Jottings
Jackson is five-years-old and in the
kindergarten class. His mum and dad
think that he was playing out an heroic
fantasy in which he saves the world by
preventing the bomb from exploding.
Yellow Perils
A motorist who parked on a broken and
faded yellow line in Tower Hamlets was
told by three traffic wardens that he
would not receive a parking ticket
because he was parked where the line
had completely disappeared. He then
received a parking ticket.
His first appeal against the fine was
rejected, but a month later, a council
worker turned up with a pot of yellow
paint and, incredibly, started filling in
the gaps in the line on the road. The
action was caught on CCTV and the
driver submitted the video with his
second appeal, after which the council
back-tracked and cancelled the fine.
was ticketed and fined £110 after she
pulled her car into a bus stop to help her
newborn baby who was choking in the
back seat. Rebecca Moore from
Aylesbury, said her son Riley was, “going
a deep shade of red in the face, his eyes
were bulging and watering, and he was
trying to cough but was struggling.”
She appealed the fine but Harrow
Council rejected her appeal, as did the
London Tribunals. “The law about
stopping in bus stops is exactly the same
everywhere in London,” a council
spokeswoman said. “You can't do it.”
Animal Corner
Eight police officers in five patrol cars
raced to the scene of an incident in
South-West London in June. Their
mission? A dawn raid to arrest a terribly
dangerous dog called Alfie.
In the last 18 months, the same driver
previously successfully appealed two
other parking fines after it was found the
wardens had not followed official
procedures correctly. A courier had complained that the dog
ran towards him and bit him when he
tried to deliver a parcel to Alfie’s owner.
So, our boys in blue took the only
possible action: Alfie was collared under
the Dangerous Dogs Act and taken off to
help police with their enquiries.
And talking of parking, which we were, a
London police officer on maternity leave Perhaps we should mention here that
Alfie is a ten-year-old Yorkshire terrier
who is six inches tall and weighs one
stone. Moreover, his owner claimed that
Alfie didn’t touch the courier who, she
said, just fell over and suffered a graze,
but he insisted he had to go to hospital.
Alfie was returned home after six days
behind bars during which experts from
the Met Police Dog Unit assessed his
“behaviour and temperament.” The
police say they are considering “further
action.” However, it’s good to know that
the forces of law respond in a timely
fashion to urgent calls for help; the
incident was reported to them on June
26 and they arrived to take the suspect
into custody on August 18.
To make it up, perhaps Alfie would like
to be taken to The Picturehouse Central,
a cinema in central London, which has
started special canine-friendly
screenings. Every six weeks, dogs and
their owners are invited to sit together
and watch movies on the silver screen.
Favourites so far include Where Beagles
Dare, Pup Fiction, Star Paws and Jurassic
Bark.
Meanwhile, a lobster caught off North
Berwick near Edinburgh has been spared
the cooking pot because it is coloured
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