Much trailed in the press this morning, the formal announcement finally arrived in my RSS reader.

“End of the road for cowboy car clampers” screamed the headline.

Sounds good – clamping down (hur!) on the cowboys who do much to ruin the industry and let formally licensed companies carry on subject to sensible regulations. A win-win, as the motorist gets sensible regulations, while private land owners retain some protection from trespassers.

Oh, hang on – that isn’t what is planned.

The government plans to make it totally illegal to clamp cars on private land (public land will still use clamping) and also make it illegal to remove a car seemingly dumped on private land.

Now, if motorists were being unfairly clamped on property that is advertised as a car park for all to use, then yes, I would agree that there is a dire problem that needs urgent action.

But that isn’t what happens.

What actually happens is that motorists are trying to avoid paying parking fees by dumping their cars on other people’s private property without even bothering to ask permission.

That is a totally different situation – and I am slightly at a loss to understand why the person who owns the land should be banned from removing “rubbish” that is dumped on it.

Two stories:

I used to work in a retail store in Slough that happened to have a private car park at the back, onto which we had a back door. We had a Gentleman’s Agreement that customers could use the back door to collect heavy items they had purchased.

However, people would treat the space as a free car park, leave their cars there, go shopping then pop into our shop to buy something much later. This meant the legitimate users of the car park were either unable to use the spaces they had rented, or in too many cases, were blocked in by someone else dumping their car in the way.

As you can imagine, after a while the tenants got annoyed and the landlord brought in clampers who clamped every single car without a permit, even if only there for a few minutes. We scrapped the back-door collection and put up HUGE warning signs.

Still the motorists would presume that they could use the private property as a free car park – simply because they didn’t want to pay to use the official car parks that the council had built in the town centre.

The clampers were a huge pain in the neck as they were so aggressive – but there was a serious problem with illegal parking that needed fixing. A licensed clamper with a sensible attitude would have been better.

In another example, I used to live near a football stadium on a semi-private estate. When football matches were being played, the residents used to set up a rosta to guard the main road entering the estate and block anyone entering who wasn’t visiting residents. Why?

Because motorists saw empty private car parking spaces by the blocks of flats and would dump their cars in them. Obviously that then meant the person off out shopping in the morning could drive home and find their own personal car parking space was now occupied by persons unknown.

–

With the new proposals, we will have a situation where private property owners are having their land trespassed on – but will be unable to evict the miscreant.

If you throw rubbish onto someone’s drive, then they are allowed to pick it up and dispose of it. But if that piece of rubbish happens to be in the shape of a car – suddenly that right is removed from you.

Yes, the clampers had got out of control – but the solution is not to ban them, but to regulate them and set sensible limits on the fines and conditions they impose. Otherwise, we end up with a carte blanche for motorists to trespass on private property with impunity.

In conclusion – if you are a motorist, use an official car park – don’t presume that the car sized plot of empty land is de-facto a car park for your use. It could be and indeed, almost certainly is, someone’s private property.

</rant>

I am about to do a diamond geezer style fisk of a press release that has just arrived and made me blink in some disbelief.

In my work job I have to process several hundred releases per day (usually skimming headlines), but  I now get an ever increasing number of press releases sent to me as a blogger – the majority of which are utterly irrelevant to me, but the below is possibly the worst press release I have ever seen, either at work or as a blogger.

Hi,

I can see from your site that you’re interested in travelling and holidays and thought you might like to hear about one of London’s most vibrant areas; Westminster.

Holidays? When was the last time I wrote about going on holiday? Actually, when was the last time I took a holiday?

Westminster has a huge variety of things to do and places to see. Head to the famous Big Ben and Houses of Parliament, or check out some art at the Tate Modern. If you fancy chilling out with some music, try the Southbank Centre.

Wow, sounds wonderful. Difficult to believe I have lived in London all this time and haven’t heard of the Houses of Parliament before. I wonder what that tall tower and archive I was in the other day – or the visit to a tall clock tower – or the place I visit on regular occasions for vaguely political meetings?

This Westminster place sounds incredible – I am so glad they told me about it.

For an array of great shops, restaurants and bars why not go to Lower Marsh. This historic area is one of London’s hidden gems. Sample Thai, Japanese and Italian food at its various restaurants or shop around for clothes and books. Relax in the evening in the Cubano Bar with some live salsa or watch a play at the Old Vic theatre.

Shops? Who’d a thought that London would have such a thing. And restaurants – wow!

Where better to stay to enjoy all that Westminster has to offer than <cheap hotel firm>’s newest hotel, opening up on August 30th. Located just 10 metres from Lambeth North tube station and only a 5 minute walk from Waterloo railway station, the brand new hotel is in the perfect spot to enjoy London. <cheap hotel firm> is a low cost hotel solution, offering rooms from £35 a night in the heart of the capital. Head to our Facebook page at <cheap hotel firm can’t afford a proper website> to find out more (and don’t forget to Like the page!)

A hotel solution? Must send that to Private Eye for them for their regular solutions mockery section.

It’s pretty obvious that Sally at <award winning pr firm> couldn’t be bothered to read my blog properly – otherwise not only would she have sent me this pile of drivel, but she would also know that I live in London, and even if I did write about travel, it is going to be about places I travel to – not my home town.

