General Chat

Rollo - it's not for fun that they "create for themselves" this purgatory! It is to help relieve some of the difficulties of managing small children safely that the spaces are provided. I entirely agree they should resist the temptation to use disabled spaces just to get closer

I so agree with you Elizabeth2469049. My son has twin babies and has to go shopping with them sometimes after 7pm if he has to work all weekend. Not too many shops have double seated trolleys either and those that do, don't have many of them. :ROLLO: you should have a go at getting 2 little ones in and out of car seats as well as putting shopping away. :-(

Yeah, it goes back a while but we got by in a time when there was no such thing as late opening of stores every day, dedicated parking, Tesco/ASDA/Waitrose deliveries to your home, internet shopping and so on. Both of us were working full time. We never ever took the kids shopping pre-school. What for ?

Nowadays I only meet this problem once a week when I take my mother shopping. I get a regular earful from mums net 'cos I use a kiddie space for my mum (96) on account of the aged spaces all being full of sports cars.

At one time having a blue badge made it possible to park on double yellow lines for a while. This was a great help to disabled people who needed to visit their bank, optician and so on. Now the trend is to mark town centre double lines as "loading only" thus confining the blue badge to regular car parks and very often an impossible 400 yard assault course.

Weep not for mums net.

Many of the aprent/child spaces here are actually labelled Parent and Infant .. so aimed specifically at babies and toddlers.

But there are many parents with handicapped children who need such spaces for children in wheelchairs

Ach, if it doesn't follow Rollo's remit it's wrong, apparently.
If you're obese/slightly overweight - it's your own fault.
If you have children - don't inconvenience others (aka him) by shopping when he's taking his mother out - do it by 7pm, not when it's convenient for you!!!!
If you're disabled - you should look it - or at least 'act' it.

Apart from my BiL (who would have been 66 today) dying of mesothelioma, my nephew has a blue badge.
He looks perfectly healthy - holds down a job, has a 16 month old son - but he's got MS. He's had it for 20 years - has good times, and bad. He uses a stick when it's bad. Doesn't look much, but he's in pain. How dare he have a disability, not be on benefits, and not look too disabled!!!

Both obviously fail the 'Rollo remit' on disability and - life!!

Please don't start on people not looking disabled or I will lose my temper big time! My eldest also has MS although she no longer lives in the UK and has never applied for a blue badge she could lose her eyesight within minutes. No further comment needed I think.

My youngest daughter has 3 children and even though her car has sliding doors she still needs a wider parking space to safely get the children out of the car and into whatever mode of child conveyance she is using. BTW they are all skinny!

I have had a blue badge for years and years and yes I really get peed off when able bodied are using designated disabled bays.

I thanked the warden employed by Asda a couple of years ago for issuing £60 or £80 fines (can't remember which amount). Anything to stop the lazy buggers thinking they are entitled to use those bays. NB He told us that if the driver had a badge or the vehicle was tax exempt (as it was then) the fine would be cancelled.

Personally I'd clamp them and ask questions later. I have had to return home and not shop because there were NO spaces. At the hospitals I attend things are no better. Staff even park in the disabled bays.

As for 'cash point cripples' words actually fail me but not enough for me not to tell them exactly how selfish they are.

Disability isn't a lifestyle choice FGS.

I always look for badges in disabled bays an tend to comment quite loudly if I don't see one.
But to pass comment on someone with a blue badge who leaves their car but doesn't look disabled is equally wrong.

Anyone who parks in a disabled bay who doesn't legally own a blue badge should feel the full force of the law - but if they legally own a badge, it's not up to me to determine whether or not I, personally, as a member of the public with no medical knowledge should determine whether or not I (in my total ignorance) consider them suitably disabled!

Personally, I prefer my 'driver' to park near a trolley park, nomatter how far it is from the shop, as returning the trolley is the biggest 'fag'.
I'm amazed at how many disabled and mother and child parking areas are quite a distance from trolley parks. Methinks not much 'joined up' thinking was done in the planning of supermarket parking.

This happened on a bus a number of years ago.

Our buses have seating near the front door that is "for disabled, handicapped and mothers with children". The seats can also be folded up for one wheelchair or infant stroller on each side ........... a wheelchair has precedent over a stroller if boarding at same stop, but one will not be displaced by the other, unless the stroller is small enough to fit on the other side with another stroller.

Of course, those seats can be, and often are, occupied by people who do not fit in to any category.

Soooooooo ....... I was going downtown, and sat in the seat closest to the front, my right side up against the partition between the body of the bus and the door.

The bus gradually fills up, I don't move, and get some very dirty looks because I look perfectly healthy and quite a few years younger than a couple of the people standing.

However, I'd had a mastectomy 2 weeks before ........ which was why I was protecting my right side, and why I literally would not have been able to hold on to any pole or strap.

No-one could tell ..... and I have to admit that I felt embarrassed because I had not stood up. No-one said anyhting out loud, or suggested I move ............. or I would have told them.

I was perfectly able to walk ...... and we were leaving for a pre-arranged holiday in the UK less than 1 week later, and I needed some travel items. I decided I could ride the bus, so why get OH to drive me downtown!

But I did expose myself to some embarrassment that I had not expected!

my Dad needs to park as close as possible to the door but he is too proud and stubborn to 'lower' himself to get a parking pass. No we don't use the handicapped stalls but we do park right next to one, if we can.
But I do agree that they are being abused. I doubt the guy in the convertible was handicapped in any way, but you just never know, do you.

I once had to use a disabled space but sought out the security guard before I did so. He came to the car with me to check my reason for using it. The reason was that after an accident my daughter was in a wheelchair for a month and, because she is seven inches taller than me, I could not lift her so I needed the space to get the wheelchair to the side of the car for her to swing herself into it. The security guard was quite happy for me to park there without a disabled sticker. It was the one and only time I have ever done so.

I have used the child car parking space several times. After an injury I needed to use a walking stick for a couple of weeks and having once parked in a normal space I almost fell getting into the car driven by my friend. I grabbed the side door which then swung wide open. It was pure luck that nobody was parked in the space next to us. For the next couple of weeks I used the child parking space until I was able to walk without the stick again.

Wouldn't it be a good idea if hospitals/doctors could give 'short term' disabled badges for such situations?

Whilst it is right and proper that things should be made as easy as possible for the disabled to park close to where they shop etc, I do think at supermarkets some of the spaces, also some of the parent and child spaces, could be made available to all say after 9.00pm. At that time at our local supermarkets there are swathes of these spaces empty and not being used, yet there is an army of people, myself included, with arthritic knees or hips etc, not bad enough to qualify for a disabled parking pass, but who are being forced to park further and further away from the store doors, causing unecessary discomfort and difficulty. The effect of this means people like myself are turning to smaller shops with smaller carparks and the big supermarkets are losing our business.

The form that has to be filled in by the doctor to get one of our disabled parking permits and signs has a section for "temporary ----- reason" as well as "permanent ---- reason"

"reasons" for temporary permits include broken legs, accident ............ anything that might cause problems in parking in a normal space for up to 6 months.

That would cover most of the experiences mentioned on here.


I've mastered the getting out of the car with a cane ............. but I do have to have the door open quite wide. If someone parks too close to us on "my" side ........... OH pulls the car out of the space, and then stops in the driving lane to let me get in.

Perhaps people are politer here, but I have never had any driver honk their horn at me as I swing the door wide, sit down sideways, and swivel round so I'm sitting "normally". The last thing to come into the car is the cane! I never hold onto the door itself ............. if I need to hold onto something, I hold on to the side of the car.