Council Bullies

I found this on Big Brother Watch.

Hauled into court over a cardboard box

The following tale is as classic a Big Brother Watch story as you are likely to find; as The Sun reports:

A grandmother was dragged to court - after carefully leaving a cardboard box next to a council recycling bin.

Lynne had taken the box which held her new washing machine to the recycling point at a Somerfield supermarket near her home in Wickford, Essex, in October.

It was too big to fit in the slot and the bin was nearly full. Lynne, 59, was filmed wedging it between two bins to stop it blowing away. Days later she got a card from Basildon Council asking her to call about "an incident".

An environmental officer later turned up at the fancy dress shop she runs and handed her a £300 fine. She threw it in a bin and ordered him out. On March 22 she received a letter charging her with "depositing controlled waste" and summoning her before JPs.

That's right people - just for putting a cardboard box in-between two bins which were too small to take the full box, Lynne Doyle was fined £300. Many would have been bullied by the council into paying up.

Luckily, Lynne did not...so she was ordered before a court. However on the advice of a lawyer she requested trial by jury. What do you think happened...?

She has now received a letter, without apology or explanation, saying the council was dropping the case.

So Lynne gets threatened with a fine and then trial; but when she pushes back the council retreats. It shouldn't end there - if you are outraged by this action by Basildon, the contact details for their refuse and recycling team are here. Why not ask them why they subjected a 59 year-old women to this ordeal?

By Dylan Sharpe

This is just another council thinking they could get some easy money out of someone.

Why don't they go after the real fly tippers?

The reason is because the councils would have to do some actual work.

Councils have enough workers to do the work, so what are all these workers doing? Not a lot.