27/01/2014 Inside Out London

Hello there. I'm Matthew Wright. You're watching Inside Out London.

Here's what's coming up. Are councils using illegal parking

tickets to get cash from drivers? Motivating and encouraging the staff

to go out and penalise people and they only get paid well if they

penalise people. That's the wrong way to run the structure. We find

out why taxidermy is all the rage? It is creating a sculpture from

living matter. You the want to get the guts out and then you have the

raw materials to work on something quite beautiful hopefully.

And the world famous Maida Vale Studios celebrate 80 years of

recording history. The studio is so unique because nowhere else in the

world has got so many artists coming through its doors every day. Some

days we have six bands all in one go.

Now, I reckon we've all heard about the millions some councils are

raking in in parking fines. A sore point with many of us motorists. In

our last series we revealed how two London councils, Camden and Ealing,

have been setting ticket targets that could be illegal. We have

discovered more councils appear to be doing the same. Keith Doyle has

the story. The image might be tough and scary,

but these bikers say they are really angels of mercenary, here on a

mission to help. Today, they are alerting drivers to

this mobile enforcement camera car in Camden.

It is a trap. What we are actually doing today is assisting them in

their goal of achieving 100% without penalties. They say tickets are

written into the council contract and they say that means traffic

wardens are unpressure to issue more and more fines. Please contact

Camden Council. Camden Council told the BBC there

are no targets in their contract and those hourly rates are there to help

them to deploy the right number of staff, but that hasn't deterred

these campaigners. There is nothing to suggest the parking enforcers we

have seen today are not playing by the rules.

Last September, we spoke to serving and former civil enforcement

officers from Camden and Ealing. They told us the pressure to reach

targets was so intense they would make the evidence up. Sometimes you

have to go out and issue a dodgy ticket. They will leave blank pages

in their pocket book. They will issue before an observation time.

That's a shocking claim. How do you constructively create parking

tickets? This traffic warden in a different borough is so disgusted by

the dirty tactics, he agreed to show how it is done. Scared of losing his

job, so he does not quantity to be identified. This is the hand`held

computer. We use it every day. Graham is about to show us a trick

for issuing fraudulent tickets. Number three is for constant

observation. When you press, are you have to give five minutes

observation to the vehicle. Graham says the trick is to pretend you are

observing a car when you are not. Maybe the guy has parked for 30

seconds or a minute, but you issue an instant ticket. By manipulating

your hand`held computer, you can pretend that you have been looking

at this car for five minutes when you haven't. You fool the computer.

Some call it the cooking or boiling option. Graham claims thousands of

tickets are being given illegally this way. Is there no way for the

driver to prove that they are right and you are wrong? No. Graham told

us it is down to targets and the pressure to issue enough tickets to

get the bosses off your back. Andy is a butcher in Lambeth. Most days

he goes to Smithfield Market and when he gets back, he passion

outside to unload. What he is doing is lawful, but that didn't stop him

getting a ticket. That particular morning we were unloading as normal

and it was only when a passer`by notified us that a traffic warden

was giving us a ticket. He apologised and told me he was knew

and to challenge the ticket. Andy followed that advice, but Lambeth

rejected his appeal, so he took the matter to the independent

adjudicator. When I saw the paperwork, they said in the traffic

warden's notebook entries, there was no evidence of me unloading, but at

the same time they produced a photograph of me unloading. Andy is

clearly visible at the back of the van and you can just make out what

appears to be the wheel of his trolley. The adjudicator shook his

head and ruled in my favour. What is going on here? Are councils really

prepared to impose unfair tickets just to increase the number of fines

and to make more money out of motorists? The law for councils

could not be clearer. It is set out in the Secretary of State's

guidance, penalties should never be based on the number of par parking

tickets. Now we have got hold of more documents from boroughs from

across the capital. Bromley Council made ?5.7 million profit from

parking charges and fines last year. Up ?1 million on the previous year.

Its contract with Enforce Company set an annual baseline of 72,000

tickets. And for every Penalty Charge Notice over that number, the

company gets a performance payment of up to ?20 per ticket. Hackney had

a parking sur plus of ?7.9 million. Up to 2 million from the year

before. Here traffic wardens are ranked into different bands

according to their hourly ticket rates.

