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Regional Issues — Northern Ireland
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Buy on-line at amazon 2006-12-15
Parking Parasites Descend on NI
Parking Parasites descended on Northern Ireland on 13th November 2006 following the announcement that parking enforcement was to be taken away from PSNI and handed on a plate to a private company concerned only with making a profit.
In the first month NCP managed to issue 13,710 tickets — that's an average of 571 per day — twice the rate at which police issued tickets.
"Decriminalised Parking" has already hit much of the UK and led to a massive increase in parking fees, fines, clamping, and complaints from the public.
Estimated Speed Camera results since 1st July 2003
Every 31 minutes
That's how often a driver was caught by a speed camera between the Safety Camera Partmership racket hitting the province on 1st July 2003, and 10th Feb 2004. 10,321 drivers were caught, which would have raised £619,260 if they all paid a £60 fine.
Our calculator above is keeping a running estimate based on those figures.
 

 
"... there is a further aspect of this policy that alarms me, and that is its capacity to drive a wedge between the public and the police. This is bad enough in any normal society, but in our local circumstances it is reckless for the government to force such a policy on the police at this time."
Terry Dicks, Chairman of the Conservative Party’s East Belfast Constituency Association, speaking about the foolhardy plan to roll out yet more speed cameras to the province.
Source: Politics NI

 
Belfast Better Without Buses
The bus strike in Belfast on Friday 18th October 2003 did not lead to the chaos that had been predicted.
In fact traffic flowed much better without the buses. Police opened the bus lanes to cars, and there were no buses stopped in the middle of the road.
Central Belfast was a more pleasant place to be as there was little in the way of the black smoke usually seen pouring out of buses and there was also a significant decrease in the general noise level.
We hope that this novel idea of taking buses off the road to reduce congestion and improve the quality of life in cities will be taken up elsewhere.
 
 
Speed Cameras
Fixed Speed Cameras arrived in Northern Ireland in July 2003. There are presently just four, all in Belfast:
 
  - Antrim Road
  - Saintfield Road
  - Springfield Road
  - Upper Newtownards Road
 
Mobile cameras will also be operating at some 83 sites.
A list of locations can be seen on the PSNI site.
The police have trotted out the usual rubbish to justify their fund raising, such as the blatantly nonsensical claim that 'for every 1mph reduction in average speed there was a 5% reduction in the number of collisions'.
Another 6 to 10 cameras are due to be installed during 2004.
 
 
Book Ferry Tickets from Northern Ireland and from the Republic of Ireland on line
   
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Media Links:
Note re Belfast Telegraph:
Previously, this page included many links to news articles from the Belfast Telegraph. Unfortunately, they have taken the foolish and short-sighted decision to start changing a ridiculous and extortionate fee to read old articles (they want more money to read one article than it costs to buy the whole paper in the first place!), so to save wasting your time we have removed the links. Access to letters is still free. Useful news sources Republic of Ireland Links

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