Charity Running

A charity run is supposed to be a well-mannered, community spirited, inclusive event, with people running, walking, stumbling and crawling their way around a set distance all in the name of charity. A good thing for a city to be involved in – hence last weekend, when Manchester laid out a 10k track for people of all fitness levels to trot around and collect valuable pennies from their friends, all in the name of a good cause. Wonderful.

Except, not so wonderful if you were one of the many people who arrived for the run, on the Sunday, parked your car in the city centre streets, which were clogged with runners and barriers, sweated in the name of charity and returned to find a ticket slapped on your windscreen. The Great Manchester Run, it seems, provided something of a feast for the city’s traffic wardens.

The ‘Parking Ticket Complaints Department’, if such a place exists, will no doubt be a rather extreme place to be working this week and we’re told “anyone [who] feels aggrieved... can write to the parking manager at the town hall and [they] will review their case." There were some accusations that extra parking wardens were dispatched to take advantage of the apparent free for all, but this has been strenuously denied. They just got lucky, apparently.