Lambeth made a stonking ?12 million profit, more than double the surplus

made 12 months earlier. It employs NSL which it requires to issue over

200,000 tickets per annum. We showed the contracts to one of Britain's

top commercial litigation lawyers. This appears to be serial breach of

Government guidance by a series of councils, clearly, cleverly drafted

by lawyers to circumvent the Government guidance on the subject?

In your professional legal judgement, what do you think of the

contracts? Disgraceful. Unacceptable. Arguably unlawful.

That isn't the way the parking authorities see tr. In response to

our story, they pointed out the number of tickets issued is falling.

Lambeth Council told us: Hackney insisted it sets no target

for the issue of Penalty Charge Notices or gives the contractor any

incentives for its officers to issue more than they feel necessary.

So, who has got it right? We are taking our evidence to the

top. This is the Government department that deals with local

authorities. Let's see what the minister thinks of the contracts?

These look like the wrong contract to me. Motivating and encouraging

the staff to go out and penalise people and they only get paid well

if they penalise somebody. That's the wrong way to run the structure.

A court may view these contracts are illegal. Do you want that to be

tested? Well, as I say, I think they seem to be illegal in the sense that

it is illegal for a local authority to use parking revenue to supplement

this general revenue account. Our lawyers will look at that as well.

It would be right to see this tested in law. We played the minister of

our traffic warden showing us how to input false information to give out

false tickets. So you are just pretending you have seen the car.

That's unacceptable. It is disgraceful behaviour, but it does

go to the point we have been discussing where people are feeling

they are under pressure because the whole structure of how they are

being paid. The structure of contract, of how the council is

operated is encouraging them to issue notices. Just to issue more

notice. That's wrong and it should stop. Can I leave you with the

contracts? You promise you will take action? We will take these and get

straight into them. It looks like he is off. These

officers have decided the attention is too much.

While the lawyers decide what steps to take next, these campaigners have

their own way of helping motorists avoid tickets.

Keith Doyle reporting there. Now, still to come on tonight's show:

Elton John played here and I recorded him here. I have to say

that in those days he was not particularly well`known as Elton

John and in fact, even the last session I did here, we referred to

him as Reg. London has always set fashion trends

and right now the latest must have accessory is a nice piece of

taxidermy. Celebs from Kate Moss to Derren

Brown have been snapping up pieces for their homes, and no trendy

gastropub is now complete without a stag's head mounted behind the bar.

But as well as buying the stuff, more and more of us are sitting down

and having a go at creating some ourselves. So we sent a rather

squeamish Ian Lee to find out more. Some viewers may find some of the

images in the report disturbing. A few years ago, decorative stuffed

animals were the kind of things that many of us associated with creeky

old Sherlock Holmes dramas, but things have been changing fast and

many Londoners are falling in love with the art of taxidermy.

Alexis Turner has been dealing in taxidermy for 20 years and has

written a book celebrating its current revival. When I was a kid,

taxidermy was seen as weird and very, very uncool, but that's

changed a lot, hasn't it? It has changed enormously, yeah. Even in

the last sort of, really in the last 10 years, but in the last five

years. Pubs were getting rid of taxidermy in the 70s and the 80s and

90s, now pubs and restaurants have revitalised and it is clean and

sharp and it is designed. If you go into the Barbican, you have got a

great big back bar wall of very smartly cased taxidermy. If you look

at the high street storks the department stores, you will probably

notice it in numerous shop windows. What caused the change? Fashion

designers like Alexandra McKean and Damien Hirst. That gave it

acceptability and brought it into the public domain. It must be an odd

thing to walk into someone's house and there on the coffee table, there

is an owl. You go in the bathroom and there is a stuffed penguin? They

have shot up in value and things that were thrown out are now

commanding large sums at auction. A giraffe could be ?15,000 or ?20,000.

I will take two, please. I have got two. For taxidermy to become cool

again, it had to do more than just wait for the fashion pendulum to

swing back in its favour. It had to sefr its links with hunting and

trophy collecting. I think people thought that animals might be killed

for the purposes of taxidermy. But now, it is completely different. All

the specimens that taxidermists deal with are road kill, natural death,

cars and cats are the biggest killers. It is very regulated.

