What was her heinous "crime"?
Nothing more than have her gardener sweep fallen leaves from outside her three bedroom bungalow in Stratford-upon-Avon into the roadside.
As the Telegraph reports, the council took a very dim view of this and threatened to prosecute Mrs Ray for fly tipping. It seems that in Nanny's dictatorship of Stratford-on-Avon sweeping the leaves from her driveway into the tree lined road is illegal.
The fact that Mrs Ray had done this for many years cut no ice, in fact Nanny's chums had even gone to the trouble of photographing her gardener sweeping the leaves into the street.
Oddly enough, since the firestorm of media publicity, Nanny has now backed down (as she always does) and has dropped her threat to prosecute after Mrs Ray promised to stop the sweeping. For good measure she rejected Nanny's offer to supply her with a second green bin, for a £35 charge.
She will now put the leaves into refuse sacks, which a friend will drive to the council waste disposal centre.
A council jobsworth attempted to extricate his masters from the shit, by claiming that the letter threatening Mrs Ray with a fine and jail was addressed to “The Household”, not Mrs Ray herself.
So that's alright then!
Given that leaves constitute fly tipping, and given that the leaves are falling from the trees "owned" by the council, would it not be feasible for the citizens of Stratford-on-Avon to fine the council for fly tipping?
As noted many times before, councils are the enemies of the people!
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It takes a special kind of person to find a job in a local council attractive.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many people are bullied by local council jobsworths but don't take the time and trouble to tell the press: I bet its thousands.
The best way to deal with these people is meet them in person and just tell them to... two words first one ending in k and beginning with f, second word off.
ReplyDeleteOr if profanity is not your bag just say NO. Stuns them into silence, winds them up because they have no reply and forces them to leave the scene empty handed.
NO is all it takes even if they threaten fines because fear is all they really have.
First time it is used it's scary but every time after that its great fun.
One of the very few things that we actually rely on the councils for is rubbish clearance. People pay their council tax with the expectation that roads and pavements are kept clean and tidy and that their bins are emptied.
ReplyDeleteIt is a very simply duty for the councils to carry out, but they have managed to fuck the whole thing up with daft bureaucracy.
Householders now have several different coloured bins each with a set of rules about what must be placed inside. With rubbish collections taking place only once a fortnight it means that household waste will be disposed of only 26 times each year.
Streets up and down the country are blighted with lines of bins outside of the houses. It looks appalling.
Their approach towards recycling and maintaining a clean environment is to distribute MILLIONS of non-biodegradable plastic bins.
Councils can find enough money to employ inspectors to photograph trivial misdemeanours and can employ administration staff to follow up these violations of their stupid rules, but do not spend money to employ more staff to clean up in the first place.
My job has taken me to many countries throughout Europe and farther afield and I can state that without any doubt whatsoever, rubbish collection policy in the UK is the most ridiculous that I have ever witnessed.
The Telegraph story doesn't mention whether the leaves were from trees in her garden, unlikely I feel as the street is "lined with lime trees" and limes grow big.
ReplyDeleteSo the leaves could well be council owned in the first place.