Labour’s punishment freaks are hounding honest citizens

David Short

Everyone who ever gets stopped by one of these odious people should opt to go to court.

Can the Tories please assure us they will stop this tyranny of the Town Halls; the only purpose of which is to fill their coffers to pay their lovely pensions?

cat osb

Agree with the sentiments expressed by this article, however Tory run councils are also guilty of this type of institutional spite towards people. I would suggest that, at the next election, any political party which promises to redress the balance between citizen and state by reining in officialdom would find that they had a vote winner. But they won't do that, will they? Because they all care much more for their revenue and their power to control our behaviour than our rights and freedoms.

Andrew Forbes

I have just returned from holiday in France, which was a bit of an eye-opener for me on this subject. The pavements and verges are covered in dog poo, and all the parking is free. Why, I wondered. Because the French people simply wouldn’t stand for a government, local or otherwise, that snoops on them and interferes with their daily lives. They pay their local taxes and demand a service from them; they understand who is in charge of whom in government; they simply wouldn’t stand for a parking warden that they employ slapping fines on them for using a car park that they own. The dog poo is unpleasant, especially for an Englishman who’s become unused to the hazard, but I’d swap it for our councils any day.

Especially in the last 10 years, local government has been allowed, encouraged to regard themselves as our rulers, rather than public servants. This attitude is rippled through to the absurdity of bin men having discretion over whether people’s rubbish is worthy to be collected; of council taxes breaking £2k while libraries and swimming pools close, and every council service carries an additional charge for using it. It’s as if they regard the council tax as their due as our betters, while anyone impertinent to actually want anything from them should obviously have to pay. The Tories could win an election on the single issue of reforming this.

And for those concerned, I did manage to avoid treading in any dog poo.

Andrew Forbes

Having just posted, I feel myself building up a fair head of steam for a full rant. So, indulge me again, if you will;

As a director of Civitas pointed out in a letter to the Daily T a short while ago; we have the absurd situation where the police cannot afford to mount surveillance operations on suspects in crimes of reasonably seriousness, but councils have been spying on people suspected of falsifying their address for a school catchment area.

The trouble here is that the police do not set their own budget (in fact, ironically in this case, Councils have an influence), so must allocate resources to deal with the most serious offences (ignoring, a side issue for this argument, all the instances of seemingly absurd PC driven PC allocation). Councils can set their own budgets, and can decide what they want to do. Every year my huge rise in Council Tax is accompanied by a shiny leaflet telling me how really really hard they’ve tried to keep the bills down. But in reality, local govt culture is incapable of proper allocation of priorities or spending other people’s money.

It’s all happened in the last 10 years. Early in the New Labour govt life, people used to complain about how the bin men would drop half the rubbish on the way to the lorry. Now we’re just pleased our bin gets emptied at all. In Jack Straw’s 1st summer at the Home Office he was forced to grovel on TV in apology for the inability to issue passports in time for people’s holidays. They wouldn’t let that happen again they said, and they’ve been true to their word; by being so pedantic about the filling in of the form, that we’re just pleased to have been granted a passport at all.

Which brings me back to happy memories of France. It was in the French revolution that they sorted out their priorities about who served who among the government and the governed. This has severe disadvantages as the French demand a 35 hour working week and guaranteed pensions. But at local level, it means they don’t get bossed around and taxed to death by arrogant bureaucrats. We, on the other hand, never had a revolution, and have a 300 year culture of largely doing what we’re told. And it shows.

michael c

Challenge every fine and publish the names of those councillors who introduce such schemes. The directors and shareholders of the private companies running such schemes should also be publishes. The people responsible should not be allowed to remain in the shadows - the public have a right to know who owns this.

grumpy old man

Andrew Forbes
September 4th, 2008 11:29am
Andrew. It could be argued that the French leave their dog poo to degrade naturally in the elements, whilst the British store theirs in the town Hall.

John Page

Delighted by the strength of these comments reflecting my own views. Local authorities are becoming our uncontrollable masters rather than our servants. The Tories should start saying they will repeal these measures, and saying they hope Tory councils won't go down the route that Ross describes; they should also say they want weekly refuse collections, and an end to small-minded health and safety rulings. There should be a big opportunity for the Conservatives, and I'm afraid Eric Pickles isn't grasping it.

