Don’t fear the RIPA: regulations have to be enforced, sometimes even covertly

You can’t trust the disabled. A lot of them are faking it. In the last year, there were 16,535 blue badges and 21,000 free bus passes cancelled by local councils, due to fraudulent use. Bloody disabled. They’re having a laugh.

Imagine you were a local council. Don’t be squeamish. You can be a Tory one, if you like, from somewhere nice. Anyway, you’re this council, or a bit of it, and you have your suspicions that somebody is using a blue badge who shouldn’t be. Some young bloke, say, who got it off his Gran and now uses it, allegedly, to park each day outside his office. Sounds trivial, I know, but there’s only so many disabled bays around, and every time a boy racer parks in one, a genuinely disabled person — there must be some — can’t. So being a council, you ought to do something about it. But what?

You can’t just take the badge away. After all, you’ve got no proof. Maybe you just had a tip-off, or maybe a traffic warden thought he saw something but wasn’t sure. You could send the traffic warden back there, to hang around until he returns, but the very presence of a traffic warden probably means he won’t. So the sensible thing would be for the traffic warden to a) hide, or b) take off his uniform. So that’s probably what you’d do. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is covert surveillance, otherwise known as an operation authorised by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), otherwise known as RIPA, otherwise known as ‘TOWN COUNCIL STASI USES TERROR LEGISLATION TO SPY ON GRANNIES!!’ in every newspaper, always.