Blog • Busking • Take action!

Westminster Council – stop the prosecution of young musician Dan Wilson

A guest post by Jonny Walker, director of Keep Streets Live On Wednesday 20 August at 10am a talented young musician who has represented Great Britain in the world loop championships appeared in court in Westminster answering criminal charges of ‘illegal street trading’ and using a speaker in the street, for a 10 minute busk in Leicester Square early this year with a couple of CDs of his own music with a sign saying ‘suggested donation £5’ and giving details of his Facebook page. This was his fourth court appearance relating to this one incident of spontaneous live music and he now…

Blog • On-the-spot fines

The injustice of fining parents for a family holiday

Parents are organising against the increasing habit of fining families who take their kids on holiday in term-time. Fines for truancy have grown astronomically – from 3,483 in 2004-5, to 32,641 in 2011-12, to the record 52,370 in 2012-13. In many councils the majority of these fines are issued to holidaying families (two thirds of the total in Kent, for example). Prosecutions for truancy have also grown, reaching 8000 in 2012-13. One couple recently received criminal records for taking their kids on holiday to Australia. It is likely that fines in the 2013-14 school year will be greater still, after a regulatory…

Free movement - visiting artists

Malaysian photographer refused entry: Testimony from Jemima Yong

Jemima Yong, a talented young photographer and performance maker, was recently detained in London Heathrow Airport, denied entry and sent back to Singapore, 18 hours after arriving in the UK. Jemima is a Malaysian citizen and a permanent resident of Singapore. She studied and lived in the UK for five years. Jemima had not done anything illegal on arrival but the Home Office believed that she might break immigration laws whilst she was here. She reveals to the Manifesto Club the deeply flawed system employed by the UK Home Office to justify a decision made on individual discretion. Her crime? Jemima only…

Blog • On-the-spot fines

Fined for drying a bench in Glasgow

I have just received a letter from an elderly gentleman in Glasgow, who was fined earlier this year while in the process of drying a bench. He has arthritis and wanted to sit down; he had one handkerchief but the bench was still wet, so he left the tissue for a minute to go to a cafe opposite to get some more tissues and finish the job. Yet no sooner had he stepped away from his bench, he was approached by a warden who slapped him with a fine for littering. He explained that he hadn’t left the tissue, he was only…

Blog • Busking

Leicester Sq busking crackdown funded by private company

The band King’s Parade were arrested while busking in Leicester square in May. Reports from a Westminster Council meeting (1) now reveal the context for this arrest. The crackdown on busking in Leicester square is part of Operation Spotlight, which is funded by the private business association the Heart of London. The minutes report: ‘Operation Spotlight is a HoLBA (Heart of London Business Alliance) funded initiative aimed at deterring performers/buskers, pedicabs with amplification, persistent beggars and ticket touts.’ The council minutes reveal that this business association, in effect, bought police time, including a police sergeant, two PCs and a noise officer to…

Blog • Vetting

Teachers told: ‘Carry CRB check at all times’

I just received an email from a teacher, reporting that the teaching agency he works with told him: ‘carry your CRB copy with you at all times’. That is, he would be expected to produce his criminal records certificate not just on the first day of a job, but at any time in the course of working life. (Over coffee in the staffroom? In the middle of a class?). This request to carry one’s criminal records check on your person is a sign of how this piece of paper has become an index of trustworthiness; you could be challenged at any moment…

Blog • On-the-spot fines

Is feeding the birds now a crime in the UK?

Is feeding the birds now a crime in the UK? Judging from the number of recent cases involving crust-scattering pensioners, you would have to conclude, yes. A woman in Blaenau Gwent was fined £125 for throwing a piece of bread roll for the birds out of her car window. In another recent case, a Devon woman was fined for ‘littering peanuts while feeding pigeons’. The Blaenau Gwent fine was issued by private security guards, paid on a commission basis, with a propensity to fine for negligible offences. (This is the company that issued a fine for a thread of cotton falling off…

Blog • On-the-spot fines

Fines for parents who don’t read to their kids

The Ofsted chief has said that schools should have the power to fine parents who don’t read to their children, or who miss school events. This is the latest extension of on-spot fines, which are increasingly seen as the sole form of persuasion or sanction, and the answer to every social problem. The fine is the one way in which a school can communicate with parents, apparently. A school – an institution which is supposed to have a shared interest with parents in the education of their children – increasingly exerts authority through the use of coercive, pecuniary penalties. There are also…

Blog • Vetting

Making parental emotional abuse a crime

Justin Wiley has written a good piece about emotional abuse at the New Observer. He includes the following pertinent example: “This author worked as a volunteer for his local authority to mentor a young man with “learning difficulties”. The boy attended a special school for young people with disabilities where he was soaked in advice about “child protection”. The result; he wanted me to take him swimming every week. And every week he would accuse me of being a “paedophile”. (Because he’d been told that adult men who take boys to swimming pools are paedophiles). The “Safeguarding” culture generates numerous conflicts like…

Free movement - visiting artists

Manufactured Britishness

A guest post by artist and Visiting Artist Campaign supporter Kristina Cranfield, about her project Manufactured Britishness. ‘Manufactured Britishness’ is a project derived from the compulsory and very real ‘Life in the UK’ test created to assess individuals’ eligibility for UK citizenship. The project critically explores the government’s program and displays a future manifestation of the test. In this dystopian future, we see immigrants as an exploitable material – a living currency, compelled to sustain national identity in order to maximise profitable agendas. The themes underlying this project were driven by my own experience as a UK immigrant, where, in the final…

Blog • Free movement - visiting artists

Organist deported – problems with visas continue

In spite of the Manifesto Club’s victory in winning reforms to the visa system for visiting artists, it seems that the news hasn’t reached border officials on the ground. Under the permitted paid engagement route artists visiting the UK for a concert or talk are exempt from the heavy-handed ‘points-based visa system’. Yet the star organist Cameron Carpenter – booked to play in Birmingham – was detained for seven hours in an ‘Orwellian’ ordeal, before being deported back to Berlin. Once he found out about the new visa route he was able to return to the UK – with only a short…

Public space • Take action!

Dog owners rebelling against no-dog zones

As I said in a Spectator article, dog owners are rising up across the country in protest against no-dog zones. Here are a few of the groups taking on their council’s zero-tolerance rules… Friends of dogs in parks – Holland Park, London. A group (including vets) taking on Holland Park’s dogs-on-leads orders, which prevent dogs from getting proper exercise in this large central London park. Their petition has 3000 signatures… West Shore Dog walkers – North Wales – a well organised group opposing Conwy council’s ‘bullying and illegal’ enforcement of no-dog zones, carried out through private enforcement officers. Caroline and Tony Costa…