Regular readers will know that I have so many pet hates I could open a small zoo. But there is one pet that towers so high over all others it sticks out like a giraffe among gerbils, writes Kilian Doyle
I speak of the reprehensible act of able-bodied folk parking in disabled spots. A crime so morally corrupt, it leaves me seething every time I witness it. Which is frequently.
Were I not such a mild-mannered, timid sort of chap, prone to keeping his opinions to himself, I'd have bitten the head off many a perpetrator of this heinous act. Stop. Who am I kidding? I confront them all the time.
"Jaysus, it's a flippin' miracle!" spurt I, the King of Witless Sarcasm, when I spot people skipping from their cars, nimble and frisky as teenage goats. I resort to throwing myself to the floor in mock-awe if they don't get the message. As you can imagine, this is often. The breed of cretin we're dealing with here is not noted for its grasp of irony.
Most run away in terror. Others plead innocence. Some retort with violent indignation. All look guilty. People can't deal with being publicly confronted with their own selfishness. Especially when it's indefensible. I admit, I can get carried away. The air is very thin up on the moral high ground. The lack of oxygen goes to the head. But the antics of these gombeens pale compared to the coterie of cretins who take the abuse of free parking to a new level by using fake passes.
There are 30,000 disabled parking passes in circulation in Ireland. It's anyone's guess how many are legitimate. A hefty chunk are not. There are thousands of boneheads abusing the system, using passes they've cajoled their GPs - like junkies scoring drugs - into granting to them. Don't believe it? The Irish Wheelchair Association points out that applications for passes increase by 300 per cent every time parking charges go up. A coincidence? I think not.
Worse still, there are those using passes formerly belonging to deceased family members. (What a nice way to honour your granny's memory. Sure, why not go the whole hog and prop her stuffed corpse up in the passenger seat?)
What kind of ethical vacuum do these people live in? Lower than a mole's piles, so they are. When you consider that these charlatans are allowed to vote, it reinforces the argument for a totalitarian dictatorship, ruled by my good self.
Were it up to me, anyone caught at this vile crime would be dragged from their car and flayed to within an inch of their pathetic, worthless lives. Thankfully for the future existence of large swathes of aberrant humankind, it's not up to me.
Still, all is not lost. There are other ways, I'm a great believer in the power of shame as a deterrent. Fines don't work. Easy come, easy go. What is less ephemeral is social standing. Threaten people with the stripping of their status within society and they'll soon conform.
Hence the popularity of stocks in medieval times. The modern equivalent is forcing someone caught parking illegally in a disabled space to stand on the pavement with a sign around their neck explaining what they've done. Or slap a big hard-to-remove sticker on their car detailing their transgressions.
That's top deterrence. But it has limited range. For proper shaming on a global scale, the internet is your only man. I recently succumbed to the charms of a camera phone. I intend to use it. I advise you to follow suit.
Spot infringers? Post videos of them on Youtube or upload photos of their parking antics to specialist name-and-shame websites such as www.space-d-out.co.uk or www.caughtya.org.
It's time to fight back. For if such behaviour is allowed to go ignored and unpunished, it is akin to tacit approval. That would be a sure sign society has become ethically bankrupt and has allowed itself be overrun by moral midgets. And you don't want that, now, do you?