With a sense of weary inevitability, I discover that it is not possible to have a washing machine delivered in my street without paying £100 in washing machine delivery protection money to Brixton town hall.
Yes, indeed. I turned into my street the other day to find a lorry unloading outside my neighbour’s house in what ought to have been a boring, everyday scene of law-abiding folk going about their domestic business. That’s nice, I thought. My neighbour’s getting a new Zanussi. And I drove down an interconnecting road to get round the lorry thinking nothing awry.
Until I heard the shouting. And then it hit me. A lorry unloading a washing machine is not a problem for me, or indeed any other citizen of planet earth because my street is in the middle of a conservation estate and leads nowhere. But it’s a problem for Lambeth council. Sorry, did I say problem? I meant to say opportunity to embezzle money.
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