Menace of the new parking cowboys: Drivers 'fined' £100 for overstaying by minutes at fast food chains and shops , Daily Mail

  Tickets doled out  private firms do not have official legal status

  Many are in fact issued unfairly and without the proper legal authority

  AA president Edmund King says many use 'scare tactics and bullying' 

  Drivers cannot be compelled to pay unless a court order is granted 

‘Cowboy’ parking squads hired by High Street firms are hitting hundreds of thousands of drivers with £100 ‘fines’ and using threats to make them pay up.

The companies – employed by fast food chains, retailers and railway operators – issue what appear to be official penalty notices, similar to those used by council traffic wardens. They then extract huge sums from drivers who are sometimes just a few minutes late in returning to their cars.

However, the tickets do not have the same legal standing as official fines.

Many are being issued unfairly and – in some cases – without proper legal authority.

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Additional Story on Parking

Scotland could run out of cash just like Greece, Scottish Sunday Express

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cotland would need to severely downsize its financial sector in order to avoid a major economic crisis if the country votes to break away from the rest of Britain.

According to former Scottish Government economist Florian Baier and former Bank of England economist Erik Britton, an independent Scotland would be left over-reliant on its financial sector and North Sea oil.

The economists’ upcoming paper for Fathom Consulting estimates the country’s banking assets as potential liabilities would be 1,100 per cent of GDP, similar to the liabiities that caused an economic crisis in Iceland in which its government took over three of its largest banks in 2008.

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Dog owner to sue council because her spaniel slipped a disc in GRASS and she cannot afford to pay the £5,000 vet bill Daily Mail

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 dog owner plans to sue a council for thousands of pounds after her pet slipped a disc in grass while chasing a cat.

Scooby, a three-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, was injured after getting his leg caught in long grass on council-owned land in Brighton, East Sussex.

His disabled owner Rebecca Richardson, 48, claims that she now faces a £5,000 veterinary bill which she cannot afford to pay as she lives on benefits.

Campaigners criticised Mrs Richardson and her husband Steven, 49, for their claim and said it was yet another example of the ‘compensation culture gone mad’.

But Mrs Richardson said Brighton and Hove City Council, which owns her house and the land outside it, was negligent and ‘completely responsible’ for what happened to her pet. 

She claimed that she and other neighbours had been asking for the long grass outside their homes to be cut for a month before the accident. 

  Scooby the spaniel slipped a disc after getting his leg caught in long grass

  Disabled owner Rebecca Richardson, 48, says she now faces £5,000 vet bill

  Claims she cannot afford to pay it as she lives on benefits at Brighton home

  Believes city council is 'responsible' for fall because it failed to cut the grass

  But campaigners deem claim an example of 'compensation culture gone mad'

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Rebecca Richardson