row in parking lot with head teacher! (longish)

[sansouci]

There is next to no parking by dd's school. Everyone complains but for the moment, nothing has actually been done about it, except for the police coming round & taking photos of pick-up & drop-off times. The yummy-mummies make it even worse with SUVs but anyway.

Yesterday when I went to pick up dd from school, I had to double park. I left my warning lights flashing to show that I was coming back soon. Unfortunately, dd didn't come to the car easily & then I got chatting with another mummy, as you do, forgetting completely about my precarious parking place.

On returning to the car, a group of angry women were clustered in front of the school & of course I apologised profusely to the one or two I had blocked.

One woman made a rather bitchy comment as I was charging by & when I saw her heading for her car a few minutes later, I asked her what she felt could be done about the parking. It's not my problem, she replied shortly. We got into an argument, which escalated, as things do on a Friday afternoon. She said, I'm a teacher at this school! to which I retorted, My daughter is a student at this school & if you're part of the staff, you should care about the parking problem! I wasn't rude, but I was very angry with her & she was angry with me.

I eventually roared off, furious and shaking, cursing the woman aloud. Do you know that silly woman? I asked DD. Yes, she said, she's the head teacher. Oh SH*T, I thought, Now I've done it.

How can I face her again? She'll be dd's teacher one day. I think I was right to be cross but I was at fault & certainly on the defensive. What do you think I can do?

whoops, I mean they are more shit than they were before parental choice.

People not going to local schools is not just because of parental choice. I know several teachers who tell stories of parents coming in to threaten others because someone has the audacity to discipline their precious demon.....teachers exercise choice as well. but thats a different thread.

and on the more tax thing....Grr dont get me started - the govt pisses away enough of my tax at the moment...

who said anything about more tax? a road usage tax would be entirely avoidable

So how are people supposed to go shopping and go to work? You appear to be hopelessly naive, I'm afraid, SB.

logic, I said they need to cut car use. I didn't say they should ban cars.

Over a long period of time things would adjust, and yes, adjustment may be painful but it would probably be rather a lot less painful than the levels of traffic and parking problems we will have if we do nothing (not to mention global warming). I am not naive.

Being constructive, do you want to know what I think an actual solution to our gridlock and environmental problems would be (and not just a way to punish people until the symptoms are disguised)?

The government needs to:

a) spend every penny of fuel duty and road tax on researching and developing clean-fuel cars.

b) stop building huge "out-of-town" industrial and residential estates that don't have any infrastructure to support them.

c) eradicate stamp duty so that people can afford to live near their workplaces.

When everyone can work, shop and educate their children within a mile of their homes, then car use will go down. Can't see it happening though.

But it's not just about the pollution: it's about the gridlock. Also the cleanest cars still pollute. I agree about out of town shopping centres. abolishing stamp duty would simply result in house prices going up though (they are currently more or less determined by what people can pay - if there was no stamp duty they would pay more).

As I say, we need radical action to get people out of their cars. Once measure are in place, other things would naturally compensate: jobs in expensive housing areas would have to pay more etc.

Stamp duty is a tiny amount of the purchase of a house. As Senora says, abolition would simply up the price of houses by the amount of stamp duty abolished - exactly as MIRAS did. House prices would have to plummet before people's house-buying habits changed.

Parking briefly outside someone's empty driveway is not the same as barricading someone in their house though, is it? It's quite different. They can still go out, drive around, park. The only awful and terrible thing that has happened is that they may, temporarily, have to park a bit further away. I do hope that all those who think it is immoral and wicked to occasionally park accross an empty drive never, ever park outside someone else's house, because they are doing exactly the same thing as anyone who parks over an empty drive is doing - preventing someone else parking right up close to their front door. That's why I can't see this as something very dreadful to do. It may or may not be illegal, but I can't see it as this dreadful, bad thing. If someone's parked outside my house, I might feel a bit grumpy that I have to lug my shopping and kids a bit further, but there you are.
I do have to add, I don't spend my time driving around, waiting to spot areas with dropped kerbs. Probably done it about twice in my life, tbh.

sigh The cleanest cars available NOW pollute. There are several interesting technologies about which don't but they need investment.

