Author: April F. Ool
Council To ‘Rationalise’ Car Parks And Issue 4×4 To Every Islander
Tuesday, 1st April, 2008 at 11:57 am, Isle of Wight
Following the news from the government of the release of £325m from a PFI, the Isle of Wight Council has decided to take a novel approach to the problem of it’s ropey roads. During a long, late night session last night a majority of Tory councillors voted in the measures.
“We’ve decided to think outside the box on this one,” enthused Joe Duckworth, “it seemed too obvious to spend the money on getting the roads fixed, so one of my think-tanks came up with some brilliant ideas.” He continued, “It’s a multi pronged approach - We’ll issue a 4×4 to every Islander, restructure the car parks and end up with tons of cash that we can use to replenishing the Councils financial reserves that have been running a little low of late.”
Ms Carz Furall presented the detail, “We’ve now adopted the issue of 4×4 as standard practice. We’ve tried it at the upper echelons of the council and it’s been very successful. Next stage of the roll out is to the people of the Island.”
Ms Furall explained how it would work with Island visitors, “The holiday makers aren’t here for long enough for it to have a notable damaging effect on their cars from the ever deteriorating roads, but year around use like the Islanders would have, would destroy normal cars - hence the 4×4 idea.”
Larger car parks
“To encourage more compact parking, we’re going to close quite a number of car parks around the Island - roughly half of them. Some of the current car parks will be rebuilt into large facilities,” Steve Buynone, in charge of the scheme at the council.
He continued, “It’s too inefficient having small local car parks, we’ve decided to close those and have a number of larger car parks scattered around the Island. OK there may be a bit of adjusting as people learn to get use to parking miles from their homes … or indeed places of work, but the buses that’s we’re laying on should sort that out.”
When questioned if this was the right thing for the Island, Buynone explained, “We’ve carried out an extensive public consultation, and got the answers that we wanted are evaluating the results - they’re looking favorable.”
Although precise plans of how this will be implemented weren’t disclosed to the councillors who voted for it — “We felt it best not to burden the poor things with the details,” came the official response — it’s emerged that many of these car parks are so large, that they won’t be able to fit on a single level.
Many of these will be multi story car parks, but the council official insisted that this wasn’t important, “It’s about improving the standard of parking, not the number of tiers in the car park,” insisted Peter Blenkensthop, the councils new parking Tsar.
Fight for it
Those who feel that it’s important that they be allowed to park outside their houses, Buynone suggested that they work on presenting a case as to why they should have a parking place instead of their neighbour.
“It’s good to bring in a more competitive approach to parking. There’s no right to having a parking space near you, you know. If the case they make is good enough, they might be lucky enough to get one.”
The master plan
Leader of the Council, David Pugh, detailed the next stage of the plan, “We’ve also decided to get with the kids. We listened to the words of Jack Tupac Pennington and decided to invest long term in horses … phasing out the 4×4 - that’s an important part of our Eco-Island vision.”
Not every one is convinced that this is the right approach. Arnold Pro-Test told us, “It’s ridiculous that the council are buying 4×4’s, just so they can phase them out in favour of the horses - all in order to carry out an objective of Eco-island.”
The right thing?
This threw us into a dilemma dear readers - is this approach right or wrong?
We put our concerns and questions to officials at the council, who explained to us very slowly, in words of one syllable, that they were right, and that we shouldn’t go around bothering our pretty little heads about it.
PS. As much as some people might like to think this article is true, you’ll see it was published before noon on 1st April 2008 by author, April F. Ool. Hence it is NOT true.
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April 1st, 2008 at 12:07 pm
this post was just in time - 3 minutes before midday.
Wiki entry
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i expect as usual most newspapers have joined in the day’s japery.
the mail’s is very funny but many readers haven’t realised the date!!
Daily Mail
April 1st, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Great stuff, April.
Get rid of Sal and Simon…they’re holding you back.
Now, was the golf club stuff real or not?
April 1st, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Did anyone see the flying penguins on BBC this morning?
April 1st, 2008 at 12:42 pm
here’s a Reuters round-up of the day’s newspaper humour.
there was also an amusing link on the google search engine page
April 1st, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Another fantastic ground-breaking initiative for the island! A network of brand new, state of the art car parks will have perfect parking outcomes for the next generation of parkers, equipping them for the 21st century. The sallied ranks of the the properly parked can only attract the investment so desperately needed by the island.
And to those flat earthers who say that small, community car parks provide the best parking environment - you’ll be saying that factory farming and pesticide use are bad ideas next.Wake up and smell the diesel!
April 1st, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Love it! V. funny. Can I be the first to stand outside County Hall with a Save Our Parking Spaces (or SOPS) sign?
April 1st, 2008 at 2:14 pm
It has just been announced that the scheme has been scrapped. Months of so called consultation have been ignored (or is that listened to?…whatever!) and a new option (or is it an old one?..Mmmm…we’ll have to look into that…) adopted instead. Anyway, I just this minute noticed that in a highly controversial, investigative article just posted on the County Council Press website, their car parking correspondent Penny Parkplatz said Cllr Pughnocchio has made a last ditch…sorry no, that should read… conciliatory…attempt to salvage something from the process without apparently losing face. So at 11:59:59 this morning, just one second before the deadline for a final decision, the council voted to go for two-tier car parks, but will divide the top tier into two sub-tiers which could be sited close to, or far away from, other tiers to give people whatever it is that the council, may or may not have been able or unable to understand that people want or possibly don’t want. So that’s clear then.
