Goodbye to the traffic warden
Will we miss them when theirs gone? Continuing with my little campaign on the issue I much prefer them to the private civil enforcement arrangements run by for profit companies which have replaced them. This story tells us:
The traffic warden – long the subject of mockery and ire from disgruntled motorists up and down the land – will soon be no more. The Home Office is removing the functions of the final few wardens in England and Wales and rolling their work into that done by police staff volunteers. When traffic wardens first appeared, the government was at pains to point out how helpful the motoring public would find these new ladies and gentlemen in uniform. As the satirical magazine Punch put it in 1959: “Any supposed similarity of function between the police and the newly proposed traffic wardens vanished with the official statement that the wardens ‘would help motorists to find parking space’.”