Disagree about the house prices, that's something different. We would move tomorrow to be nearer dh's job. The only thing stopping us is the vast amount of stamp duty that we would have to pay upfront and not in 20 years time. If house prices went up then we could still sell ours and buy another because they would go up by the same amount so no problem and we wouldn't be losing any money.

Do you honestly think that companies would pay people more? Not a chance. They would simply outsource to other countries where labour is cheaper. More money flowing out of the country and people would lose their jobs, have to rely on the welfare state and stop purchasing in the shops. Instant recession. Nightmare.

We have bikes but the trip to school is all uphill and about 3 miles. Not on with a baby and 2 young kids. Why should I be penalised for not living near public transport? I also need to drive dd1 over a mile to her bus stop - I will not let her walk on a narrow winding road with no footpath before 7.30am. Lots of people think it's all very eco - friendly in the country - I did before we moved here. It isn't. The only practical way to get anywhere round here is by car.

I have to say that I think its not practicle to expect all schools to provide parking, I know the original post was a private school but for council funded schools where is the money to come for that? Should the children give up their playgrounds and playing fields for carparks?

I do drop my kids off in the car on the days I am working even though I live not too far away, simply because I don't have time to walk back home to get car and carry on to work. I do not expect to park right in front of the school though! Double parking anywhere near a school is bl**dy dangerous is it not?

It drives me mad at one of the schools I pass to see loads of cars parked right beside the crossing on double yellows. Both the school and the police have tried their best to stop them but they just keep parking there.

I can't see why they can't park around the corner a little away from the school, its a victorian built school in the middle of town. Should they sacrifice their little playground for parent parking?

My ds has just started kindergarten here in the usa at our local state school. The school that he goes to has a parent volunteer run system of dropping the kids off and ushering them into the school gates so that the parents don't have to park. It's super efficient and really works well. When I was in London, we lived across the street from The Japanese School (a private school for japanese kids). They had a similar system and it worked brilliantly and even though we were directly across from the school, we never ever had a problem with parking or traffic jams. I suggested to the head at my ds's nursery (also a state primary school) that she try a similar system to avoid all the problems with parking in the area. She said "oh we could never do something like that at a state school, we'd never get the parents to do it." Well ds goes to a state school here in the usa and the parents DO do it. I think it just takes someone to organize it.

Well, if we are going to talk about sustainable transport policy, may I mention something I have posted about before?

You can get rid of traffic jams, reduce accidents and get more people on to cheap, reliable public transport. That's been done. In South Yorkshire in the 1980s. Saved millions of pounds and thousands of lives entirely by carrot, not stick. Public transport was so good, and so cheap, that people voluntarily reduced their car journeys to those they actually needed to make.

Unfortunately Maggie got rid of the Metropolitan boroughs in order to get rid of Ken Livingstone in London. So this incredibly successful scheme was stopped. And now the only solutions we are offered are all stick, no carrot, and completely unproven. Bring back Fair's Fare and it would be sorted, both in urban areas and the countryside.

Edam your post has reminded of the "Can't Pay, Won't Pay" thing of the 1980's.

I remember my best friend getting on a bus and saying it to the driver, whose prompt response was "Get off my bus"!

it would be nice edam, but since they have sold off the bus services it would incredibly expensive. In order to fund it there would need to be some kind of stick.

logic - I don't really understand your argument about stamp duty: you could actually get a mortgage that would cover it now. But then I am resigned to never owning a house.

As for new pollution free technologies - yes, they are possible, but at least 10 years down the line if well funded. If we put all road dudty into that now, who pays for road maintenance etc in the meantime?

Bless you, SB Fuel duty doesn't pay for road maintainance as far as I can tell. Until you own a house, I don't think you will really be able to understand what I'm trying to point out.

Has my favourite thread died

Someone dared to park across my drive today so I fetched the shotgun and peppered the side of the car with lead pellets.

ks - they sound like old lady ailments don't they

Lol at LadyDragon

Was it Aloha

Aloha - I do take your point that dropped kerbs effectively give people with drives a personal slice of the public highway, BUT since dropped kerbs and drive access is generally narrower than a space required for parking, do you not think that owners of drives should receive a rebate on their road tax as thay are paying to accommodate their vehicle on their own land? [innocent not-stirring-at-all-icon].
Or that we non-drive-owners should pay more road tax as our cars are always on the road?