Conti vs Aaronovitch update

Aaronovitch is leading the field in my poll about the parking spat between Tom Conti and Tiomes Journalist David Aaronovich.

Voters for Aaronovitch I am told, come from across the political spectrum.

The Ham & High carries the story here, although editor Geoff Martin plumps for Conti (why not, parking tales of woe flog 60p papers and that’s his job).

I’m 100% behind David. As a long term resident of this borough I remember being able to play football in the streets in Hampstead and, believe it or not, in Camden Town! The fact is that the number of cars has roughly tripled over the last 25 years, while the number of streets has not.

On top of that large houses across the borough, but especially in NW3 have been converted into flats, further driving up demand for parking spaces.

More than that, as councillors we know from emails we get that there is a small but rather nasty contingent of people who believe that there is unfettered right to park or drive their car pretty much anywhere without restriction or encumbrance.

In this skewed world things like speed humps outside schools are to be resisted. Pork pies like the one told by the Chair of the London Ambulance Service a couple of years ago that 500 people a year die in London because of ambulances slowed by traffic calming are wolfed down.

Obviously clearly unfair rules exercised without discretion are legitimate topics of debate and challenge, but the lazy journalism which obsessively focuses on parking over every other policy issue confronting local residents is nothing more than wordy dross. Editors of local papers often privately dispair at the over-concentration on parking that they have in order to satisfy the tastes of the demographic they chase, one well-known editor was moaning about this to Camden officers just before the 2006 election.

So well done to Aaronovitch. Local councillors who have dare to venture into the same territory have suffered a cruel and unfair fate at the hands of populists who only look at the issue from one, blinkered perspective.

Still time to vote in my poll.