Several responses to my post on the fallout following the modified car meeting, none of them very happy with my comments. One of them, was a well balanced and passionate plea for a better understanding of those who genuinely enjoy modifying their cars.

Another took the time to criticise my poor grammar, but offered little else. The third one suggested that I should have, or is it of?, been criticising the police for allowing the meeting to go ahead.

Having stirred up these enthusiasts, I suppose I should at least apologise for some of my more sweeping statements and also for classifying them all universally as boy and girl racers. However, I hope they will in turn accept that they were bound to stir up a s**t storm of protest by doing what they did in the first place – taking over a town centre car park without any form of permission.

I was going to suggest that if this had been a rally for mobility scooter enthusiasts, the response would have been very different. However, thinking about the bad behaviour of many of these people on our streets and footpaths, I’m not so sure. So let’s use mothers showing off their baby buggies as the example. Whilst the owners of the car park may have been slightly miffed at the uninvited takeover, the general public would probably have responded by saying, what’s the harm?

Unfortunately for the modified car enthusiasts, they come with a significant amount of baggage when it comes to public perception. Not least the belief of non-enthusiasts, such as myself, that they are all boy and girl racers at heart. Right or wrong, the simple act of congregating in a town centre location, to display the most obvious badge of the boy and girl racer fraternity – the soup-up motor car – was always going to create a negative response from the general population.

Can I therefore suggest that in future, if modified car enthusiasts don’t want to be pilloried in the local press again and see all the good stuff they do for charity ignored, they don’t takeover town centre car parks without notice. Also, if the local press is to be believed, it would also appear that a lot of litter was left behind, a particular bug-bear of mine and something that definitely winds me up.

It would also be nice if they could convince the less socially responsible boy and girl racer element of the modified car enthusiast brigade, to stop peeing off the rest of us!

Outrage at car park takeover by modified car meet, followed by outrage at biased and unfair treatment of modified car owners meet in local press!

Those outraged modified car owners seem to have conveniently forgotten that they didn’t have any sort of permission to takeover the private car park they invaded for their meeting. They’ve also ignored the fact that those people who are unhappy about this coming together, we’re not really expressing their unhappiness at the car park takeover, but much more about the anti-social behaviour they have experienced involving modified car drivers – generally known as boy racers and more recently, girl racers.

I would also of been very interested to see how many of these vehicles were sporting the illegal number plates so many of these car drivers seem to treasure – or is that yet another illegal act they consider to be okay?

If these car enthusiasts really want to improve their reputation with the general population and not continue to be seen as anti-social yobs, then I suggest they clean up their act and encourage the bad eggs amongst their ranks to stop wheel spinning and speeding around our local streets and car parks at any opportunity they get.

If there are any modified car drivers reading this and muttering about the many being condemned by the behaviour of the few – tough. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and paddles about in water, then it’s probably a duck!

P.S. – While you’re at it, see if you can get our local Royal Mail van drivers to act more responsibly when driving around our local streets