First they came for the paperboys…
Ex-MI5 chief ‘astonished’ at how many organisations use anti-terror law…
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) was passed in 2000 to regulate the way that public bodies such as the police and the security services carry out surveillance. Originally only a handful of authorities were able to use RIPA but its scope has been expanded enormously and now there are at least 792 organisations using it, including hundreds of local councils.
This has generated dozens of complaints about anti-terrorism legislation being used to spy on, for example, a nursery suspected of selling pot plants unlawfully, a family suspected of lying about living in a school catchment area, and paperboys suspected of not having the right paperwork.
It’s merely Pope Leo X’s declaration of ‘God has given us the papacy; now let us enjoy it’, only on a much smaller and sadder scale.
Do these people put on their best Bodie and Doyle bomber jackets and give themselves a cheeky wink in the mirror before leaving for work? I know we all like to big up our jobs to get us through the day but this is a whole new dimension of piss-poor sad-sackery.
The after-work conversations around the dinner table must be dynamite. ‘Yeah, so I’m trailing this paperboy, right? Dodgy paperwork, innit?’. Their kids’ ‘what my daddy does for his job’ talks at school must be unmissable: ‘He follows young boys around to make sure they’re not being naughty.’
I wish I’d witnessed the plant pot bust as well. ‘Drop the geranium, scumbag!’ I bet there was compost all over the shop. They should get Jason Statham for the movie adaptation.
Posted on December 10th, 2008 at 3:55pm under T.W.A.T., The home front
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• 14 Comments |
Rather embarressingly I’m going to plug my piece about paperboys that I wrote last week… it’s on the same story – honest!
That’s cool – it’s an ace post.
a nursery suspected of selling pot plants unlawfully,
Plants in pots, I assume, rather than actual pot plants.
Now there’s a thought. We could call the movie Mary Jane Goes To Kindergarten. Jennifer Lopez is a single mother of three struggling to make ends meet when she bumps into Keanu Reeves who has a ker-razy idea…
Been done, Justin – wasn’t it called Weeds?
It was also called “Saving Grace”…
Yeah, but this is Lopez. And Reeves. Hilarity ensues. Honest, it will.
I was a paperboy for two years and didn’t have any paperwork…I hope that I’m not on a list…
Ben
Remain where you are. You will be collected shortly.
Do these people put on their best Bodie and Doyle bomber jackets and give themselves a cheeky wink in the mirror before leaving for work?
I commented a couple of days ago about some of the fraud officers who I used to work with (sort of) in the DSS….”yes”, would be the answer. They even went on advanced driving courses, for reasons that escaped me even at the time.
See, I told you that there’s a sitcom in this.
Government goons harassing people never goes out of style. From 1965, an earlier victim writes:
Twenty uniformed, booted, armed sheriffs in cowboy hats were staked out around the mansion, a real life T.V. posse led by two assistant D.A.’s, Alphonse Rosenblatt and G. Gordon Liddy. It was decided to wait until the revellers within the castle retired to their bedrooms. Liddy was used to waiting, Castalia had been under surveillance for weeks. G. Gordon Liddy and commando staff hidden behind trees, noting who slept where. And then, back in the courthouse, endless conferences with maps, floor plans, schedules. It was an exciting prime time caper. Miami Vice North!
AT midnight the raiders burst into the mansion, pushing open unlocked doors. Liddy leading four troopers bounded upstairs to the third floor and smashed open the door to the master bedroom. She was reclining on pillows on the mirror bed. I was sitting on the edge of the bed talking to my son Jack and his friend. I stood up and looked into the wild eyes of G. Gordon Liddy. We were ordered, illegally, ‘Don’t move,’ while nervous deputies searched the room, confiscating Her innocent geranium plants and boxes of papers.
Dr. Timothy Leary describing G. Gordon Liddy’s raid on Millbrook in his book Neuropolitique.
I quite like the idea of benefit officers trained in advanced driving skills, dressed like Bodie and Doyle, chasing my disability scooter at at 4mph. I’d get to drive through big piles of empty boxes, while they collide with old-style fruit barrows. It would make a great youtube clip.
Something like this, only slower and manlier? Can’t you just imagine Purnell and Flint as the Dempsey and Makepeace of the DWP?