Today is a big day for me.

I am up before an Adjudicator from the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service.

I am refusing to pay a £60 fine for parking in a bay with no parking meter – just the plinth on which it once stood.

In long correspondence with the parking commissars, I am told it is my responsibility to find a meter.

I explain there are no meters in the street where I parked nor in any of the adjacent streets. Residents’ parking only.

This cuts no ice with the enforcers.

How far afield am I expected to roam in the search for a meter?

Silence.

Why wasn’t the bay suspended?

No answer.

No fewer than 29 pages from the Lambeth Parking gauleiters (based in Worthing) detail the nature of my offence.

There are countless references to regulations that, in a previous life, I probably nodded through without a second thought.

I see that one page in the bundle tells me that the parking machine was not broken.

But no mention of the fact it wasn’t there.

I figure it is going to cost them a lot more than £60 to get £60 out of me.

China eyes Liverpool

After my prescient blog post yesterday, I wake up to hear this on the Today programme:

The Chinese government's investment arm is backing tycoon Kenny Huang's bid to buy Liverpool Football Club. The BBC's Beijing correspondent Chris Hogg examines why the China Investment Corporation may be interested in English Premiership football.