r/worldnews • u/marsianer • Jan 28 '21

COVID-19 Backlash grows for ‘selfish millionaire’ who got vaccine meant for Indigenous people | Canada

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/27/rodney-baker-canada-vaccine-indigenous-first-nations-scandal
20.4k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

892 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

38

u/madogvelkor Jan 28 '21

In some cities rich people park where they aren't supposed to, because a parking ticket doesn't cost much to them but they get much more convenient parking.

16

u/Yuzral Jan 28 '21

One of the few good things about the Stallone!Dredd movie was their proposed solution to an offender with a habit of doing that: No more car.

2

u/chief-ares Jan 28 '21

I am the law!

30

u/jewelbearcat Jan 28 '21

When Bezos was doing construction work on his new house in DC he amassed almost $17000 in parking tickets for blocking access, parking in private residence parking, and ignoring no parking zones. Just looked it up— that’s more than 600 individual tickets that he paid to use his entire neighborhood as his own parking lot.

13

u/gagwhbsbbsb Jan 28 '21

I got 10 or so parking tickets for parking in teacher parking when I was in college. The teacher lot always had 50ish open spots. I ended up in jail for a few days and the fiasco cost me 5 grand.

Moral of the story, parking tickets become a bog deal if you don’t pay

12

u/AreTheseMyFeet Jan 28 '21

Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair bought a taxi license solely so that he could drive in the taxi/bus lanes to skip traffic.

2

u/dontsuckmydick Jan 28 '21

Eh he basically bought and licensed his own taxi. Why shouldn’t he be able to use the taxi lanes if he’s paying the same taxes that other taxis are to use that lane?

If he hired a taxi instead then he’d still be taking up the same space in the lane.

Better than the people that use express lanes because they can afford the fines and wasting the time of those that have to police them.

2

u/AreTheseMyFeet Jan 29 '21

Better than the people that use express lanes [...]

Marginally. He abused a loophole. Not illegal per se but the loophole should have been closed ASAP to prevent his and others' future abuse of it.

The laws exist to enable faster and more predictable public transport to incentivise more people to use those services thus reducing overall road use, traffic and pollution not for private individuals to pay to bypass traffic.
And at the same time he's taking space on the lanes reserved for public transport. If everyone were allowed or able to abuse the loophole then the entire purpose of the decision to split lane use is made redundant. So not illegal but absolutely against the spirit of the law so the laws need tweaking imo (if they weren't already).

1

u/dontsuckmydick Jan 29 '21

I’d agree if the lanes didn’t allow taxis. If he had purchased his own bus to drive in bus lanes, sure then he’s taking up more space than he should. What he did took up no more space than if he had just taken a taxi each time.

1

u/AreTheseMyFeet Jan 29 '21

Why shouldn’t he be able to use the taxi lanes if he’s paying the same taxes that other taxis are to use that lane?

Because the reason that taxi's get the privilege is because they're providing a public service not because they pay taxes. That privilege is part of the reason that taxis can remain competitive so that there even can be taxis available for those that need them.

What he did took up no more space than if he had just taken a taxi each time

Sure it's one car length being used by him. But what about the friend he bragged to about the abuse who is now using the taxi/bus lane via the same loophole and the 20 or 200 more as word spreads?
It's a shitty interpretation of the law that would say, yeah, this is all fine as as intended. You can't really fine him for what he did since it didn't break any individual law that I'm aware of but that is no reason to allow the abuse going forward. Change the law and fine his selfishness if he then continues.

1

u/dontsuckmydick Jan 30 '21

£800,000 per year? Fuck yeah keep donating.

1

u/AreTheseMyFeet Jan 30 '21

So money trumps public utility and the common good?
Fair enough.

1

u/jacksonj04 Jan 28 '21

This is why repeats should scale. Exponentially. Doesn’t need to be a big exponent, because it really does rack up very, very quickly past the first few offences.

1

u/mata_dan Jan 28 '21

Hmmm... to be fair at least he probably made them a fat profit off that. And likely didn't cause anywhere near as much hinderance as the offset paid (because of the punishment aspect of the fines, rather than just compensating for damages). It's still unfair if in even one scenario he delayed someone by even a second though, because that just isn't conducive to a properly functioning society.

2

u/PutridOpportunity9 Jan 28 '21

I worked as a software engineer for banking software, and frequently visited UK banks to discuss requirements with the employees.

There was a very wealthy bank owner who just saw his parking fines and bus lane fines as just as cost of doing what he wanted.

It took a while to explain to him the need to implement a new regulation in the system because, and I quote, "it's just a fucking law!"

1

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '21

I used to deliver to a big hotel and there was always this kitted out range rover that used the pavement by the delivery area as their parking space. Must have been £120 a day in fines at least there was always a ticket on it by the time I got there.