Free car parking is a joke
Our bizarre obsession with parking for free makes great comedy. What’s not so funny is the way it benefits the wealthy at the expense of poorer people and the environment.
Listening to some people, you’d think that being able to park their car for free wherever they go was an inalienable human right. I find the insistence that storage for private vehicles should be provided freely (often at public expense), and the outrage when it isn’t, bizarre.
I’m not the only one. Comedy writers recognise the absurdity, skewering characters whose car-logic defies any semblance of sense. In an episode of the superb BBC comedy Detectorists, Becky is trapped in a dull staff meeting, dreaming of escaping her life as a primary school teacher to volunteer in Africa, when a conversation about parking takes a surreal turn.