The abuse of parking wardens does not surprise me. I am a particularly placid person but, having reluctantly accepted the 500 per cent parking charge increase last year so that I pay 50p every day to collect my son from school, I was incensed by the ticket I received the other day.

I was held up at the school for five minutes so my ticket expired at 3.17pm and my fixed penalty was issued at 3.22pm.

I was parked in a legal bay and was clearly someone who had bothered to pay for a ticket. The wardens were still dealing with my ticket when I got there at 3.22pm with two small children. I was furious.

There are people at that school every day who don't even bother to look for a space but go straight to the pedestrian zig-zags (dangerous and illegal), the double yellow lines, the pavement in front of people's garages or the bus stop or, indeed, the disabled bay.

I have asked the parking attendants on more than one occasion why they just stand there and let people park in a fashion that puts children in danger on the pedestrian zig-zags and they always say they cannot do anything about illegal parking as it is a police matter.

I am all for fining people who park on pavements so you can't get past with a buggy or wheelchair but I think I have been treated extremely harshly. It is just one more nail in the coffin of this council which is ruining our city.

Who is going to be held accountable when we have no tourist trade in ten years time because you can't access the city centre or seafront in your own car because the main road into Brighton is reserved for use by buses, taxis and cyclists only and you need a second mortgage to park here for a weekend?

I have to admit I did give the traffic warden some verbal abuse because I wanted to know why they were up at the bays waiting for time to expire on tickets that had been paid for and not further down the road where people were putting lives in danger with their parking.

-Clare Gerlach, Brighton