Tourist tax

Lunch yesterday was marked by the arrival of a penalty notice from Cambridgeshire County Council. One of those letters which are printed in heavy black type with lot of heavy warnings about what happens to people who put the letter out for recycling without action.

It seems that BH had broken some by-law by driving in a bus lane in the course of her trip through the centre of Cambridge last week (reference 1). A contravention which might be put down to me as I was supposed to be navigating.

Inspection of the scene of the crime - Emmanuel Road - in Street View revealed that there were indeed signs about bus lanes, but, as a tourist not terribly sure of your way and concentrating on roads rather than road furniture, very easy to miss. I suppose the road being more or less empty in the middle of the afternoon might have been a clue.

Nevertheless, all rather irritating. Calmed down after a few minutes and decided that simply paying the £30 requested was a lot simpler than getting into a debate with them about it - for which, to be fair to them, there was provision in the letter. Just regard it as a not-so-covert tax on the tourists. Tourists which they need to help them pay for extravagances like guided bus ways wending their way across the north Cambridgeshire fens.

Moved onto their website where I was able to key in some long numbers and pay the £30. An average but not good bit of system design, which managed to drift to the end without telling me that the transaction had been properly concluded. Some time later, the receipt snapped above turned up in gmail and I was able to conclude that it had been properly concluded.

The council will now be able to afford another 20 yards worth of whitewash when they next paint the bus way.

PS 1: for readers not up in these things, Wikipedia says: 'Immanuel (Hebrew: ... meaning, "God is with us"; also romanized: Emmanuel, Imanu'el; also ... Amanuel in Geʽez and Amharic, and Emmanouël or Εμμανουήλ in Koine Greek ... language of the New Testament) is a Hebrew name that appears in the Book of Isaiah (7:14) as a sign that God will protect the House of David'.

PS 2: a side effect of the bus way is that our shiny new Ordnance Survey map of the area is now loaded up, not to say cluttered up, with yet another icon. I suppose the Ordnance Survey people are in a bit of a spot, their fine maps are having trouble competing with all the online offerings - with gmaps being free at the point of use - and that they are thrashing about in consequence, trying to keep ahead of the game. Added to which they might quite reasonably think that the Tories are all too likely to flog them off, quite possibly to some foreign outfit with money, quite possibly oil or gas flavoured, with morale being a bit low in consequence.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/11/through-tunnel.html.