Illegally parked cars

To the Sleepwalkers of Enfield Council,

It seems I must once again rouse you from your regulatory stupor to report the continued and wilful defilement of both law and common decency on our street—yes, again.

This morning, as if choreographed by some malignant little traffic deity, the same duo of civic offenders—The Primitive Butcher (whose grasp of modernity appears to end somewhere around the Domesday Book) and the ever-ingenious Two Brothers Motorcycle Repair Shop—treated the double yellow lines outside their premises not as prohibitive road markings, but as VIP parking bays for their ever-expanding entourage of staff, customers, delivery drivers, and hangers-on.

By now, the scene has acquired the air of grim routine: cars lined up on the double yellows, blithely obstructing the entrance to the road like some absurd tableau of low-level anarchy. Any attempt at reason or appeal to legality is met with the slack-jawed indifference of those who know they face no consequence.

Let me be blunt: your inaction has become part of the problem. Your failure to enforce your own laws has emboldened this parade of defiance to the point where it is no longer merely inconsiderate—it is dangerous. Were a fire engine to attempt access today, it would need to reverse time or levitate. Do you propose we issue grappling hooks to the elderly in the event of an emergency?

You cannot claim ignorance; I have already alerted you. You cannot claim surprise; this is now a pattern. What you can claim, however, is dereliction. If a municipal authority cannot enforce the simplest of traffic regulations, one wonders what hope there is for tackling more complex civic issues—say, education, sanitation, or the metaphysical question of why you exist at all.

I urge you—again—with what dwindling optimism remains: send enforcement officers, issue fines, tow vehicles, and stop this nonsense before someone pays for your inertia with something more than their time and temper.

No more warnings. No more “monitoring the situation.” Act.

Yours Richard Greenyer.