A MOVIE and television actress is taking on Islington Council over its “unjust” parking policy.
Sorcha Cusack, who starred alongside Brad Pitt in Snatch, said she will launch a campaign to “oust the Lib Dems” at June’s local elections if they do not become “more responsible”.
Miss Cusack, 56, lives in Devonia Road and is best known as nurse Kate Wilson in TV hospital drama Casualty.
She is a fully paid-up member of the Liberal Democrats and even distributed leaflets for Islington South and Finsbury parliamentary candidate Bridget Fox at the May General Election.
But if the party does not stop “alienating” ordinary people she told the Tribune she would consider backing parking protest party Local Freedom. She said: “If they don’t start behaving in a responsible manner, I am going to launch a campaign to out the Lib Dems at the local elections next June. Policy like this makes law-abiding people want to break the law. But there’s no point getting rid of Lib Dems if we just get another shower of sharks in their place.
“What I feel most upset about is that there’s no social responsibility.”
Her dramatic comments came after she was issued five parking tickets in the last year, the last of which was slapped on the van of her partner Nigel Cooke.
Mr Cooke had returned from a few days in Stratford-on-Avon, where he was starring in the Shakespeare play Thomas Moore.
Mr Cooke, 47, was miffed that the single yellow line on which he had parked a few days earlier had become a double yellow on his return.
He made his thoughts clear on Monday night by parking in one of Islington’s only single track roads, at the top of St Peter’s Street. The road, he claims, is one of the only roads that should have a double yellow line that doesn’t.
In two incidents Miss Cusack was fined after her back wheel was eight centimetres over a residents’ parking line and another when she had a flat tyre.
She is concerned that after the recent moratorium on clamping, Islington Council has told contractors to increase the number of double yellow lines to keep the revenue coming.
Miss Cusack, a mother-of-two, said: “There’s no decency. When I get a ticket I pay without a murmur, if it is just, but some are just ludicrous.
“We’re a four-bike family and certainly not car-mad. I don’t want to be disenchanted with the Lib Dems but I want them to listen. I was so disgusted with Labour for not listening and not taking issues seriously but I find the Lib Dems are now doing the same.”
“I’m terribly happy with the recycling, I think the Lib Dems are doing a great job. But I’m not happy with the streets. I want on-the-spot fines for people who litter.
She also wants to see the profit raised from “irrational” parking fines instead collected from chewing gum tax.