Cllr Pughnocchio, told the County Council Press: “This is an historic moment for parking on the Isle of Wight. By introducing a two-tier system of parking we will be able to save many local car parks that would otherwise have had to close under any other two tier options. Some will have to close but this way we get to keep £7m and £8.3m and at the same time reduce surplus parking places to less than 10% across the Island and certainly no more than 25% in any one car park. We hope to pleasure the Government with this good news and in doing so guarantee myself a place in car parking history”.
It was later announced that Chairman of the Council Sir Roger the Supercilious had saved the leader’s electoral bacon by catching a speeding bullet in his teeth. Sir Roger will from now on be known as Lord, Roger the Supercilious of Northwood Abbey. He will sit as a Centre Right parting member of the House of Lords much to the amusement of Labour peers who intend to throw badges with “duck off” emblazoned in fool’s gold as a reminder of his roots.
The Isle of Wight Council later issued a denial in the form of a letter to protestors claiming that had any councillor or officer ever said any such silly things it would have only have been because that is what the Government told them to say. So nah-nah-nee-nah! Steve Gnomone (or however you say it), has been reported to be stalking the corridors of County Hall waving his independent in the air claiming to be much misquoted, misunderstood and constantly mistaken.
Nobody from parking pressure group Hard-Standing-Not-Tiers was available to comment.
April 6th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
I really do not think that this silly story about 4×4s and 2 Tier car parks etc bears any similarity to the education consultation which was conducted with complete openess and commonsense. After all, you all knew what the result would be so why are you wasting your time poking fun at our Leadership. It didn’t matter that we changed the parameters regularly just in case you non-conservatives started to realise it was a stich-up from the beginning. To tell the truth some conservatives still really believe it was all above board, what a laugh! Just shows you really can fool some of the people all of the time. Anyway, I can assure you that none of you will notice that you have been conned by the scheme to spend £400,000 of your money this year on ECO Island to ensure Vera’s CV looked good, or will you??
April 7th, 2008 at 11:58 am
“Anyway, I can assure you that none of you will notice that you have been conned by the scheme to spend £400,000 of your money this year on ECO Island to ensure Vera’s CV looked good, or will you??”
Unfair, Dave. A few of us have and commented upon it too. Not that the “Leader” takes any notice.
I take it that you won’t be going to the Big Green Pick-your-pocket at the end of May?
The next Big Idea to save the planet will be Resomation.
When a loved one dies, instead of the crematorium, or a burial, the body will be boiled in a solution of water and potasium hydroxide to a temperature of 300F degrees.
This, according to the wise guys, will stop crematoriums emitting poisonous gases into the atmosphere which cause snow on the IOW in April.
(Yeah, OK. I made that last bit up, but fairs fair, they make loads of stuff up too.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Dear Bertie,
Who is this source you speak of “Vera”
April 7th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Vera is the nick-name given attached to Joe Duckworth by the esteemed organ, Private Eye (and then used regularly by the County Press)
Our chief exec shares his surname with a famous soap character, Vera Duckworth from Coronation Street.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Dear Sal or Bertie,
Its funny that you bring this to the subject that the “Vera” may have conducted this Eco-conference on the grounds of boosting his political CV. I have a copy of the “Ordinary Meeting of the Council” Wednesday 19 March 2008 in which it states “Agenda Rule 3. Questions may be asked without notice but to guarantee a full reply at the meeting, the question must be delivered in writing or by electronic mail to Committe Services no later than 6.00 pm on Monday, 17 March 2008.”
This put me off as I read through the lines of agenda set up for the meeting, furthermore the Council put the Conference together in a very short time. Supposedly the Council has a cabinet member called Muriel Miller whom I have not read about in any of the paper work concerned with the actions applied by the IOW council. Most of my investigation was done before arriving to the Conference and all though I am not a serving member of the public I would have thought someone on a blog might feel responsible in opening people’s eyes. (I have been told by other bloggers that I should be evengelizing in my own country) As a freelance Journalist I aint in this for the money, but the ammount of money the Council has been trying to save on the closure of schools and this Eco-Conference alarm me because although I don’t have the figures for the prices of either the Eco-Conference or how much they thought they would save on shutting down schools their budget outlined for 08-09 is phonomenal around 100,000,000pounds to be accounted for in the duration of one year. My questions are…How will they arrive at such a sum in the duration of a year? Is the IOW council involved in aid from the Mainland? My questions have been quenched already during my ivestigation but maybe there are other people who have a more broader aspect of what is happening. I am all ears.
Sincerely,
Jack Tupac Pennington
April 8th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
“Its funny that you bring this to the subject that the “Vera” may have conducted this Eco-conference on the grounds of boosting his political CV.”
Jack, I did not say that. It was said by Honest Dave.
What you have to remember is that the C.P.C.E.O. (Council for the Preservation of Chief Executive Officers) is there to preserve their members jobs via a national local authority party game of Musical Chairs. It has been going on for donkeys years.
Just be grateful that J.D. did not end up retiring here.
The pension payable for 20+ years would have dwarfed the cost of the Eco Jolly budget of £400K.
“This put me off as I read through the lines of agenda set up for the meeting, furthermore the Council put the Conference together in a very short time.”
All Council and national government business is deliberately contrived to “put you off”. They don’t want interfering electors meddling in “their” business.
However thankfully, there are a couple of people from the Chale/Brighstone area who are never put off! Not to mention S and S.
Finally, look at the dates of these “put together in a very short time” wheezes.
When there is money left over in the budget, which finishes on 5 April each year, ALL councils will enable “projects” which empty the coffers.