Don’t start with parking at schools, Dalry has a nice new primary school, with parking and drop off areas, but the lazy bastards still park on the pavement when kids are walking along them.

My other half as a habit of damaging the cars on the pavement with the pram, I can remember her telling me about one of the other parents complaining that her brand new mpv had been scratched all along the side, guess who, I had to laugh, she deserved it.

It’s a lot worse, more like the kinston bridge at 8.00 am, wating to go someware for no particular reason and arriving 3 hours late.

I’m not sure that they still do. That was certainly what the badges were orginally intended for (It was the US, if I remember) but as parents left them up irrespective of the presence of the kids and all the silly ones appearing that they lost all usefulness.

On the subject of selfish and dangerous, I have to drive past one of the local schools in the morning. As is the case near every school, there are bright yellow zig-zag lines near the school entrances indicating that you cannot stop on the road. So the parents mount the pavements (at speed) to drop the kids. They also stop or turn without indicating and tailgate.

Haven’t got one, but did change my mind about them when I discovered that emergency services pay attention to them in the event of a crash. But “Show dogs in transit”… ugh.

I love the Evening Times readers who say they make a point of parking in the parent-and-baby spaces because parents are so fucking jumped-up they need teaching a lesson. And I particularly like the bit where someone suggests we tell our kids to walk so they don’t get obese. Of course! That’s why Daisy can’t walk! I haven’t told her!

Is that one still as hellish as it used to be? Going to that ASDA used to be an all-day event. Five minutes shopping and four hours to find a parking space, then four hours getting out of the car park again. It was like going to a rock concert without the rock concert bit.

Yeah. It’s not just people who drive disabled people misusing the badge, either (although that does go on – same with parent & child spaces being used by people who have kids, but don’t have them with them), but people who just don’t give a fuck about anybody else. When I was pre-back-surgery I could barely walk, but I didn’t go for a disabled badge because I felt I wasn’t properly disabled and therefore shouldn’t jump the queue. And when I tootle into the tesco car park, car seat in the back and Baby On Board sticker in the boot (I know, I know, I said I’d never get one) I park in the normal spaces. But I think I’m in the minority.

That said, I do think we should be more strict with the granting of disabled badges. There’s a big difference between “disabled” and “crazy old bastard who never sat a driving test, hasn’t told DVLA he hasn’t been able to see anything since 1973 and should under no circumstances be in charge of a one-ton killing machine”. There’s a lot of the latter round my way. As I blogged a while back, they had to stop the disabled-excepted parking in our pedestrian town centre because people were driving through walls, mowing down small children, taking the fronts off shops and so on.

And it should be legal to punch certain pensioners in supermarkets.

On another point, will ASDA fine the members of staff that use the disabled / Parent Child spaces?