The fines that Boris BOASTED about: PM described in 2007 book how he let parking tickets stack up on his Fiat 128 while a student at Oxford because his ‘Belgian number plates’ meant he could ‘let them pile in drifts against the windscreen’
- He told of fines in 2007 book Life in the Fast Lane: The Johnson Guide to Cars
- The then MP said his ‘favourite spot’ was on ‘double yellow lines’ in Oxford
- Said fines ‘piled in drifts’ on windscreen before they ‘disintegrated in the rain’
- The Prime Minister was fined this month for attending party during lockdown
This week, Boris Johnson apologised after he was given a £50 fixed-penalty notice for attending a birthday party in Downing Street at the height of the coronavirus lockdown.
The Prime Minister said sorry with ‘full humility’ in an address in the House of Commons.
But Mr Johnson did not show the same contrition over dozens of parking tickets that he received when he was a student at Oxford.
He boasted in his 2007 book, Life in the Fast Lane: The Johnson Guide to Cars, about how he had let fines pile up when he parked his Fiat 128 on double yellow lines.
The then MP for Henley wrote: ‘I parked all over the place, my favourite spot in Oxford being the yellow lines by the squash courts in Jowett Walk.
‘Sometimes, it is true, I got a ticket, but what did I care? I had Belgian number plates.
‘I let them pile in drifts against the windscreen until – in the days before they were sheathed in plastic – the fines just disintegrated in the rain.’
Boris Johnson was blasé about the parking tickets he received when he was a student at Oxford. Pictured: The future Prime Minister with his sister in 1985
Mr Johnson boasted in his 2007 book, Life in the Fast Lane: The Johnson Guide to Cars, about how he had let fines pile up when he parked his Fiat 128 on double yellow lines
Mr Johnson’s more recent car, a Toyota people carrier, was pictured in 2020 parked outside his future wife Carrie Symonds’ flat with unpaid tickets fixed to the windscreen.
Amid the row about Mr Johnson’s partygate fine, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis mentioned how ministers have previously gotten away with receiving parking tickets.
Mr Johnson arrived at Oxford from the world-famous Eton school in late 1983.
Studying Classics at Balliol College, his contemporaries included fellow Old Etonian David Cameron, along with other Conservative colleagues William Hague, Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt and the journalist Toby Young.
Both Mr Johnson and fellow future PM Mr Cameron were also members of the infamous Bullingdon Club drinking society, which gained its notoriety for various alleged acts of vandalism.
Mr Johnson’s more recent car, a Toyota people carrier, was pictured in 2020 parked outside his future wife Carrie Symonds’ flat with unpaid tickets fixed to the windscreen
Mr Johnson was previously criticised by his former Eton schoolmaster for an alleged belief that he did not need to follow rules observed by others.
The 1982 letter to his father Stanley, written by the then headmaster Martin Hammond, read: ‘I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation that binds everyone else.’
Along with his wife Carrie and Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Mr Johnson was fined by the Met over a gathering in Downing Street’s cabinet room on June 19, 2020.
No 10 has insisted the Prime Minister was only in attendance at the gathering, for his 56th birthday in June 2020, for less than ten minutes.
But government sources have said the event lasted for half an hour.
In his Commons apology on Tuesday, Mr Johnson said: ‘It did not occur to me then or subsequently that a gathering in the Cabinet Room just before a vital meeting on Covid strategy could amount to a breach of the rules.’
The PM was branded a ‘joke’ by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer after he made the short admission of guilt before giving a more lengthy address on events in Ukraine
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