Classic bikers boxed out of Oxford
County council send parking enforcement officers out on Boxing Day, ending 45-year tradition
VINTAGE motorcycle owners who have been gathering in Oxford's centre on Boxing Day for the last 45 years have been forced out by the council's heavy-handed parking enforcement contract.
The Oxford branch of the Vintage Motorcycle Club (VMCC) have met every year on Boxing Day to show off their motorcycles to locals and tourists before heading out to a pub in the countryside for lunch.
However, the club now find it hard to meet in Oxford due to free bank holiday parking being replaced by parking charges enforced by Oxford council's draconian parking officials, NCP.
The club have been shuffled from their original meeting point to increasingly cramped parking area, then a loading-only bay and the final straw came in 2010 when a minibus containing 10 parking wardens turned up and circled the group.
Barry Whitehead, treasurer of the group and part of the Boxing Day meet for 10 years, said: “I regard us as being just the latest victim of the march of health and safety and commercialism.
“People love to come and see the bikes – it’s part of the city’s Christmas tradition. But I guess we don’t make money, so we are not important!”