People aren't just forking out for taxidermy to display in their homes

and businesses, more and more Londoners are signing up for

taxidermy courses to learn how to stuff things themselves.

Over in Hackney, this cure osity shop holds classes for those who

fancy learning how to stuff ethically sourced dead hamsters. We

run a series of beginners taxidermy classes. There is several a month

and they range from mice guinea pigs. We really can't put enough of

them on. They sell out immediately. M It is really kind of nice sealing

the anatomy of the animal first and they are frozen and they don't smell

or anything. I'm really enjoying it. I think people automatically assume

that taxidermy is for people who don't like animals. I have always

loved animals and always had animals and it is extending its life further

and in a really beautiful way, I think.

You go beyond being a living creature, it is now dead. It is no

more. So what you are doing is creating a sculpture from natural

matter. So you just want to get the guts out and get rid of that and

then you have the raw materials to work on something quite beautiful

really. Courses like this are springing up over the capital. I

head on down to Borough to get a masterclass from the tutor at the

London Taxidermy Academy. I am finding this horrible to deal with.

Do you need a strong stomach? Because it is frozen, everything is

intact. Most of the people who come to my classes say I am really

nervous, I am really squeezy and as soon as they sit down and touch the

animal, all the worries vanish and they become enthralled by it and

absorbed. There is a resurgence. Particularly in the last year of

young people coming in and wanting to learn it to inform their

practise, whether that's fashion, art, we get milliners and surgeons.

A lot of people fall down. The sewing scares them. I am not good at

sewing, I would have to get my mother`in`law to come and do this

for me as I did with a button the other day. The technique is being

recovered in classes like these had their heyday in the world of Queen

Victoria. Stuffed birds and animals were the on real way for members of

the public to get up close and personal with the natural world. One

of the capital's best collections can be found in the museum in Forest

Hill. There was all sorts of collecting going on. Different parts

of the empire. Amazing and intriguing animals were brought back

from Africa and innia. Thousands of people `` India. Thousands of people

flocked to see these animals. It started off a craze really for all

sorts of different strands of taxidermy, displaying birds in domes

for example. The prize specimen is a stuffed walrus which ended up bigger

than any living walrus I have ever seen. He is overstretched and over

stuffed than you might see a walrus in the wild. He lost his wrinkles

because the taxidermists didn't have any reference material at the time.

They probably didn't have a photograph to look at or many

sketches and they had to do their best really.

London's latest embrace of taxidermy has been welcome by some of those

who help drive the revival in the first place. Artist Poly Morgan has

been creating taxidermy art works for 20 years with some fetching six

figure sums. When I started doing it, people would want to know where

I got the animals from. I the don't get that. They take it for granted

that I'm not killing animals. I hope it is educating everyone and

preventing people thinking taxidermists as these weirdos in the

basement somewhere. The public's appreciates helps Polly find the raw

materials for her art works. People will call me and say they have found

something. This ganet is from Liverpool. A woman kindly posted it

to me. We have an owl. Someone contacted me via Facebook. A

fisherman shot this dead because it was catching his fish. Like many of

the Londoners discovering taxidermy now, Polly finds the practise

rewarding. From the second I started doing it, I was hooked. It satisfied

so many interests of mine. It span froms science to art and the whole

spectrum really. It is interesting to see where people are going to

take it next. A lot more happened in the contexts than in taxidermy. I'm

interested to see what people will do with it really.

Recording music is a doddle these days. All you need is a bedroom, a

computer, microphone and away you go! Which might explain why so many

of the capital's recording studios have been closing down, but there is

one legendary institution that's going strong, the BBC's very own

Maida Vale Recording Studios. This year, they are celebrating their

80th birthday. # Close your eyes #

These instruments belonged to the BBC Symphony Orchestra and are being

unloaded into the Maida Vale Studios as they have been since 1934.

But for many years, the studios have recorded the very best of modern

rock and pop, renowned worldwide. The studio is so unique because

nowhere else in the world has so many artists coming through its

doors. Some days we have six bands in one go. Of often people will walk

past our studio and they will look in and think, " Look at that huge,

great orchestra." I remember Kylie popped her head in one day. We are

sitting here in the studio where The Beatles recorded. It sounded ten

times in that room than we heard it before.

