Tuesday 19 May 2009

Sweeping Authoritarianism


It's a sad indication of how de-sensitized to local authority loopiness I have become that, despite an 'Oh god, no. Really?' headline, my red mist-o-meter didn't get much past pastel pink when reading the early part of this article.

Restaurant owner facing fine for sweeping dirt into gutter

A restaurant owner is facing a fine after he was filmed by a Poole Council road sweeper - brushing dirt into the gutter.

It's all becoming depressingly familiar. Local power-crazy morons taking national diktats too far and shitting on the public. What's new?

Eyebrows were raised a touch when it became apparent that it's the same freaks who felt it perfectly acceptable to use RIPA anti-terrorist powers to hound parents who wanted a decent school for their kids, but that was about it.

Until this part.

Shaun Robson, head of Poole council's environmental and consumer protection services, praised the unnamed road sweeper for using his initiative in order to "protect the people of Poole."

Oh shit. Scarlet with the ferocity of Mount fucking Etna in a foul mood.

Protect them from what? Gangs of marauding litter, mugging old ladies and stealing mobile phones with menaces? Surely we are into Monty python territory here.

He added: "They had the sense to gather evidence and supported their observation using their initiative, using their personal mobile phone to record the event.

"This falls within the normal range of enforcement activities that council staff carry out to protect the people of Poole and their environment."

Gather evidence? Normal range of enforcement activities? He/she is a fucking road-sweeper. What do you do in Dorset? Give them a stab vest and an ASP baton?

He said: "The officer was not conducting surveillance, they were rightly gathering evidence of a potential offence."

According to Poole council, a road-sweeper secretly filming on a mobile phone is 'not conducting surveillance'. Err ...

sur·veil·lance (sər-vā'ləns) n.

1. Close observation of a person or group, especially one under suspicion.
2. The act of observing or the condition of being observed.

And this bollocks is from a Tory council.

Jesus fucking wept.




2 comments:

Unknown said...

What a fucking nation we have been turned into, every kunt has a grudge and the council are waiting on the sidelines to make a buck out of it...sad, so fucking sad.

TheFatBigot said...

I have a lot of time for road-sweepers, we have a small group around here who do a splendid job.

If they saw someone crumbling blue asbestos into the gutter or sweeping broken glass onto the pavement I'm sure they would do something about it. Maybe they would take photos and report back to the council. I don;t have a problem with that.

I do, however, have a problem in them being described as "officers". They do not hold an office, they are roadsweepers whose hard work is much appreciated by those living in and around FatBigot Towers, but they are not "officers".