Another example emerged today of how national borders get in the way of fighting crime. This time, the crimes are speeding and parking offences.
There has been an influx into London of so-called supercars owned by Arab millionaires, which are designed to drive at very high speeds. The fashion is to drive them through the centre of London, on streets which are not designed for those speeds. Such driving must be very dangerous to other road users, if not to the idiots behind the wheel, as the example below shows:
Furthermore, these cars are often parked illegally because parking fines cannot be served. As the example to the right shows, tracing the owner of a car with a numberplate in Arabic, which has different symbols for numbers compared with those used on this website, for example, is going to be beyond most traffic wardens. The City of Westminster has lost nearly £4 million in unpaid parking fines as a result.
This blog is normally the first place where respect is urged for foreign habits and recognition for the differences between countries. But where that difference turns into an excuse to break the law, this blog’s sympathy disappears. Why are cars allowed on British roads if they are not properly marked?