imprison drivers and extort money from them on the spot?