Jerry is a wheelclamper and has been for a number of years. He is 41, a white male and lives in the south of England. I have been talking about the coalition governments announcement that it is going to ban wheel clamping on private land whithin a few month’s.

author: Jerry, how did you get into clamping in the first place?
Jerry: It wasn’t a concious decision, i migrated into it from another sector of the security industry.
author: so not planned?
Jerry: No, definately not.
author: Do you enjoy your job?
Jerry: absolutely! i have a job where i get out and about, help people and have earnings directly reflecting effort put into the job.
author: helping people?
Jerry: yes, helping people.
author: how does clamping people’s cars class as helping?
Jerry: It helps the owners of the land, plus it helps car owners to learn not to park there again.
author: Isn’t it a harsh way of making a point though?
Jerry: yes, but by the time a clamper arrives at a vehicle, It’s owner has already ignored signs and possibly also sneaked/helped through a barrier. How many ways can you tell someone not to park there before you have to take direct action?
author: So you are obviously not in favour of banning clamping then?
Jerry: No, Car owners need to realise that they are dumping their car’s on other peoples property. If people parked legally, i would be put out of a job naturally. This is the work of a limp wristed government trying to appease a new breed of brit, which has no regard or respect for other peoples rights or property.
author: what about the motoring organisations supporting this ban?
Jerry: well they will won’t they? their members are among those who park on others land without permission. The motoring organisations have no option other than to pucker up and kiss arse.
author: How many cars do you clamp in a typical day?
Jerry: 5 to 6
author: I expected it to be more
Jerry: well that would be greedy, wouldn’t it?
author: have you ever let anyone off?
Jerry: depends on what context your talking in. We decide whether to clamp the car and sometimes choose not to for any number of reasons. But once the clamp is on, payment is required to take it off.
author: have you ever been offered a bribe to take a clamp off?
Jerry: yes many times and in many forms.
author: such as?
Jerry: Cash, Sexual Favours etc
author: Sexual favours?
Jerry: yeah
author: Did you take them?
Jerry: Noooo definately not. You leave yourself open to allsorts of allegations once you do.
author: very true.

I think i should point out here that stringent background checks have to be passed and are carried out by the government before you get a licence to operate and Jerry has never been accused or implicated in any inproper conduct of any kind.

author: do you ever wish you hadn’t clamped a car?
Jerry: yes, usually late on a Friday/Saturday night and it’s a young girl who has blown all her money out on the town.
author: So what happens in that situation?
Jerry: the clamp stays on. we do stay nearby while she waits for a taxi or someone to collect her.
author: Now that sounds very harsh given personal safety is such a big issue for young girls
Jerry: It is, but they took a concious decision to park there despite signage telling them they would be clamped. Parking a car on private property is a wilful act. Why should i not get any wages because she chooses to ignore signs?

All i can say is that must you have to be able to handle difficult situations and remove yourself emotionally from the circumstances to be a wheel clamper. Not sure if i could do it.

I have since writing the article, discussed the situation with a Wheel Clamper and a land owner who is plagued by unauthorised parking on his land. What i found out will i suspect if it becomes public knowledge kill off much of the celebrations as Parking Enforcement Companies are not it seems going away and will rise to the challenge with a number of resources in their arsenal.

But what about in the short term? Well it seems clamping will very much continue in the short term possibly with land owners putting pressure on parking enforcement companies to ‘catch’ as many unauthorised vehicles as humanly possible as the countdown to the ban starts. Will this mean more cars getting clamped than ever before? very probably it seems.

And in the longer term? according to the clamper i spoke with, who we will call Jerry, while tickets historically have a high instance of non payment, Tickets will still be allowed and these will almost certainly be persued very aggressively with many more motorists being marched in front of magistrates courts seeking either payment or possibly a seizure order for the vehicle. Jerry has has also forecast that many parking enforcement companies may even employ or at least retain baliffs to facilitate collection of payments faster and more effiecently.

