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Blog • Leafleting bans

Shop owner fined for sticker on a lamppost

A Hull shop owner was fined £75, after a sticker advertising her shop was found on a lamppost. She denies putting it there. But still – it’s a sticker. The po-faced council announced gravely that she had ‘committed an offence of displaying an unlawful advertisement’. What this shows is: first, the increasingly free and easy use of on-the-spot-fines by councils, in a way that lacks all consistency and proportion. Cases that wouldn’t even see a judge – let alone result in a guilty verdict – are being dealt with in this casual and arbitrary manner, delivered in the same way as the…

Blog • Freedom hotline

Manifesto Club statement: No to new ‘general curfew’ powers

After the riots, Home Secretary Theresa May proposed giving police broad new powers ‘to impose a general curfew in a particular area’. ‘In the fast-moving situation we have seen in the last week, we need to make sure the police have all the powers that are necessary.’ Other politicians have suggested new powers to force somebody to remove their face-covering, or new powers to shut down social media sites. Curfews and communication shut-downs are the mark of authoritarian regimes and martial law. They are also completely unnecessary. Virtually every area affected by rioting was already a ‘dispersal zone’ – including Tottenham, Croydon,…

Blog • Freedom hotline

City of London creates a ‘good behaviour zone’

City of London police are setting up ‘good behaviour zones’. The policy was first announced in this poster here. A Flickr photo captures a good behaviour zone sign on location. The justification is that City of London Police believes that ‘there are grounds to believe that members of the public have been intimidated, harassed, alarmed or distressed as a result of the presence or behaviour of groups of people within the estate acting anti-socially’. As a result: ‘If an officer feels that two or more people gathering in a public place are causing or are likely to cause anti social behaviour they…

Blog • Vetting

Volunteers’ checks cost £31 million a year

A CRB answer to an FOI request provides a fascinating cost breakdown of CRB checks: ‘The CRB as an executive agency of the Home Office is completely self funded and does not receive any government subsidy towards the cost of the Disclosure process. In the event that an employer is required to register their child care services with Ofsted, the payment of Disclosure applications is a matter for the individual or organisation. The CRB does not dictate which party should incur the Disclosure cost. The current cost of a CRB Disclosure to a paid staff member (i.e. not a volunteer) is: £26…

Blog • Vetting

‘Fit and proper person certificates’ for volunteers

A Tory MP has tabled a private members’ bill to try to get around volunteers being put off by CRB checks. Rather than ask for CRBs, proposes Chris Chope, people should be asked to sign a ‘fit and proper person’ certificate declaring that they have no criminal record and no convictions. The aim is admirable – to cut bureaucracy and enable people to vouch for themselves and their own trustworthiness. A few holes in the plan, though. First, obviously, is that lots of people have some kind of criminal record which in no way makes them a risk to children – for…

Blog • Vetting

CRB checking grandparents

The ‘Grandparent project’ is Oxford seeks to involve grandparents in community activities. The project celebrates the virtues of ‘living in a friendly community’, and aims to ‘give a voice to grandparents’. Grandmother Paula Mitty said: ‘I think it would be wonderful for grandparents to be acknowledged for the important part they play in their grandchildren’s lives, especially those grandparents who are carers too.’ Yet these worthy aims are undercut by the details of the ad: ‘All volunteers have to attend our in house training and have a CRB check before they join the volunteer team.’ The weblink for the project is worldclasscommunities.co.uk…

Blog • Football Fans Not Criminals

Oppose the ‘anti-sectarian’ authoritarians

Guest post from Dr Stuart Waiton, Lecturer at the University of Abertay Dundee and co-founder of Take a Liberty (Scotland) ‘No one should be subjected to intolerance, prejudice or violence in 21st Century Scotland’. So reads the Scottish Executive website discussing Banning Orders, introduced in 2006, orders that can ban abusive or bigoted fans from attending any football game anywhere in the world for up to ten years. Ironically, as the authoritarian discussion about how to rid Scotland of sectarianism rumbles on it appears that the Scottish Government are illustrating their own far more worrying form of intolerance, prejudice and violence. Tolerance,…

Blog • Leafleting bans

Leafleteer banned from Portobello Road

An antiques trader has been banned by an exclusion order from areas of the Portobello road, for ‘persistent leafleting and agitation of market traders’. The pensioner, Marion Gettleson, takes a strong stand against planned changes to the market – basically, Kensington and Chelsea council and landlords’ policy to favour big brands over the ‘messy’ traders. One landlord obtained an exclusion order against Marion Gettleson, preventing her from visiting his arcades – showing the legal means available today for clamping down on leafleting and other activities in public space. Our Campaign Against Leafleting Bans focuses on no-leafleting zones, but we are discovering more…

Blog • Booze bans

‘Wet zones’ for drunks – and other zoning of public space

Parks are traditionally mixed use spaces – for kids playing, ball games, drinking or eating, walking dogs…. Of course, sometimes these activities get in the way of each other, but generally people are reasonable and negotiate the space. Now we are seeing more zoning of public space, with specialist dog walking zones (no kids), designated drinking zones (drunks only), children’s play areas (no unaccompanied adults). Towns including Peterborough have proposed designated ‘wet zones’ – ie, areas of the park where street drinkers are allowed to hang out (drinking is banned everywhere else). Meanwhile, parks in Washington State are planning to ban kids…

Blog • Vetting

Which is worst – stealing school money, or failing to CRB?

A headteacher has been suspended after a series of wanton acts: he brought himself a meal at the Savoy on the school credit card; he bought himself a piano under the school’s instrument purchasing scheme; and used school money to buy a member of staff’s leaving present. But his worst indiscretion – and the main focus of his grilling – was that he failed to get a CRB check done on a classroom assistant, who had been in the post for ‘who had been in post for several months at least’. What a crime! Here we see how the failure to CRB…