CAR PARKING

 a wee red car Originally uploaded by PhylB

I know I have ranted about it before but it just baffles me why the people in charge on NHS car parks are so blinkered. There are two solutions - the black one and the white one. The default is black, if that doesn't work, they try white, if people get angry, they revert to black... NO!!!! It started up at Yorkhill where for years you couldn't get parked if you needed to take your kid to casualty or if you were in labour. The car park was one of the only free ones in the West End, you see, so was used by shoppers, workers and everyone and his dog. So they introduced parking charges when Labour were in power which caused anger meltdown as people objected to parking tickets received when their parking ticket ran out because their NHS appointment was delayed. People objected to fines because they couldn't psychically work out how many hours to put on the meter when going in to have a baby. So when the SNP came to power the first thing they did was to abolish Labour's parking charges - and three guesses what??? Now you can't get parked when you go for an ante-natal appointment - d'oh! What is so hard about coming up with another suggestion? There are many. They employ a wee man to operate the gate who asks to see your appointment card, for example (or your kid in the back seat with the broken arm, split head?) Not rocket science. Maybe they don't want the expense of an employee. How about my idea number two - when I joined the National Trust they gave me a sticker to display on my vehicle allowing me to park for free in their car parks. Maybe when I get my first scan at the maternity, they could send a car sticker valid until my due date plus ten days? There must be countless ways to keep the NHS parking free and more or less restrict it to those they actually want to be parking there, surely.