Just leave my beaten-up Beetle alone

But events of the past week have made me look upon my local wardens less benignly. It began when we found a parking ticket on the windscreen of our beaten-up Beetle. Our residents' permit had run out the day before. The penalty was £120 — the rate for a "serious offence" such as parking on yellow lines.

Surely some mistake. We looked up Islington council's website and found a "common sense parking charter" which talks in friendly tones of safety, free-flowing roads and giving residents priority over commuters. There is further reassurance that attendants will focus on "offences that have a serious impact on road safety".

Strange then that a permit, less than 24 hours out of date and still displayed on a car parked safely in a quiet Holloway street, should merit the most punitive penalty. What made matters worse was that Islington council had contributed to the problem by failing to send a reminder notice and renewal number. Without a renewal number, we were told, we had to reapply from scratch — with the car's full documentation and insurance.

We live in a rare area of London that has more spaces than cars, so there's never a problem parking. Restrictions exist on weekday afternoons only, to deter out-of-towners dodging the congestion charge. Despite this, the fact that we're registered residents, and the council's "common sense" policy, no concessions could be made. We would have to use meters until we got a new permit.

To cut a long story short, this resulted in two more penalty notices. One, for £120, because the ticket had fallen onto the dashboard. Less a threat to road safety, surely, than a problem with council adhesive. In the end we clocked up £320 in fines — precisely the amount it costs to park legally outside our own home for two full years.

Of course we're appealing against the tickets, along with two others doled out in previous weeks for equally random reasons. But it's hard to escape the sense of persecution, even though we're two of the most law-abiding car owners in town.

Islington council claims that parking in the borough is revenue neutral. Can someone please tell that to the ferocious new breed of parking zealots stalking my street?