Parking fee's.

I have a photograph of my father next to a Russian grain ship that was stuck in a Scottish port at the time of the break up of the Soviet Union. He’d been sent up to examine it as not being anything other than a grain ship.

The ship couldn’t leave port as it couldn’t pay the fees for its berth so was impounded. The crew, he advised me, were in dire straits - killing ship rats and seagulls to consume as they also had no permission to come ashore. I think my dad ordered some local official to give them sustenance (he was a naval man himself so had sympathy) but that they had to be told to do that to other human beings tells you all you need to know about pettiness.