If 'booking their place' means no one else can park there, then one is inconveniencing the visitors and pushing a parking problem on to an adjacent area, which is selfish and no real solution. What if everyone did this, you could never stop at your destination. One needs parking at the destination for the system to work. Paying off the council's space protection racket in order to get more rights than others, solves little. But if the problem is pushed elsewhere it can be ignored and claim it's worked well.