I think one of your biggest mistakes was to only mention your ideas about how to reduce double parking, I mean cheating, right at the end of a very long essay with a linkbait title that was basically the equivalent of "Why I'll never write another parking ticket" in this analogy.

Don't get me wrong, I read the whole thing and I thought it was a great article. But while I don't believe for a second that you did it on purpose, if you had wanted to create a media firestorm focussing on the wrong issues you couldn't have found a much more effective way to go about it.

Personally, I would hate to see the essay form get replaced by something more like a newspaper story, with the conclusions at the start and the exposition after. But maybe that's going to become essential on controversial topics like this, I don't know. The lesson I'll be taking away is to ensure that the key point makes up the bulk of the writing, and if it doesn't then keep cutting other stuff until it does.

I imagine it's been rather an unpleasant ride, but thanks for giving us all the opportunity to learn something.