An earwig upon thee

Mrs Gripe and I have had a fantastic Bank Holiday weekend - yesterday we had a lovely suprise when we bumped into an old friend over brunch who we had lost contact with. We spent the afternoon with her and her boyfriend and finally parted ways at 23:30 after dinner. This morning I had one of those moments when you step under the shower and instantly realise how sunburnt you got the previous day. This afternoon we took in La Boheme in Greenwich Park - thoroughly recommend it (opera not really Mrs Gripe's thing but she loved the picnic and sunshine too). Anyway, onto darker and more sinister matters...

This is a photo of the moment when, by our calculations, the parking contractors for Greenwich made about at least £4,000 in 10 minutes alone through penalties (assuming everyone pays promptly and gets the 50% discount). The cars are all parked on the road outside Greenwich Park at the back, along Blackheath. They are on a single yellow line, which everyone parks on at the weekend because it is only restricted Monday to Friday.

Conventional wisdom in every part of civilization is that a Bank Holiday is treated in the same way as a Sunday. Clearly everyone who parked along here thought that the same would apply - and why wouldn't they?

The evil parking nazis, on the other hand, decided that on the technicality that Bank Holiday Monday is still a Monday and therefore they can fine all of these people, ruin their day and make some filthy money.

I'd like to say three things about this:

1. Thank you to the person who pulled alongside me and warned me just as I was trying to park in one of these spaces - you have saved me £50 and Mrs Gripe lots of my fuming.
2. A Bank Holiday Monday is clearly not the same as a usual business day, and therefore the spirit of the restriction says that it shouldn't be applied. These people are applying the letter of it only.
3. These wardens waited for people to turn up and leave their cars and then walked along ticketing them. How can they, and the parking contractor generally, sleep soundly at night?