Conlige suspectos semper habitos

You see exactly the same phenomena in Birmingham - Britain's second city and forthcoming host to the Tory Party Conference.

Here 'Civil enforcement officers' in Orwellian-looking uniforms are just itching to nab a businessman for discarding an apple core, or a motorist for overstaying his parking meter by a few minutes.

However, one place you will never find a CEO in Birmingham is along the city's many miles of canals (the Council boasts that Birmingham has more than Venice), which are home to all the City's dossers and winos and into which they merrily toss discarded beer cans and cider bottles all day long.

But, as Ross rightly notes, taking on potentially abusive winos is probably not in Birmingham City Council's risk assessment scheme.

Gene

The Tory councils are the worst culprits and since they control most town halls now things can only deteriorate. My Tory council have imposed two different coloured wheelie bins plus a black plastic box on each householder so far. In the many roads with terraced housing and no side access, these bins now are permanently in front gardens or on the pavements making the whole area look scuffy. And when they are empty, many blow into the road causing more nuisance and hazzard.

Captain Coma

And just to add insult to injury, don't forget that ever-larger portions of your ever-increasing council tax go to fund the index-linked pensions of these vicious government-licensed muggers, thus ensuring that, after you've paid for their comfortable retirements (the fines help, of course), you won't be able to afford a pension of your own!

Cogito Ergosum

Whatever happened to "Britons never never will be slaves"?

It's time the Tories revived their election slogan of 1951: "Bonfire of Controls".

Steven Davidson

I live in Colchester. It is an historic, otherwise pleasant town, currently suffering from a severe, chronic littering problem. The Council has invested significantly in campaigns, clean-ups and more recently, enforcement measures, to try to do something about it. Of course there is always the temptation for not-overly-bright individuals employed in the service of the state to overuse their powers. However, the idea of fining and shaming litterbugs isn't something I object to in the slightest. For those of us who do not want to live in filth, it might eventually bring results. You seem to assume the whole public is middle class, civilised and "nice". It is not.

Dwight Vandryver

Suppose you had a feud with your neighbour. What would be simpler than to acquire an "accredited person" status. You would then be able to persecute your neighbour mercilessly by watching for any minor infringement and by snooping into his or her recycling bins looking for signs of mis-sorting. Even if your neighbour decided to have "the day in court", nowadays there is a presumption of guilt, not a presumption of innocence. You have a "win-win situation".
How times have changed under 11 years of socialist rule. Labour wonders why there is a new generation which has contempt for the system, the environment, and law and order. It only has itself to blame: its rules and regulations have forced the family unit into isolation, fearful and distrustful of the people living next door who might report the slightest misdemeanour to the authorities. Standards of living may have risen superficially under Labour, but the quality of life has plummeted.

Verity

God, I can't imagine living in that nasty, Orwellian country again! You've allowed the servants to become the masters. It's your fault.

There is absolutely no accountability in Britain among the uber class - the public sector. Cameron won't do it, but this class needs to be slashed by 50% for starters. How could you cede power over your own lives and your own small freedoms like this? You deserve what you've got.

Cyclefree

These officials have no power to detain you for as much as one minute. So if one stops you tell them this and march swiftly on. Challenge every fine. I've told my local councillor that if she dares to bring in any any nonsense rubbish-collecting rules, my rubbish will go into her front garden. But the only way to clip these people's powers is to sack a large number of them - about 50% would do it - and repeal the laws which give them these powers. Any chance the Tories will do this? Just a thought......

EUSSR GO HOME

Divide and Conquer.

The eussr uses it against us (Fascists work like that, don't they?).

And we're daft enough to let them.

James Richardson

They had a good name for these fellows in the old Western movies: Tin Badge Deputies.

