How many times could I possibly have forgotten to click and clunk after getting into the car, or taken a call while driving and then have it slip my mind completely?

My suspicion that most of the tickets were being issued fraudulently by some warden trying to make his quota while at the same time striking a blow for Labour just grew until one day I received a ticket claiming that I had gone against a No Entry sign at seven o’clock in the morning in Ħal Qormi. I might not have remembered forgetting to do up my seat-belt on the road to St Julian’s, but there was no way on earth I was going to forget being in Ħal Qormi at 7am, largely because I am never awake at that time, let alone awake and buzzing around there.

I rang the wardens-company boss and let rip. If he’s reading this now, he’s probably cringing at the memory. My fury and contempt were increased at that point because my hunch that it couldn’t possibly be legal to fire off tickets by post – precisely because it offers such enormous scope for abuse and acts of revenge – had turned out to be correct. I accused the wardens-company boss of breaking the law, encouraging his employees to break the law, setting targets for them which they were then forced to meet through perpetrating abuse by picking number-plates at random, and so on and so forth. He stayed admirably calm in the face of my anger and accusations, denied setting targets, but defended the system of sending tickets by mail.

So then I wrote a column about it, about how wide-open to abuse the system is, particularly when many wardens (though clearly not all) have such a low standard of education and are not subject to the same disciplinary procedures as police officers, which might allow them to feel they can get away with issuing tickets abusively and then sending them through the mail. Their victim is then forced to take half a way off work, drag himself to the tribunal, sit around for hours, and then defend himself.

Shortly afterwards, a notice was published, informing the public that wardens, like the police, are not permitted to issue you with a ticket unless they stop you while in the act, or just after the act, and actually hand it to you after asking you for your details. If your car is parked badly and you are not in it, then they must put the ticket beneath your windscreen wiper.

Now it seems that the habit of sending tickets by post has started off again. Some months ago, a ticket for going the wrong way up a street arrived by post in my son’s name. My son was away from Malta at the time of the alleged contravention and had been for months. My husband went to the tribunal hearing to say so, and found that the warden was not there but had actually left a written statement, sworn on oath, that he had stopped the young man, cautioned him, and handed him the ticket. “That would have been difficult,” my husband said, “unless he caught a plane to London to do it.”

So here we have a warden issuing a ticket fraudulently and abusively for a contravention that never happened, sending it by mail and claiming that he had stopped the driver and handed it to him, then above all, committing perjury.

And I am left with the suspicion that these things are so normal in tribunal hearings that no action was taken against him.

The subject has come up because I have just read about the warden who, after he fell out with his lover, who owed him money, issued her with a barrage of traffic contravention tickets, presumably sending them by post as well, because he couldn’t possibly have been following her around and handing them to her personally for things she didn’t do. He even drew another two colleagues into the revenge scam. As it did for me, things came to a head when the woman received a ticket for a contravention in Marsascala, when she remembered she was in Gozo that day. The police were called in and an investigation ensued.

I can’t see why it should have come to that. If there were proper internal audits, the suspicious actions of this man and his two conspirators would have been picked up immediately. How is it possible for the same three wardens to be running into the same woman while she drives without a seat belt, talks on her mobile phone while driving, or goes the wrong way up a street? The coincidence is too remarkable.

When you next receive a ticket through the post, remember that sending tickets through the post is not allowed, then examine it carefully and challenge it. You never know, but some unappetising, spurned or politically motivated warden might have it in for you – or maybe he’s just having a bad day with tickets and picked your number-plate at random to get his success rate up.