Oxford City Council has just taken the decision to pass a leafleting zone. This will mean that everybody from student societies to a local theatre will have to buy a council licence to hand out leaflets in the city centre. These rules…
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,…
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…
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…
The Manifesto Club has made a written submission in response to the Protection of Freedoms Bill – arguing that vetting and barring reforms have not gone far enough in rolling back red-tape and mistrust. See the Written Submission in response to the…
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…
Important video about tango dancers barred from the UK, as a result of the suspicious and bureaucratic points-based visa system…
The Points-Based Immigration System (PBIS) requires arts and academic institutions to monitor international visitors throughout the duration of their stay. UKBA officials have carried out raids and spot-checks on campuses, and checked up on artists to ensure they are not making art…
With the coalition government planning tougher penalties for under-age serving, our new report finds that ‘Think 25’ policies are already penalising thousands of innocent adults. 28 ¾: How Constant Age Checks Are Infantilising Adults, by Dolan Cummings, finds that adults in their…
A school in Leicester banned a father from watching his son’s egg and spoon because he didn’t have a CRB check – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicester/10558648.stm An extreme case, perhaps, but not alone – we’ve had reports of demands for CRB checks for parents going on the rugby bus, or attending the school disco as helpers. In many cases these regulations are coming from Ofsted and other bodies. We need to expose the general climate, and official regulations, that lead to schools acting in this way, rather than to blame particular headteachers.
In our volunteering report we documented the harmful effect of vetting on volunteering. There is also a large nearly-voluntary sector – where people work with children for very little money, and yet because on paper they are ’employed’ would have to finance their own CRBs. I remember my piano teacher charged £2.50 an hour – a token amount really. This email comes from a trampoline coach who falls into this category – she calculated that it would take her 6 weeks to pay back the costs of CRB checks and other fees. We have already reported on the case of Peter Bulmer,…
The Society of Authors just sent us this statement in support of our vetting campaign: ‘The Society of Authors supports the Manifesto Club’s campaign against the over-cautious and over-complicated procedures for vetting and barring of those working with young people. The current CRB system is clearly unworkable, with many of our members who work on a regular part time or voluntary basis with young or vulnerable people reporting the need to obtain multiple clearances for each site they visit or each group with whom they have contact. Despite statements from the Department for Education that CRB checks should not apply to authors,…