I FEEL sympathetic towards visitors like James Callus from the Netherlands in his letter; ‘I rang to pay but got fined’.

British motorists are accustomed to being the victim of laws that seem to be framed with the primary purpose of extracting money from them.

So-called parking attendants are allowed to impose fines even when a driver is no longer present, by the simple expedient of popping a parking ticket in the post. The problem is obvious. The recipient will be in no position, days after the event, to gather evidence to demonstrate his innocence. Indeed, the very fact of there having been an incident may well be in dispute.

Parking penalties are no longer anything like a fine for a misdemeanour; they are more like a reverse lottery. At the same time, they undermine respect for the law, with innocence being replaced by luck as a defence against the oppressive use of unjust laws.

MIKE FRY, Moorland Crescent, Upton, Poole