Jerry has also stated, in his opinion the parking enforcement sector may become even more profitable as he expects the number of motorists mis-guided in the belief that tickets wont be persued will start to park their vehicles on private property in increasing numbers without the visable deterrant of a clamped car in the car park.

“From a clampers point of view we don’t like clamps on too long, every minute they are on.. more people see them and decide not to park there.” - Jerry, Wheelclamper

“I earn my living from people parking where they shouldn’t” he said. - Jerry, Wheelclamper

Asked what he thought of the ban, Jerry responded that it was just another indication that people in this country are turning into a nation of spoilt brats that don’t like being told no, or being held responsible for their actions.

Moving on to the landowner, who we will call Tom, i asked what this ban on clamping unauthorised vehicles meant for him. His response was:

“more expense, misery and a vow that he would never vote for a conservative again. Cameron has s*** on those that voted for him and his party.” - Tom, Local businessman and landowner.

Asked how he would keep the lazy element of motorists out of his car park that is for the use of his employees he indicated that he hopes many more get clamped and learn the error of their ways before the ban comes into force and that he will urge the parking enforcement company he utilises to continue with a robust approach to people dumping their cars in his car park instead of the public car park a few yards down the road.

The Legislation will be introduced to parliament in November as part of the coalition government’s Freedom Bill. If passed it could come into force as early as next year.

The news comes after a spate of high profile cases where people have been clamped after parking on private land without permission or authorisation.

While on the surface it looks like a good thing there is far more to the issue than just wheel clamping companies are bad people.

Critics claim that wheel clamping equals extortion and essentially equals theft by depriving the owner of the use of the vehicle temporarily.

Supporters say that it is the only thing that deters and ultimately stops lazy and selfish people from parking their vehicles on private land.

Critics of clamping are claiming a victory,  Supporters of clamping are slamming the proposed legislation as a charter for lazy people to park wherever they think they will.

My friend was a service engineer visiting people in their homes and rectifying problems with their domestic appliances until recently when he quit his job stating he “could not handle the persistent whinging and the got to get something for free” mentality of the customers. He cites many examples of customers who would phone the company call centre within minutes of engineers leaving the property with the single minded mission to wriggle out of paying the bill, and if necessary resorting to fabricating a complaint about the engineer in question.

Now having been a service engineer myself in the past, i really can understand my friends gripe with his former employer. To everyone who has never been in that position, the comment “If the engineer has done nothing wrong the complaint will be dismissed easily” would seem reasonable. However many service engineers will no doubt disagree. The truth of the matter is that the hypothetical company will pander to the customer in a desperate bid to appease the ‘apparently’ upset customer, Many company’s will even go as far as sacking the engineer and stomach the cost of recruiting a replacement if they think they can get away with it in a bid to avoid negative publicity.

Why? the customer has many weapons in the arsenal to utilise to help them avoid paying that bill, we have the most common threat of utilising various media channels to heap bad publicity on the company and the media’s openly stated willingness to do just that and during these economically tough times that could be disastrous for many businesses.

How did this situation come about? have we become a nation of whingers?

I think many will openly state that the younger generations morals and attitudes are definitely not those of the older generations. Should we condemn a generation for doing it, if they can get something for free? Or are expectations increasing beyond industry’s ability to deliver?

The lastest brainwave of the internet giant is apparently called ’shop view’ where it seems they are trialling something similar to the much hated street view, just inside shops now. Coupled with an aquaintence bemoaning how it seems google are ignoring the noindex tags on his website, this got me thinking, If you don’t invite google or any other search engine to index your site i.e submit your url to them… do they actually have a right to be indexing your site, docs and pictures that you may have on the server at all?

Is ignoring noindex tags on a site that has not been submitted to them by the sites owner tantamount to digital trespass?

Having seen many of my pics turn up in googles image search in the past when i would rather they didnt, this has got me thinking about the whole subject of webcrawlers (bots) zipping across the internet via links from one site to the next and wondering about whether a link pointed at your site from another actually constitutes invitation to index at all given the site owner has no control over who links to his/her site.

