Shed a tear, gentle reader, for the harsh judgement handed out by a county court to one of those popular car-clamping companies.

Poor clamper Jason White, who was, just doing his job for his Whites Car Park Solutions firm was horrified recently to find that an Indian restaurant, Chillies, next to a permit-only car park he was paid to police in Andover, Hants, had put up a sign warning its customers that they faced a £150 release fee if they parked there.

Not unreasonably Mr White felt this was depriving him of the very modest profits to be gained from clamping motors at £150 a time and took out a claim, presumably based on the best legal advice, in the Southampton County Court for £535 for his loss of earnings and £35 court fee, and £150 a day until the case was heard.

Sadly the court failed to appreciate how utterly reasonable our Mr White was being and threw out his claim on the basis of “no reasonable grounds”. The District Judge even said that the restaurant owner Zak Hussein was “entitled to warn his customers”, a judgement that can only open the floodgates to others who might want to unkindly deprive needy clamping companies of their rightful due in these difficult times.

Meanwhile Chillies continues to delight its customers with the wonderful flavours of the Indian sub-continent, available for as little as £20 for a take-away for two, plus an optional and very reasonable £150 charge that those nice people at Whites Car Park Solutions would also like you to hand over..