Gautam

Much of town hall make-believe work can be rapidly outsourced abroad to reduce staffing drastically and lower costs to ratepayers. Since staff rarely answer telephone callss or interact with ordinary mortals, quickly becoming belligerent if the have to (this is what impregnable job security and gold-plated pensions seem to do to people)they are hardly likely to be missed. The enforcement jokers in flashy (expensive ?) uniforms should be the first to get the sack. How much longer do we have to put up with these dour Labour student politicos, who moved seamlessly from student politics and party office to ministership and exercise of pseudo-proletarian dictatorial power, without ever having to make an honest living? Can't wait for Cameron's public school prefects to replace them. At least we will have some Johnsonian pranks and at somewhat lower cost, one hopes!

David Short

Come on Spectator, organise a campaign to stop Town Hall Terror, and ask the Tories to promise to do something about it when they form the next administration.

I see these awful people ambling to work at Tower Hamlets Town all, and ambling back rather early.

Their gait is as irritatingly slow as the frantic pace set by nearby Canary Wharf workers.

CW workers have to perform or face the sack, TH Town Hall workers don't. Hence the relaxed attitude.

If they want to absolutely guarantee election, then that's the way to go.

If there was a new Thatcher in charge, she'd know that the nation's enemy is now the Town Hall, Tory, LibDem or Labour, that they are unaccountable and need to be controlled.

Stop their fat pensions, stop their fines, make them accountable to the people, just as mayors all over France are.

Ric Cooper

It's not just in the North. I got fined £30 in Petersfield central car park (prop: East Hampshire District Council) for parking with my car's nose a few inches over an imaginary line at the end of the bay. Could that have something to do with the fact that I shrugged off the car park's persistent car-wash muggers? I shan't be shopping in Petersfield again.

John Bull

Well-said Ross !

Now let's return the compliments by "Naming & Shaming" all these cerebrally impaired Councils.

Publish a weekly "Stazi" List - make the contents cumulative in nature, and rule that once "On" the list it requires a minimum of six months complaint-free before they come "Off" the list.

Back this up with some "Teeth" by publishing the names of the big stores resident in the Council's area, and thereby 'supporting' by their business Rates, the dubious dishonest tactics of their local council !

I bet it would not be long before the Chambers of Commerce would be screaming at the idiot councillors permitting this type of 'robbery' ( demanding of money with menaces ) !!

Might be tough on some companies, but their names could "Come Off" the lists once they provide publishable proof of their strong condemnations of the Councils.

Most Cities have their own local Newspapers - get them organised to freely 'pool' their reports and publish the "Rogues Gallery" nationally.

Nothing hurts bolshie councillors more than being made the laughing stocks in full public view !

I suspect a bit of hasty "Risk assessment" would be done with the loss of a few ill-thought-out contracts !

Treat swine as pigs and they may learn to keep their noses clean !

Bob Silentio

Strange that it has taken so many people such a short time to misunderstand this completely. People who do not live in tidy expensive suburbs are entitled to get pissed off at the behaviour of the scum who constitute their neighbours. PC Plod will take no action so what else is left but the appeal to ordinary people? These being, for the most part living garbage,the recourse has to be made to another possibility.
I live in a good area which is being spoiled by three families -all living from the state - who always litter and quite frequently have parties which involve loud music and drinking and cursing out loud at 3am. They vandalize property and steal what they can. By the way they all have better cars, bigger tellies and a much easier life than I do.
You may feel schadenfreude right now but they could be your new neighbours. I pay very high rates and I do not live in some council estate but a quiet village in N. Yorks.

Robbit

Well said Ross. But I fear the implications are far deeper and more sinister that simply filling Town Hall coffers at the expense of ordinary citizens while real criminals go un-checked. We generally, but primarilty NuLab and its big-government, nanny-state aparatchiks are gradually insinuating a culture in which ordinary citizens with some petty bureaucratic stamp are happy to make the lives of their fellows citizens a misery ... all, of course, for the sake of the "common good". If we nuture a generation of people who are happy to fine other people a days wages or more for a bin lid a few inches open or a sigarette butt carelessly discarded then why should it stop there? None at all. In the apparently trivial respects you describe, as in so many others, we in general, but ZaNulab and their ilk primarily, are laying the foundations, preparing the way, breeding the aparatchik culture, for the police-state to come.