What do you think? should google and co be restricted to sites they have been invited to index?

The credit crunch may still have it’s fangs into the country and economically times may still be hard, recession still causing hardship, ebays fee’s still high and the future uncertain… BUT if you can set up a small online business and make a small success out of it now the law of averages says it should be a bigger success in better times.

The fact of the matter is people are still shopping online, albeit a bit more prudently than in the past… So if your going to sell to them you have to keep your costs down and if that means axing ebay fee’s from your overheads it can be done.

The abundance of online payment processors today also totally negates the need to have business bank accounts etc until such time as you actually find your business has grown and a business bank account is a realistic option.

Do you think twitter is a business tool or gadget?

WebProNews.com interviewer, Abby Johnson talked with Baily about whether or not Twitter was a viable and useful channel to pursue for the average business.

Watch the WebProNews video here

Bailey feels like businesses feel an unwarranted pressure to ‘get someone on Facebook or Twitter’ without fully understand why they are doing it – aside from the fact that some marketing expert told them they needed to. – WebProNews

Early comments on the WebProNews site seem to suggest that Baily is not alone in his views.

What do you think about Global Warming?

The feature was about Global Warming, Not unusual you may say.. given that the Copenhagen International Climate Change Summit is kicking off today. The key part of the feature was an international survey carried out by somebody (i forget who it was now) which recorded results that around the world there is far more concern within populations about global warming and its effects than there was last year.

Are you concerned about global warming?

What i couldn’t believe i had heard was that in two countries, China and the USA there are reported to be fewer people who are concerned about Global Warming than there were just 12months ago. China and the USA are also coincidentally the worlds two biggest polluters.

Regardless of how concerned anyone should or shouldn’t be, i’m just amazed that in 12months you can have a percentage of a population become LESS concerned about something that has not been addressed, rectified or averted somehow and even more so when it’s something as huge as Climate Change.  

According to the BBC the African nations led by Nigeria are going in to the summit with a tough line demanding commitment from nations such as the USA and China to addressing the issues.

An African representative stated “President Obama has signalled a desire to address this issue, But he has not passed any legislation to facilitate it”.

From what i hear, Congress and the Senate do not share President Obama’s desire to tackle global warming and many in the USA still debate whether they should even try!

Does community service really act as a deterrant to others in this day and age?

Philip, who was on a commercially organised pub crawl operated by Carnage UK, consumed copius amounts of alcohol at £1 a drink. The company was critised by the judge who suggested that maybe someone from the company should also have been in the dock.

Should Companies like Carnage UK be held to account for scenes like this and if so, to what degree?

The 19-year-old, from Macclesfield, Cheshire, admitted the offence when he appeared earlier this month at Sheffield Magistrates’ Court.

But District Judge Anthony Browne told the court that “something does need to be done” about the drinking culture that led to his behaviour. The Judge also said he had considered jailing Laing.

The District Judge said: “Now, let me make this perfectly clear. No-one forced you to take all this drink, or forced it down you, or persuaded you to commit a criminal offence. You did that all by yourself and you must take responsibility”.

“But all this is set against a backdrop, as your solicitor has said, of a culture of drinking far too much. In my view something does need to be done to change this culture. What you have done has outraged and offended many and has saddened most.”

After the Stuart Feltham saga in Crete, Should something be done to curb alcohol abuse?

Sheffield University is yet to rule on his future in the establishment.

Many who have been trying to reclaim bank charges levied against them by the banks to the tune of up to £40 for going even £1 overdrawn on their accounts were evidently disappointed but even more determined to carry on the fight.

One spokesman for the banks has been quoted as saying “enough is now enough and it is over”.

However the website moneysaving expert run by Martin Lewis has declared that although today’s judgement was a blow, that a ‘Phoenix has risen from the flames’ thanks to the judges hints.

• Should Banks be made to repay the charges?
  
• Should free banking for some be funded by those who can least afford it?

At the moment it sounds like the issue is far from dead in the water.