We are seeing a lot of anti-social behaviour of late and one particular selfish act was witnessed by a Bath Newseum follower who – for obvious reasons – wishes to remain anonymous.
Here is his story – and the photograph above was taken by him. I decided to blot out the number plate but the abuse of an assigned parking space is still obvious.
‘I was sitting in the old Green Park station which now has Sainsbury’s overspill car parking spaces, exclusively for disabled and mothers with children shoppers I think, because it’s undercover. I was eating my meal from one of the fast-food stalls sitting at a table adjacent to the car park.
Up pulls a young man in a white Mercedes and parks across one disabled bay so badly that the tail of his car infringes the neighbouring bay a disabled person’s car was parked in. He jumps out of his car (showing himself to be a 6’ 28-ish ‘Hipster’ in his dress and facial hair – by the way, I have some very good friends who’ve adopted the hipster style of appearance), dashes over/through the barrier and hurries to the front of the Thai Hut stall, 15 yards from his car, to order his lunch.
He’s clearly neither disabled nor shopping with children. It takes about 15 minutes for them to prepare, bag and invoice him for his meal. Meanwhile, I notice two cars crawling around the car park looking for available spaces. They may have been blue badge drivers, but I couldn’t swear on that.
Anyway, as he hurries back to his car I say to him “You’ve parked in a disabled bay.”
He turns around and shrugs.
Then he asks me “What’s it to you, are you disabled?”.
I reply, “No, but that’s not my point.”
He gestures as if to say “I don’t give a ****” and starts to get into his car.
I stand up and say “That’s the problem we’re having in our society today, there are people like you who just don’t care.”
He stands up again behind his car door and says “Don’t stand up, you’re too small to get into a fight with. When was the last time you were in a bundle? I could squash you.”
Then he gets back into his car and roars off through Sainsbury’s car park.
This is not the first or even 21st time I’ve experienced, and called out, what most right-minded people would call unacceptable and anti-social behaviour.
I’d like this incident to be broadcast in Newseum in order to achieve two goals :
- To broadcast anti-social behaviour so that those in society that have the power to discourage it, cannot deny it exists and are obliged to take action.
- To shame the young man, and possibly (I know it’s a long shot) make him think twice before he does it again.
- To galvanise other citizens, who are fed up experiencing such behaviour, into action. I’d like to hear others say what the past mayor of New York was heard to yell out of his window “I’m as mad as hell, and I ain’t goin’ to put up with this any more” aka the start of Zero Tolerance.”
I leave it there for other readers to comment.
I saw this a year or so ago. A driver driving far too fast through the Sainsburys park, stopping in disabled bay near cash machines who then jumped out to get out cash.I told the driver he was in a disabled space – clearly not disabled. There was no response so I took his number plate. He noticed and drove off at speed – dangerous in this car park. I was furious and reported it to the Customer Services in the store. They took a note but said it often happened. Parking in a disabled bay is an infringement so surely Sainsburys can be asked to enforce their rules?
Private land. Report to Sainsburys
I have had similar responses when speaking to people parking on double yellow lines in a nearby street. As here, they had expensive cars – and sometimes there was a legal parking space only a few feet away that they were too lazy to use! It would be a nice little earner for the Council if a traffic warden dropped round there regularly.