It's 11am on Sunday. A car parked outside the block of flats where I live has just received a ticket.

It is parked in a bus stop bay, clearly marked "No Stopping 7am - 7pm".

Just the kind of offence for which Brighton and Hove City Council tells us we need the Traffic Taliban - especially when you look at the bus timetable: Sundays - No Service; Mondays to Saturdays - a bus at 4pm and another at 5pm.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays there is an extra bus at 3pm. So you can see why this bay needs to be kept clear 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

Before there was a bus stop, there were parking spaces - very useful for pick-up and set-down for residents

of a block of 32 flats which has no dedicated parking of its own.

But times change and now there's a bus stop and a virtual bus service and a nice little earner created out of yet another patch of roadside.

They are not going to stop, you know.

Someone somewhere probably has a target of reducing the amount of useable roadside parking space by 90 per cent. The lure of the fines is irresistible.

Trevor Pateman,

-Brighton