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I once parked at a parking meter in the City of Westminster. I did this only once. It was a long time ago. I have never used a parking meter since.
I had a little green minivan. I went there for a specific purpose. It was to carry home something I had bought which was far too large to carry on public transport. I bought the maximum allowed amount of time at the meter. At that time and in that place it was 30 minutes. As I understood the law (I could be wrong) it was an offence to 'feed' a meter. This meant you could not put another coin in when your time had run out. You had to move on. I put my coin in the meter at the same instant as starting a 30 minute timer on my watch.
I arrived back at my van and put my purchase in the back. I got in with just over 2 minutes to spare. I started the engine. I saw a big yellow parking ticket in a plastic bag stuck to the windscreen. I got out and looked at the parking meter. It clearly showed I had two more minutes. I looked for the traffic warden. I ran to one street corner and looked. I ran the other way and looked. There was no traffic warden in sight. I still drove away before the 'Penalty' sign showed in the meter window. I was livid. I refused to pay the fine.
To be able to write out a parking ticket and walk out of sight must have taken a good 5 minutes. The traffic warden must have written out the ticket at least 7 minutes before the meter expired. That Westminster City traffic warden was a liar. He wrote the time of booking on the ticket as 5:30pm - the time the meter would run out: not the time he wrote the ticket.
By so doing, he made Westminster City Council liars. He made the local police, who eventually enforced the fine upon me, perpetrators of injustice. Westminster City Council is not without blame. They employed him. He was acting for them. Therefore they also, by default, lied about my having committed a parking offence. The plain fact remains that I did not commit the offence for which I was fined.
Most people would think that in any case it was not very much. But it was. I was a student at the time. I had very little money. That fine was something I could really have done without. However, from the traffic warden's point of view, somebody with a second hand minivan was unlikely to have the means to do anything about it. He was right. The police did not believe me. They believed their lying traffic warden. I do not know whether traffic wardens received commission on the number of parking tickets they wrote or not. I would not put it past a capitalist state to effect such an incentive. Perhaps the traffic warden had not found any offences that day and was desperate to justify his existence. I do not know. But I do know he was a liar, and a teller of lies which inflicted financial harm on the innocent.
A few years after the minivan parking incident, I had a job in the West End of London. I commuted by train. On my walk from the tube station each morning I use to see a Lamborghini coupe parked down a side road half on the pavement.
Every day on my way home I would see a bright yellow parking ticket stuck to its windscreen. It owner was obviously so rich that the swingeing fine was to him simply the daily cost of parking his car conveniently outside his West End office. I think he would get clamped and towed away today.
The fine, which to me would have been catastrophic, was to him as nothing. One could say that in fact the law did not actually punish him at all.
I am now unemployed. I exist on state welfare. I am struggling to keep an ageing car on the road. Without it I could not function within the society in which I am forced to live.
I am trapped in a yuppie commuter belt. The only practicable source of food is a supermarket which is not realistically accessible other than by car. If I lose the car, I lose the means of getting food. If I lose the car, I lose the means of seeking work beyond walking distance in any direction other than up and down the main rail line.
If therefore, unjustly or otherwise, I were to receive a parking fine or a speeding ticket today, the cost would put me off the road permanently. My punishment would be a permanent driving ban. I would lose mobility, with all the consequences that would bring with it in today's transport-dependent society.
Thus, by using the monetary fine as the instrument of punishment, the law, in effect:
It is obviously and flagrantly anything but justice or equality before the law. The law is therefore undeniably partisan and disreputable and consequently worthy of nobody's respect. If the law is ever to regain my respect, it will first have to become respectable.
This same monetary principle of injustice is also manifested in capitalist taxation and charging systems. For example, the government of the day is desperate to cut road traffic. So how is it proposing to do this? By road tolls. It will certainly cut traffic, but which traffic? The effect is obvious.
This will further exclude and isolate the poor and give the rich clearer roads. Hardly what one could call justice, but then universal justice is hardly of great concern to the government of a capitalist state