New parking machine in Lewes - a means of getting cash for nothing

I’m pleased to see that they take various methods of payment, including that old fashioned amenity called cash.

Having a conversation with friends recently, we all decided that this was another method to get cash for nothing.

Let’s look at it this way, on the old parking machines you paid your money for probably over the time you need to pop in a bank (if you can find one these days) and when you got back to your car with the ticket you had paid for, so it was legally your property, you may have chosen to pass it on to someone else if there was time left on it.

Now this was deemed to be a thing you shouldn’t do by the authorities but I’m guessing most of you, out of kindness, will have done it at some time, since you paid for it with your money for time you didn’t use.

Now if you had purchased sweets from a sweet-shop but not eaten them all, you wouldn’t give them back to the shop, would you?

You’d hopefully offer them to someone else who may like them, after all you had paid for them so they belonged to you to do as you wished with them. Am I right?

Now if you park you give your registration number so you cannot pass on that ticket with time left on it as it will not have the matching registration number on it, so any time left on it will go to the authorities as profit.

People are not stupid and many are struggling to cope with finances so will probably use supermarket car parks more and park and shop after six, or on a Sunday, or go to places like Newhaven, where you get an hour parking free.

You can buy the same items in Poundland that the big stores sell but at lower prices, plus good cheap meat from the visiting butchers van that I know many people recommend, and vegetables and fruit are incredibly cheap from the market stall.

We all need to use local shops, buy locally made food and other items to keep our High Streets going especially Newhaven, which has had a very bad time since it had the one way system installed.

Does Lewes want to go the same way? I hope not!

Let’s support our shopkeepers by making parking easier and fairer.

Pauline Cherry,

Rodmell