Robbit

Dear Cogito,

I fear I have to tell you that that anthem died some little while ago ... to be precise when our great and good, in an act of treason that would have seen them consigned to the Tower in any other age, finally sold a thousand years of British sovereignty down the river and signed up to the Lisbon Constitution. Whereupon the new anthem became:

"Ruled Britannia, Britannia ruled by knaves,
Britons ever, ever henceforth shall be slaves.
Tara-rara-rum-pum-pum-pum...
trr-rum-pum-pum-pum-pum...."
etcetera... (Courtesy of the US mag The New Criterion, with some improvements by me.)

pat

These amateur policemen are taking the soft option - why? Could it be because of intimidation? Clearly you need less resolve to tackle a single mum than to tackle one or more yobs doing the same thing? It seems as a result of a lack of moral fibre, that the UK is drifting towards mob rule - with the tacit support of PC politicians.

mondayclubber

Can I ask a question,when you are stopped or asked for a on the spot fine by these (quasi) official thugs what happens if you just tell them to piss (or expletive deleted) off

Mark Noble

You can add Whitby council to the list of offending councils. This is the town in which I was fined for parking in an otherwise deserted car park without a ticket on Christmas day.

David Lindsay

This is what happens when, having arbitrarily decided that they will not do such sensible and necessary things as delivering education and health care, or running railways and utilities, or ensuring that the Police patrol the streets on foot, the political and administrative classes still have to find some way to occupy their time.

This, and waging pointless, unwinnable wars.

yarnesfromhorsham

It has been forever thus. Governments have always excelled -well certainly this one - at enforcing laws against "soft targets" as defined by "those of us that pay our taxes and try observe/respect the law.
Recently, in my small rural town some thirty travelling familes decided to stop over for three weeks which meant breaking in/cutting the locks of a nature reserve and crashing through a hedge of a field adjoining a main road. Eventually when they left(well evicted) they also left three weeks of their filth.
Now, if I drop litter in Horsham High Street the Police or LA will come down on me like a tonne of bricks.
Unless there is seen to be some readjustment in the law between those that endeavour to obey and those that dont actually give a stuff membership of the BNP is going to rise and rise

Leon Vesty

I agree heartily with the sentiments of Bob Silentio. I would like to ask though: if you do not throw litter or misbehave otherwise, what exactly do you have to fear from the people you are vilifying? Do you imagine that it is some petty official who will be facing down the louts? No it will not be some well-paid fat cat, it will be some community minded underpaid, unappreciated PBI type of person who has the guts to face abusive drunks and gangs of feral youths. Guaranteed whoever it is and whatever their motives, they will do more good that the splenetic, brave-on-paper bastards who are spouting off on this page.

David Short

This Leon Vesty is very stupid, and misses the point entirely. Or he works in a Town Hall.

Block him.

And it's true that, unless the main political parties start talking as if they care about the everyday problems of what they would call 'ordinary folk', the ordinary folk will either reduce their voting even further, or will go to the BNP, Respect or other parties that reflect what they want.

American politics shows it works, viz Palin, who embodies so much of what America wants and identifies with.

By contrast, we have an administration here who did not command even 23 per cent of the electorate's votes, because people stayed away, particularly in Labour areas because ministers represent no-one but themselves.

A heady brew in British politics is coming.

You cannot mock the people forever.

NimrodTroyte

Surely the solution to persecution by these commercial civil pirates is to give a false name and address - as long your vehicle isn't involved.

A good one might be to find out the name of a chief local politico and where he/she lives.

The problem of a uniformed brigand finding a piece of paper in the street with your name on it
can be solved by printing off 100s of 'flyers' with the name of the council leader or private firm running accredited persons and surreptitiously dropping them all over town.

Leon Vesty

Ii do not now nor have I ever worked for any kind of town hall or local bureaucracy. Mr Short is a bad-mannered cur but fits exactly the description brave on paper. Thank you Mr Short but I have no wish to hear any more from you.

