Airport to Hound Travellers

The Manchester Airports Group (MAG), which also owns and manages the Bournemouth, East Midlands and Humberside terminals, is to install Automatic Number Plate Recognition [ANPR] cameras at its principal site.

This is in response to an alarming increase in the instances of drivers going to extreme lengths to avoid parking charges. There have been reports of lines of vehicles 'tail-gating' each under the raised barrier. However, quite how a spy camera is going to record the registration numbers of cars lined up nose to tail remains unclear.

MAG spokesperson, Sarah Barrett, spouts the usual mantra about 'fairness' and keeping prices down for all users, claiming that the company are 'losing' thousands of pounds in unpaid fees. Really? Then why not reduce the outrageous £27 a day tariff to a reasonable amount? Possibly the only cost in maintaining a car park is the equipment and staff employed to collect the money.

An ominously-titled private company, Parking Eye, will use ANPR cameras to log the number plates of every vehicle entering and leaving the car park and issue sizeable fines to the fee-dodgers.

But, campaigners have severely criticised the use of the technology. Alex Deane, of the organisation Big Brother Watch, says, "Manchester Airport is now the most intrusive surveillance area in the country. These cameras are completely disproportionate and should not be installed. Perhaps they should revisit their pricing rather than snoop on law-abiding travellers."

However, it seems that the use of such devices to create offences based purely on fiscal motives is continuing unabated.

The obsession with revenue, over and above any actual cost incurred to a car park operator can seriously backfire. At Luton Airport, the authorities have recently introduced a charge for simply dropping-off passengers in a designated area. Given the absurdity and sheer greed of this arrangement, it is hardly surprising to find vehicles pulling over on the approach road to discharge their passengers and baggage.

There is clearly a road-safety issue here, and one for which the blame can be placed fairly and squarely at the feet of those responsible for the cynical extortion.

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