British PC council at work

[STEED]

she was a real hard line criminal wasn’t she. (NOT)

Pensioner fined £50 for feeding pigeons

An outraged pensioner told yesterday how she was fined £50 for feeding crumbs to pigeons.

Beryl Withers, 81, had just finished eating a sandwich during a lunchtime shopping trip when she emptied out the remaining crumbs for the birds.

But as she moved to put the empty packet in the bin she was stopped by two council wardens who told her she had broken the law.

The yellow-coated wardens demanded her name and address and warned her she faced a maximum £2,000 fine.

The incident happened in Nottingham, recently branded the most crime-plagued city in Britain and notoriously overrun by guns and drugs.

Last night dismayed Mrs Withers, the daughter of a policeman, condemned the authorities for targeting pensioners while criminals run wild on the streets.

The retired antiques dealer said: "I have never put a foot wrong in this country in all my days. I have paid all my taxes and have never been to prison.

"I have no doubt that if my father could somehow know what was happening to his daughter he would be spinning in his grave.

"It would break his heart to see the powers-that-be concentrating on defenceless people like me instead of tackling proper crime.

"I don't know what has happened to the law and its priorities. I feel completely outraged by what has happened to me."

Mrs Withers served in the Women's Royal Naval Service during the Second World War and skippered a 75ft-long motorboat delivering mail to British warships in the English Channel.

She was stopped by the wardens outside the city's Victoria shopping centre last week.

A flock of around half a dozen birds were loitering nearby and Mrs Withers said it "seemed natural2 to share the crumbs of the chicken sandwich with them.

"They started to peck the crumbs off the pavement", she said.

"When I moved off I even made sure to put the bag in a waste bin, but I had only gone a few steps when these two yellow-coats appeared.

They said "That's a £2,000 fine' and asked for my name, address and age. I didn't even know at first what they were talking about.

"Then they said I would be hearing from them. I was so angry that I marched straight to the nearest police station to make a complaint.

"I told them they had more than enough crime in Nottingham to tackle instead of having council wardens picking on old ladies like me.

"There's no two ways about it - crime and violence are rife here. You would think they would have enough on their hands dealing with that."

The three times widowed pensioner received her fixed penalty notice two days later, with a letter declaring she had been "seen emptying the contents of a bag to feed the pigeons".

The pensioner, who paid the fine yesterday, said she had previously been fit and healthy, but the stress of the incident had brought on several nosebleeds.

Mrs Withers' father, Jack Wright, was a policeman in Nottingham all his life and eventually retired as one of its most respected inspectors.

Nottingham City Council stood by the fine, saying the crumbs were classed as litter and littering was an offence met by a fine.

Environment spokesman Brian Grocock said: "Food waste makes up a significant proportion of the litter cleaned up by the council every day.

"Dropping food, even if to feed pigeons, represents a real health risk. It attracts rats."

In the past three years the council has issued more than 2,000 fines for dropping litter, an offence that carries a maximum fine of 2,000 pounds.

In May, research compiled using police statistics and population data by the Reform think-thank showed that Nottingham had 115.5 crimes for every 1,000 residents, four times the level of the safest towns.

Already dubbed Gun City, it also had the highest number of murders per 100,000 population, with 5.21, and featured in the worst five towns or cities for robbery, burglary, assault, rape and gun crime.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=394624&in_page_id=1770

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by STEED

The incident happened in Nottingham

Men in tights! Men in tights!

[STEED]

It dose sound like the sheriff of Nottingham is back in town.

[Yahoshua]

hmm.....dress as old crippled kid in a wheelchair and I'll see if they can stand to a discrimination lawsuit.

[CB..]

if she had been a gang of teenagers with a ghetto blaster and the possibilites that they may have been carrying knives they could have emptyied an entire skip of bread crumbs and the "yellow coats" (appropiate name what?) would have done nothing--

"Dropping food, even if to feed pigeons, represents a real health risk. It attracts rats."

seems bread crumbs are not the only thing that attracts rats---

[TteFAboB]

Give her a pet, a golden fish, a cat, a parrot, so she's kept busy and happy with it instead of going out to adopt pigeons.

It's Hawks and Falcons that should be fed pigeons..

But if you're going after small offenses, then there's no excuse for leaving greater crimes unpunished.

From now on, for every month the Police fails to reduce crime, citizens should be given a tax exemption proportional to the security budget to take care of their own security. If it's anarchy, gang bangers running free, then citizens have every right to form their own gangs and start their own gang wars against them.

[Skybird]

Riding bicycles on the pedestrian's part of the pavement, or on th wrong side of the bike-path of the pavement, is under penalty in Germany. Last year I came out of a store, short before they closed, street and pavement was almost empty. I unlocked my bike which I had locked at a tree, and drove on the wrong side of the pavement to the bike-path of a traffic light, to head over to the the right side of the street, and stopped, since it was red. That distance was maybe 5-6 m, it took one or two seconds to drive, and me being the only one around - with the exception of the police-biker who immediately appeared from my back from nowhere and fined me a penalty of 20 Euros. Law and order and respecting rules is one thing. But one could exaggerate it. If someone is using a divider and a ruler to examine if the dot above the i is really round, it starts to become ridiculous.

[CB..]

Originally Posted by TteFAboB

Give her a pet, a golden fish, a cat, a parrot, so she's kept busy and happy with it instead of going out to adopt pigeons.

Mrs Withers served in the Women's Royal Naval Service during the Second World War and skippered a 75ft-long motorboat delivering mail to British warships in the English Channel.

sounds like she's earn't the right to do what ever she feels like whilst quietly enjoying an afternoon in the local park...

[STEED]

Mrs Withers served in the Women's Royal Naval Service during the Second World War and skippered a 75ft-long motorboat delivering mail to British warships in the English Channel.

Originally Posted by CB..

sounds like she's earn't the right to do what ever she feels like whilst quietly enjoying an afternoon in the local park...

I agree with that one.

[tycho102]

That was f*cking retarded call by the constables. I guess there are times when even the British screw up.

[XabbaRus]

Well On the one hand I think it is a little mad fining her. They could have just bollocked her. Pigeons are vermin, almost as bad as Seagulls.

I think anyone feeding pigeons or seagulls should be shouted at. Go to any seaside town in the UK and you'll find hordes of the buggers. Guess what, they are protected. Now that is crazy. Bloody tree huggers.

[Linton]

Did you know that you can be arrested for reading the names of the British war dead from Iraq outside the houses of parliament?