Disabled parking badges are for the designated places NOT where the hell you like

[lilmissminx]

Really need a vent! Am sick to death of seeing cars parked in the parent and baby/toddler spaces just because they have a blue badge, and not a child in sight The other way around and you wouldn't hear the end of it about inconsiderate parents etc. I fully agree with the need for the disabled spaces etc, but I don't like having to choose between leaving my baby locked in the car to return the trolley (especially if out of sight) and him getting totally soaked etc if I take him with me.
Disclaimer This is made more annoying for the particular store I am referring to as there are only 2 parent spaces, and more than a dozen disabled badge holder ones. Yet because the parent ones are in between the two sets, they use those and leave all the other badge spaces empty.

That horse sure has some sense of entitlement if she ate all my twiglets. Greedy bitch mare.

Is that the high horse standing in the P&T spaces with or without her foal? Not that you'd drive a mare with her foal, that would be a crazy thing to do.

My mare is 16.1. Is that high enough? I don't think she likes twiglets though.

That's quite a big mare, Exit. I rode a 17.2 horse a couple of times - he was half shire though and had a lovely rolling gait, it was like being on a big rocking horse! He liked Polos, don't know about Twiglets.

Well, I regard the blue badges with a little scepticism. When my mother was dying, it took so long for the blue badge to arrive that she wasn't well enough to be taken out when we got it. On the other hand, there have been rumours of a widespread misuse/ fraudulent obtaining of blue badges. ( this was a few years ago and it is conceivable that abuses may have been tightened up). I remember an acquainatance, who was a doctor, getting a ticket for parking wrongly in the mid 90s and commenting that she would have to get her father, a GP, to sort her a badge, for example. I don't know whether she went through with that.

2 or 3 years later, a co-worker of mine who had a blue badge turned out to have a similar condition to me. I would not have thought it merited a blue badge, and still don't. Neck pain, of an intermittently problematic variety. It was causing me more difficulty than it was her, at that stage; she noticed that I was holding my neck awkwardly and had the grace to blush about the blue badge. She was regularly using a disabled space at work, for convenience, but didn't have any symptoms at that time. I was polite, what else.

I am sure that most people who use the blue badge system do so deservedly, but it is likely that some do not. That's life. I would not choose to park in a disabled space nonetheless out of principle firstly and respect for legal niceties secondly .

As regards parent and child spaces, I would personally appreciate it, likewise,
if they are left for parents and children to use. I find them very convenient, since I have a dashing-off-type toddler, am pregnant and have had poor health in the past year (not neck pain this time). I find it very helpful on the occasions when I use the supermarket to have the extra space and it certainly would be a consideration in choosing where to shop, if I am choosing not to shop online. I think that most people who bag these spaces and are childless are not disabled but are chancers who fancy a convenient parking space and sod everyone else.

I do largely sympathise with the OP. I am sorry she has taken such a bashing and that there has been so much meanness on this thread.

The Disability Right Commission - many of whose members had worked for YEARS on the Motability scheme - had its offices in Camden.
Camden refused to recognise "blue badges" issued by other London boroughs.
So ALL of the DRC commissioners got tickets when they parked where they could for the monthly meetings.
BUT
The Magistrates Court in Camden was not Wheelchair accessible in any way - as required by the laws brought in by the selfsame DRC staff.
SO ALL of the ticket appeals were won on the basis of not being legally enforcable.
The DRC who I was related to used the tickets (by the dozen) to light BBQs every summer.

And to get to the point - Mum and Baby has no legal standing.
Wheelchair etc does
If a supermarket is not leaving enough accessible space for both, more fool the supermarket.

Oh and the "chancers" are people without any claim to priority parking (and certainly no disabled badge) who just roll up and slide into the last parking parent and child space for no good reason. Like our childless neighbours-down-the-road one Saturday.

BINGO

I think I have a full house

P+C space taken by disabled driver
OP having relative with blue badge
blue badges given out willy nilly anyway
Don't want my child getting wet
AND a thread derailment.

What do I win?

How about a free packet of Lemsip?

YAY!!

You get front row seats to watch Spero being stripped of her Blue Badge when her leg grows back.

Not sure all these posters can be genuine. Way too mad. On the blue badge parking thing - we regularly wait for 5-10 minutes for a space in the designated carparks. Don't rememberdoing that when dd was a baby (pre tragically crippled era)

YY, having read back, you also forgot "they all seem to have sports cars as well"

Tutty tut tut - no cheating now!

Oh. and I didn't say blue badges are handed out willy-nilly. I said that I know of a couple of cases where people who effectively admitted they didn't deserve them either had one or claimed they were planning to get one. And that it seems likely that not absolutely everyone who has a badge should strictly have one.

If this sort of thing is continuing, that might be why there is more demand on the parking spaces these days, when people with tragically disabled children are waiting longer for spaces. And also, if these are problems regulating supply of badges, that might be why people who have a blindingly obvious disability appear to be undergoing needless checks. Because other people are abusing the system, and those genuinely in need are paying the price.

I apologise if I appear to be needlessly raising the tone of the debate by making sensible points.

I am very excited about the re growing of my leg. Because of course that must be what is going to happen, as why else would I have to be reinterviewed at public expense every three years?

I do not know of these people who get badges willy nilly. All I know is that when in Lambeth I had to attend two separate interviews. The first was a complete cow who said that as I could get on and off a bus, why on earth did I need a blue badge?

The second bloke was lovely and clearly more sympathetic, the questioning was not particularly rigorous. But I still had to take two days off work for the privilege and was made to feel like a pathetic scrounger.

Why not have a twin track system? People like me who are permanently and seriously disabled should not have to face re assessment every three years, people who are suffering something more short term get six month permit.

That might stop some of the judgmental bollix I have read on here, but maybe to believe that is on a par with believing my leg will grow back.

After reading this thread this morning I went to my local Morrissons on foot too (shock horror!)

Anyway, there was a Police car parked in a P&C for almost an hour before they finally led someone out in handcuffs and chucked him in the back.

I had to wonder what some MNers would make of that

OP. Don't go shopping when it's raining. Problem solved.

Depends on whether said person in handcuffs was a child I suppose.
:)

Can I just say, this has descended into jollity which is all very nice but the initial responses and for quite a way in were what I'd definitely say was lynch mob-ism verging on bullying. It was a bit like, hurrah, we can't be wrong on this one so let's pile in with the worst language and abuse, and everybody struggles to the front to land a few kicks.

I didn't really feel very sorry for the OP and in fact I doubt she's affected by it but I do think she came in for quite a lot of childish abuse from grown women.

yes, Berties right. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.