Facing down the bully state...just say 'No'

One topic that Dave might find time to address is how to get the State off our necks. Much of the state-sponsored bullying that goes on has no basis in law.

For example, I had a young mother complaining to me that the authorities had threatened her with prosecution if she took photos of her toddler at his nursery school Xmas party. They told her she would be in breach of the Data Protection Act. Only they made it up. There is no such offence.

Under the ludicrous ‘Sarah’s Law’, brought in after the horrific murder of two young girls by a school employee who already had form for child-molesting, people who wish to work with youngsters have to get a clearance chit from the Criminal Records Office. This, of course, does not prove that you are not a kiddy-fiddler; merely that you have not been caught. The upshot is that the voluntary sector has been decimated; who is going to be a Boy Scout Master if he has to pay about £140 for a chit?

Then we had the ludicrous case of the elderly lady flower arrangers at the cathedral who were told to get CRO checks because the choirboys used the same lavatories. They simply resigned.

The latest nonsense is a father being stopped by a security guard in a shopping mall when he took a photo on his mobile phone of his small daughter eating a large ice cream. The jobsworth ordered him to delete the picture. When he told the guy that he had already posted 3 pix by twitter, the police were called. They told him that taking pictures of his daughter in the shopping mall was possibly an offence under S.44 of the Terrorism Act. They took his particulars but no further action.

Now ‘they’ appear to have extended this nonsense beyond the intention of the law of protecting children by requiring clearance for volunteers to work with adults. How bureaucrats love to gather power over peoples’ ordinary lives.

So what’s to be done?

My stance would be ‘Just say No!’ Here are some of my suggestions.

Never make eye contact with e.g. airport security. If you get an unreasonable demand from an official, ask for the name and phone number of his superior. Ask to see the supervisor. Keep the Daily Mail editorial desk phone number on your mobile; you might get your 15 minutes of fame if you grass-up a bullying official.

And here is one that really worked because the feisty lady shopkeeper concerned had the backbone to take on the jobsworths.

She had waste paper to dispose of, so she took it to the council paper skip. However, it was full, so she left the box of paper alongside it. After she had returned to the shop, she shortly received a visit from the fool of an inspector who gave her a fixed penalty notice of £80 for littering. She told him to put it where the sun don’t shine.

Then she got a notice of summons for non-payment, to the magistrates’ court.

She replied ‘Sure, see you in court. But not the magistrates’ court, maties; the Crown Court. I want a trial by jury’.

She heard nothing more. The local authority had been faced down and they were not prepared to face the opprobrium of trial or of the inevitable scathing comments from the Judge.