Nicholas Storey

Verity _ I am in complete agreement. it would be totally impossible to live again in modern britain - and Shorty - you're a good egg this week, old bean, really you are.

EUSSR GO HOME

Love your ideas Nimrod!! I hope lots more like them appear on the site. It'll be OK - people like Vesty have such tunnel vision they don't comprehend English ideas anyway.

As for "if you do not throw litter or misbehave otherwise, what exactly do you have to fear from the people you are vilifying?" He has to be kidding! Presumably he looks rough enough for them to leave him, his money, his time, and his goodwill, alone.

John Bull

Leon Vesty
September 5th, 2008 10:23pm

This nasty little "town-hall" type seems irritated enough to be a part of the problem - ie - one of the uniform-wearing Street Stazi who will gladly even do "the job" for free, as long as they get to wear a nice police-style uniform and get to boss other people about.

Go on Leon you pillock, admit it - you just love playing at being Hitler don't you !

You can thank you lucky stars you don't live where I do - you'd end up in a trash bin within seconds. Just where you belong.

Archie

Spot on, yarnesfronhorsham and David Short! Sick to death of the rubbish dumps that our towns and countryside have become and the accompanying tyranny under this pathetic apology for a government, and finding absolutely no redemption in the vapid platitudes of Cameron, I am doing as all of my friends and voting BNP next time, come what may!

Anon

Maybe Vesty himself is one of the Litler Yoof?

Or should that be the Mestapo?

Iain

mondayclubber: "Can I ask a question,when you are stopped or asked for a on the spot fine by these (quasi) official thugs what happens if you just tell them to piss (or expletive deleted) off"

Good question - I suspect not very much. How about some basic legal guidance from The Spectator?

Lets get difficult - take their names and numbers. If they visit your house, record the conversation on a dictaphone. Take a photograph or two.

Be difficult, be bolshie, don't be a pushover!

John

The socialsists have always been the nasty party. The Conservatives are the stupid party and the Lib Dems the silly party.

David Short

Pity that this excellent article is intro-ed thus:

"Ross Clark says that far from keeping our streets safer or cleaner, the government’s new force of amateur policemen are ignoring the worst offenders and pursuing law-abiding innocents instead"

Anyone over the age of eleven who has attended a proper school and paid attention can spot the basic howler here, but obviously not a new-style Spectator sub-editor.

By the way, Vestey. I am not 'brave on paper'. This is not paper.

Colin

Any incoming government will find the scope for tax cuts and other beneficial fiscal reforms limited. As a result, the dismantling of the state and action to reduce the powers that town hall officials have over tax payers could well be measures that resonate positively with a demoralised electorate. At the very least they could take our minds off the dawning realisation of the scale of fiscal mismanagement and maladministration of the past 11 years or so.

Mike Mitchell

The only thing that will stop New "Stasi" Labour is a general election in which the Labour Party is removed from power for a decade, hopefully longer.

Richard

Nasty, interfering, full of self beleif.......and unbeleivbly incompetent.

However it is not just the politicians. The last ten years have given us a whole generation of bureaucrats (from Whitehall down) who share these same traits.

I hope Cameron realises that he has some serious house cleaning to do.

Colin

The reason they ignore the worst offenders is because they fight back.
I mean they really fight back. Once they see a shirt and tie their on you "your a soft touch"
Give a false name and address but make sure the address is an empty house.

wendy slater

First Great Western trains are quite appalling in this regard too. A gang of half a dozen menacing lugs can regularly be witnessed at outlying stations, ready to loom around someone who hasn't got the exact, correct ticket. My sister fell prey when misinformed by a South Western Trains man at her station of departure. However, a letter of reasoning sent to the court (when threatened with a fine of £110 plus legal costs, for an offence of £1.65 that my sister could readily have paid if only asked instead of persecuted) fended off any necessity of appearing there, so baseless and flawed were the arguments made by the bumble.

Nicholas Storey

Wendy Slater - If all the tin badge deputies and all the rest of the growing body of gestapo which is evolving in new Labour's modern Britain did get the sack, it would mess up Garden Broom's fugures demonstrating high employment and a booming economy.