‘Blue Badge’ bandits.

My wife is one of those fortunate or unfortunate people, depending on how you look at it, who has a disabled person’s parking permit. This means that the vehicle that she is travelling in may be parked in certain ‘restricted’ areas or in the special bays which are clearly marked with the familiar blue sign. When parked, the permit or ‘blue badge’, as it is more commonly known, must be clearly displayed inside the car.

Now it seems that these permits are being targeted by thieves as there appears to be a growing market for stolen and forged ‘blue badges’. Of course the arseholes who use these stolen permits give little thought to the misery they cause some poor bugger who has to wait weeks for a replacement of something which was difficult enough to obtain in the first place. Almost as bad are the the inconsiderate sods who park in ‘disabled badge holders ONLY’ bays at supermarkets and the like.

Today I was sitting in our car, which was parked in a clearly marked ‘disabled’ space at our local hospital, while my wife was inside having an X-ray taken. Close by was another clearly marked vacant bay.

Suddenly a car drove at high speed through the hospital gates, the driver ignoring the 5 m.p.h limit sign, and screeched into the empty bay as if it were a ‘grand prix’ pit stop. It must be an emergency, I thought; but no, for out jumped a young woman who then strolled into the main building of the hospital. No permit was in view, nor was there any sign of a walking stick or crutches, much less a wheelchair.

After a few minutes the woman returned to her car, where she sat for the next ten minutes or so, eating a sandwich and making calls on her mobile phone as drivers passed by searching for a convenient place to park.

“She couldn’t care bloody less” … I said to myself as I was just about to have a touch of the ‘Victor Meldrew’s’, when she suddenly accelerated out of her parking space as if she was on the front row of the grid at Monaco.

It was then that I noticed that she had removed her coat to reveal …

…   her nurse’s uniform !