Mean spirited traffic wardens in London handed out over £300 worth of parking violation fines to the volunteers of the British Divers Marine Life Rescue charity that worked throughout the night on Friday and all day Saturday to save the northern bottle-nose whale that was lost in the River Thames.

Traffic wardens are famous for being miserable at the best of times, but Alan Knight, the British Divers Marine Life Rescue chairman, couldn’t believe that the cars clearly marked with stickers identifying them as belonging to rescue workers, would not be given some kind of special consideration on the day.

“I guess they have got a job to do. However, all of our cars have ‘marine ambulance’ on the side or ‘marine medics’… and I would have hoped they would have given us the benefit of the doubt.” Said Knight, adding that the organisation now has a £5000 bill to pay for the failed attempt to rescue the whale which died on Saturday evening while on a rescue boat to deeper waters.

[UPDATE] – All of the rescue workers had the tickets forgiven the following day after this news story broke.

The cost of doing good