It was rash, not to say stupid, of me to boast in this column a couple of weeks ago that I had not received a parking fine in decades, if ever. Nemesis read my words, and Nemesis quickly struck. Within days I was the surprised - and annoyed - possesser of a penalty notice, placed on my car a hundred yards from my home. I shall explain presently how this occurred. Meanwhile, let me tell you what happened last week to another member of The Oxford Times's arts writing team.

On Monday of last week, Sylvia Vetta was the co-presenter on Bill Heine's afternoon show on BBC Radio Oxford. She drove to Summertown and parked at the Ferry Pool. As she explained to me in an email: "By my car clock I arrived at 3.29pm and so put in for three hours (Bill is on from 4pm to 7pm and he suggested arriving about then). The car park is free after 6.30. When the ticket was printed it said 6.27 but I didn't really look carefully at the time. For those two minutes they fined me £100!

"This gives local authorities a bad name. I am concerned about the image that the council's parking policy gives both to visitors and electors. It seems to be simply about collecting enormous amounts of money from taxpaying citizens and making it risky for friends to stay overnight in residential areas. Wardens hover specifically to issue a ticket the moment you are one minute late. That can happen for many good reasons. Your watch may not be in perfect synchronisation with the machine clock. At pay and display car parks, I am sure I am not the only person to sometimes pay for three hours and yet return within two hours. I am unlikely to get a refund! The unfairness of fining law-abiding citizens £100 for being a couple of minutes late causes antagonism. Many drivers feel persecuted. You may like to warn readers that a jobsworth lurks at the end of the day."

Well, yes, Sylvia; but a jobsworth who is acting strictly in accordance with orders from his money-grubbing bosses. Here is what The Oxford Times reported in December: "Enforcement officers manning Oxford's car parks have been told to 'get motivated and tough' and issue thousands more fines. Council bosses . . . have told enforcers to come down hard on those who stay beyond their allotted time limits. Tougher enforcement at a dozen city council-run car parks , including Gloucester Green, Westgate, Worcester Street, Oxpens and smaller, suburban car parks could reap an extra £50,000 a year. Motorists parking beyond their time limit, not displaying a valid ticket or parking over a marked bay will be slapped with £100 fines - reduced to £50 if paid promptly. Last year, 11,272 fines were issued raising £500,000 for the Town Hall, but next year enforcers have been told to break all records.

"Parking manager Graham Smith said: 'Obviously we are going to get more income from more penalties - and there are some motorists running the gauntlet and getting away with it. We need to find out where that is happening, and start targeting car parks. We have told them enforcers in no uncertain terms there is an additional sum in the budget which we have to make up - there is room for improvement.'"

Men such as Smith make one pine for the days when council officers considered it was their duty to serve and not command, to assist the citizens of Oxford rather than harass and intimidate them. (And, yes, I am thinking here of rubbish collections too.) My own parking ticket was acquired on Tuesday of last week. A central heating engineer was coming to mend the boiler, and he phoned ahead to ask where he could park. With the house still in some disorder following last summer's floods, I did not know where I could easily lay my hands on a visitor's parking permit. Never mind; I told him he could use my rented parking space opposite the house, and that I would move my car, which carries a resident's permit, to a space in the street.

Fast forward to 7pm that evening, when my mobile phone rang as I was enjoying a pre-theatre drink with friends in the Corner Club. It was Rosemarie, to say that a neighbour, Julia, had called to tell her that the car had got a ticket and was likely, if I didn't move it, to get another. This was what often happened, Julia had explained, when people made the mistake - as many did - of parking where I had on a one-hour parking space at the end of Bridge Street.

It hardly needs saying that I had absolutely no idea that I had parked in such a space. If I had been aware there was a time limit, I would certainly not have parked there but in one of the many empty spaces elsewhere in the road. Of course ignorance of the law is no excuse (unless you happen to be an MP), but there are a couple of points I could make in mitigation.

The first is that this one-hour space is a hangover from the days - rather a long time ago - when Osney had a baker's shop. It was designed to allow non-islanders to park legally when they popped in for their bread. It is one of a great many spaces in the area that are no longer required for the purpose for which they were supplied. Others include the seven or eight disabled spaces, almost all of which were provided for people who have moved away, got rid of their cars or died. For many years this column has been demanding their replacement. All they do is provide a steady source of income for the vultures of Control Plus, whose agents are ready with a ticket if anybody makes the mistake of parking there. It is extremely annoying to return home very late at night to find no empty spaces save these, but to know that if you park there you will be ticketed first thing in the morning. This ongoing difficulty was what led me to rent a space of my own.

Now, at last, the county council is bringing the parking scheme up to date. The space outside the former shop will be turned into a two-hour slot. Interestingly, I notice, penalties will not in future be incurred by residents who park for a longer period there. Clearly someone at County Hall recognises the injustice of penalising locals in this way.

But - and this seems to me a crucial point - who are the people who need to park in these timed spaces? They cannot be visitors to Osney Island, for displayed with utter clarity on two huge notices at the Botley Road end of Bridge Street is the injunction: "Residents only parking beyond this point". So residents are being fined, it would seem, for depriving other residents of the chance to park in these spaces.

Madness - or legalised larceny?