Once in through the door, you quickly discover this place is a

maze of corridors, but they lead to rooms oozing with musical history.

Studio one has recorded memorable works since Sir Adrian Boult

conducted the orchestra at Maida Vale in the 1930s.

Today, Strauss is in the house! For us, there is a lot of history

here in this building. The people who have conducted the orchestra

here. People like Stravinsky and Toscinini and there is a lot of

history. The list and range of world`class artists that have come

through these doors is extraordinary.

Richard Strauss, whose music we have been rehearsing today, he was here

using the kettle drums that we're using in the orchestra still to this

day. Prokofiev conducted the orchestra. It is a whose who of who

is great in music. As radio listeners tastes broadened,

it was realised that Maida Vale couldn't survive on classical music

alone and had to expand. So it opened its doors to what was loosely

termed popular music. By the time The Beatles queued with

everyone else in the canteen for their lunch, there were seven

studios operating most days of the week with superstars in and out all

the time. We have derigged for most of the

rock and pop bands over the years. Bing Crosby when he made his famous

recording in Studio 3, that was with the Radio Orchestra. Some of the

mike stands go back to the 50s. The stands haven't changed much.

# Take me out tonight # Where there is music and there is

people # Many of heard of this place though

because of one man, John Peel. His sessions were recorded here right up

until his death in 2004. Bands like Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd and the

Smiths walked through these doors. Peel hunted out new music and as

well as getting the really well`known bands in here, we got

bands no one had ever heard of who evolved into public icons. Elton

John played here and I recorded him here. I have to say in those ays, he

was not particularly well`known as Elton John and on the last session,

even the last session I did here, we referred to him as Reg. This place

isn't just about a past when rock music was still called contemporary,

the legacy lives on. Radio 1 records live bands here. Today, it is the

turn of the much talked about and fancied Mount Kimbe.

Maida Vale is the band's first proper studio session. It will be

the first time they get to play in a real studio and here we get to

document a band as they perform together. It is like taking a

snapshot of a band's history. Bands like Coldplay who just played in a

pub and somebody booked them to come in and over the years they turn into

absolute megastars. Experiences like this are massive for any artist. I

mean from our prospective, we try not to think too much about, you

know, the stuff that's been recorded in this room and all that, but it is

unavoidable when you are walking down the corridors and there is

photos of the greats on the wall. BBC Radio was very important to me

growing up and I live somewhere which was very out of the way and

there was no real music scene so that was my musical education. It

was something great to be inside something that's really positive to

come out of that kind of system, you know. These studios played a big

part in many of our musical he hadications. I remember ``

educations. I remember Hawk Wood live on John Peel. Down the

corridor, the double base player surprised me with her response, I

was expecting Handel. I knew before Maida Vale long before I knew there

was an orchestra here. I grew up listening to Radio 1 and the Maida

Vale studios and that added a few extra smiles when I got the job here

with the orchestra, this mythical studio and working here. That love

of different types of music from the past seems to sum this place up as

Strauss is rehearsed down one end of the building and Mount Kimbie cut a

few grooves, a 19 piece Bulgarian choir record, you can't help, but

think this place might be unique. It is such an important building for

music in this country. It resonates with music and history and for every

band that comes into this place, they are adding to that history.

When you spa he can to people from other countries, they rave how great

it is and you realise it is something we are lucky to have.

Happy 80th birthday, Maida Vale. Do you knee what, I would loved to

have been there to witness that John Peel session. Before we go, let's

look at what's coming up next week: With London's house prices

rocketing, many are desperate to get a foot on the property ladder. One

place I went to, I think there were 130 viewing in one session. We are

finding the best way of doing it is offering before seeing the property.

With so many cash rich Chinese investors, are the decks stacked

against first`time buyers? ?300,000, ?400,000, people can afford it here

and they can afford to pay cash as well.

And that's all from Inside Out London. If you missed any of

tonight's show, catch up on the iplayer. Thanks very much for

watching. See you next week. Jude Law has given evidence at the

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about him. A former reporter said he discussed intercepting phone calls

between two newspapers. Anger over flooding, a government minister has

been heckled by residents in Somerset.

He promised an action plan. Dave Lee Travis has told the court

he is not a sexual predator. He said he has a cuddly nature towards women

and denies indecent assault charges. Bill Roach has been