THE internet teems with sites for people with special interests, and people with a special interest in thwarting the clampers are no exception.

A simple search takes a matter of seconds to produce sites with advice on removing and destroying clamps, including the equipment needed and the best ways of avoiding being caught.

Some sites advocate threatening clampers - and even carrying out such threats.

But perhaps the most notorious such site to appear in recent months is that of Angle Grinder Man.

Dressed as a Marvel Comics-style superhero, the nameless London-based man offers a free and illegal clamp removal service for people in the capital and Kent.

He claims that all victims have to do is call him on a cellphone number he gives and tell him their location.

He then goes there with an angle grinder and destroys the clamp, thereby freeing the car.

Angle Grinder Man explains on the site: "My obsession with wheel clamping is actually a rebellion against a much deeper malaise.

"This is, namely, the arrogant contempt that politicians hold for the people who put them into power, and whom they claim to represent.

"Wheel clamping, speed cameras, congestion charging, proposed ID cards, omnipresent CCTV cameras, new toll roads and the MMR vaccine fiasco are all good examples of inept administrators attempting to make their lives easier and solve their own mismanagement problems by persecuting the people that they have failed."

Angle Grinder Man is not the first anonymous aggrieved citizen to adopt a superhero persona to right a perceived injustice.

An anonymous man styling himself Captain Gatso is thought to have carried out or directed the destruction of several speed cameras.