her name is ZoΓ« Bread and she doesnβt show her face, and sheβs a British artist whose videos are basically her fucking with people in harmless ways - like, asking retail workers if they want an βofficialβ picture of King Charles that is in fact a cartoon and filming their bewilderment (the person is never in the video; she films the floor and her shoes while sheβs doing this). she also calls up companies who have stuff like βcall us to talk about [X]!β written on their products to see if theyβll really talk to her about [X] and if the person at the call centre doesnβt know (βfull unedited silenceβ is a feature in most of her videos), she will dig and dig until she finds someone who can. or, until she gets bored, which. fair. canβt fault that.
Iβm currently trying to get a member of the british peerage to give me Β£50 because weβre distant cousins. I appreciate her.
she travels around for these videos and one day she went to Manchester and parked on a road called Collier Street.
Collier Street has (or had, at the time) another car park at the end of it - the SIP car park. SIP is a private company that runs these. the signage on Collier Street indicated that the payment machine there was where youβre supposed to pay, so ZoΓ« and a fuckload of other people assumed that that was where you got the tickets. ZoΓ« put it on her car and went about fucking with whoever she decided to confuse today
she gets back to her car, has a parking ticket, and is confused
again - she paid for a ticket. she wasnβt trying to get out of paying.
because sheβd bought a ticket from the machine that the SIP car park instead of the council run machine that is actually on a different road, sheβd been ticketed. and, rightly so, she contests it and the person at the council says that the rules are the rules and thereβs clear signage
ZoΓ«: the signage is misleading
council: we donβt believe it is
council: we believe the signage is adequate
ZoΓ«, being ZoΓ«, doesnβt agree with this. she pulls up literal yearsβ worth of data on the history of that sign, the parking on the road, and the number of people who got ticketed. very early on, she says sheβs not actually bothered about her own ticket, but sheβs upset that people are being caught out and sees that itβs a money-making scheme for the council. she speaks to parking wardens, who mostly seem to agree that the signage is misleading. she has data. she calls them back. same response.
ZoΓ«, being an artist, makes her own sign. which she puts up below the official one. and then she waits to see how long it is before itβs taken down.
[note: there was a side quest sometime during this - it went on for months - where she put cones in the parking spaces. the council moved them onto the pavement/sidewalk. this made it inaccessible for wheelchair users, people with prams, other people who canβt just move around them, which is illegal. so she called the council repeatedly to complain about the cones and monitored them until they were moved. this took ages - we are talking weeks.]
ZoΓ«βs sign gets taken down.
the signpost it was attached to, with the misleading sign, becomes a point of pilgrimage for British people who appreciate a good bit of humour with the intent of bullying the local government. it is COVERED in stickers.
her sign is taken down. the sign is not changed. more people get tickets.
[there was a second side quest, where ZoΓ« discovers that the SIP car park - the private one - doesnβt have planning permission. she doesnβt let this slide.]
not happy with this, ZoΓ« calls in to the local radio station. which has a Q&A with Andy Burnham. the Mayor of Manchester. she calls in and asks him about this. Andy Burnham says heβs taking her concern into consideration and will look into it, and get back to her if she calls in next week.
sheβs not put through next week.
she calls in again and brings it up.
[all this is happening while sheβs repeatedly ringing the council to ask them about it]
she has gone from βharmless tiktok pranksterβ to βcalling out government incompetenceβ. with a MASSIVE platform.
eventually, after her being interviewed by the BBC, Manchester City Council puts up a sign saying where the actual car park for Collier Street is (there is a running bit where a council worker misheard her and thought she said βCollyhurst Streetβ, which to my knowledge does not exist. ZoΓ« now exclusively refers to it as that, including in her radio appearance and on her phone calls)
she isnβt done. she now has a petition to force the government to change vague signage. the government said no, all their signage is adequate. sheβs now fighting with them. in one of her most recent videos, she was on the phone with the House of Commons enquiry department trying to figure out how to contest it. sheβs brilliant.
anyway, this is why the art of Fucking About must never be lost. big up ZoΓ«
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