Several foreigners report having been done for this in Taiwan, one as a victim of a Smartphone Stazi "in the middle of nowhere"

Apart from them, enforcement of the obscurer regulations here tends to be a series of "flavor of the month" campaigns, so is episodic.

Glad to hear its not heavily enforced in the UK.

I remember a very long time ago my dad used to have a small clip on light that he used a few times when parking on the road at night. It was roughly egg shaped with a clear lens one end and a red lens at the the other. You clipped it on the top of the window which meant that you couldn't quite close the window fully. I think the theory was that it took less current and would thus be less likely to flatten the battery than having the sidelights on. I don't know if it was actually legal though. I've seen a few similar items for sale on eBay, but none exactly like the one I remember.

Remember this was in the days when one had to park with 'sidelights' on......,

When were those days? I'm old and I don't remember them, though I started driving fairly late.

Sounds a real PITA, though I suppose modern cars parasitic draw levels have restored some of the inconvenience.

It was certainly the case in 1961/ to 1964 when I was a student in Sheffield. I had one of the white/red clip-on-the window lights to spare the aged battery on my old Austin10. That, of course , had a starting handle so low battery wasn't as critical as nowadays.

The German parking light set-up always struck me as rather clever. With ignition off, flick the indicator up or down for the sidelights on that side to remain on. (Mercedes and a few others have a parking light setting on the rotary master light switch.) All other lights (number plate and dashboard) stay off. To prevent accidental use, the indicator now has to be activated after switching the ignition off. No doubt modern LED lights use far less juice and aren't going to run the battery down.