Sigh

I am about to be a total and utter hypocrite*.

In my previous, and to a limited degree in my current, jobs – I was a mild drum-beater for making websites accessible for those who have problems with their eyesight  (or whatever the current PC term is).

I did this partly as it makes good business sense, partly as it is technically illegal not to, and partly self-interest as my own eyesight is fading and I sometimes have to adjust the colour/fonts on websites to be able to read them.

I also have a general distaste for fussy websites that are fussy for no reason other than to be fussy.

Do deliver the information in an aesthetically pleasing manner – but don’t put aesthetics before information.

This morning, the website for the 2012 Olympics appallingly badly named “game makers” was launched. Ignoring why they can’t just be called “volunteers”, a role that everyone would instantly recognise, the website is a disaster.

Here is the website (as advertised on Twitter) http://www.london2012.com/get-involved/volunteer/index.php

Now click through to http://www.london2012.com/get-involved/volunteer/have-you-got-what-it-takes/take-the-games-maker-challenge.php

Nope – still not at the questionnaire yet – http://www.london2012.com/get-involved/volunteer/game/index.html

I then got a really nasty, bloated webpage that is entirely made in Flash, which does a quite good job of trying to overload my laptop with its wizzy flashy silliness.

Try it – I defy anyone to suspect it’s target audience is 5-year old kids.

However, try viewing it as if you are using a computer optimised for people who have viewing problems.

You can’t.

This is what I saw when I disabled Flash (as is usual for partially sighted users).

(For the record, I tried visiting the site from the very beginning page to see if there is a redirect based on browser compatibility. There isn’t)

Any half-decent website designer would ensure that there is a plain HTML version of the website available for people who can’t or won’t use the Flash plug in.

We are not talking about some highly complex webpage that really, really needed all the wizz-bang that can only be delivered by using Flash. This is a childishly simple questionnaire that could have been quickly delivered by a junior webmonkey without breaking into a sweat using off the shelf web tools.

To insist on using Flash is not just a strange decision, but it breaks all the fundamental rules about making content accessible to as wide a range of users as possible.

For an event that has a very strong remit to appeal to disabled people – if nothing else, because of the Paralympics – making sure the website is accessible should be one of the core requirements of the online team.

You’d have thought they would have learnt a lesson with the fuss over their dayglo flashing website allegedly triggering epilepsy in some people a few years ago.

Evidently not.

*The hypocrisy? This blog isn’t very good on mobile websites, which is a related issue to making websites accessible. It’s one of the many things I have on my to do list.

Why is buying shoes so incredibly difficult?

It should be simple – go into shop, look for shoes, pick up shoes, try them on and if they fit, buy them.

After all, that is how we buy clothes.

No – shoes have to be laid out like jewellery and we should select them daintily and then seek assistance from the staff.

In addition though, increasing numbers of shops seem to be allergic to making it easy to ascertain the price of each item. I am not excessively obsessed by prices, but I do have an upper limit and the old adage that if you have to ask how much something costs, then you can’t afford it has been adopted en-mass by the foot apparel department of fashion retailers.

Some shops will put the price tag inside the shoe so the only way to find out how much something costs is to manhandle it, but why not put it on display so that I can see at a glance how much something costs? That seems to work for most other retailers.

Having finally identified not only shoes that appeal visually, but also appeal financially – now is the task of finding a sales person. If you are lucky to find someone who deigns to assist, then invariably, the size I want to try is out of stock.

Can we go back to the way M&S used to do it? Put the stock out on display and let people help themselves. OK, the display looked a mess at the end of the day, but that was due to the combination of customers being nonchalant about putting things back were they found them, and a lack of staff to tidy up.

At least there I could pick up half a dozen pairs of shoes and find the ones that were most comfortable without playing “hunt the salesperson” each time I want to try out a new pair.

Today I tried out a range of shops, and again returned home empty handed.

M&S – prices on display, staff not.

Debenhams – prices just about visible, staff invisible.

John Lewis – lots of staff, serious lack of price tags.

Next – some prices, some staff, no nice shoes

House of Frasier – the glare from backlit shelves blinded your correspondent.

I use Flickr to host my photos as it is a convenient repository and has some nice, but generally subtle community aspects to the website.

However, there is a dark side to the website – and that is the groups.

Groups are a convenient way to collect photos of a similar topic from a range of people into one area – and I submit some of my photos to some groups that interest me.

However, groups have administrators to look after them, and some administrators can be rather aggressive in trying to make their groups increasingly popular. Not sure if they get any reward from administrating a popular group, but certainly some people seem very motivated to promote their cause.

On Flickr, an administrator can find a photo and post a pre-written message on the photo inviting you to submit your photo to their group. I get the occasional invite most weeks and and I tend to accept about half of the invitations.

However, the afore mentioned aggressive admins can go through a person’s photo gallery like a proverbial dose of salts, scattering invites all over the place with gay abandon.

After going out for a walk today, I came home to invites to submit a host of photos to seven different groups – all from one person. Argh!

So, thank you for making me go though my gallery deleting your invites from all the photos you just spammed.