THE AGE OF COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT 2
Two stories from the week ending 26th July 2008: A man is fined £30 for smoking in his van as this is deemed his ‘place of work.’ I speak to a man in his early sixties, mild mannered to the point of being self effacing; he enjoys a beer, however being on benefits he can no longer enjoy drinking in the pub as much as he would like. He goes to a Local park in Haringey to drink a can of beer. However it is now an offence to drink alcohol in any Haringey park. A Police Community Support Officer arrives and not only confiscates the can from him but insists on pouring its contents away in front of him.
Both stories are so translucent that further comment seems superfluous however at least one point comes to mind. One wonders if our drinker had instead been two local councillors enjoying a bottle of Champagne in the park our PCSO would have been quite so officious.
I feel weary of rehearsing arguments I have already made however again I point out that anyone who is drunk in a park, especially if abusing other users of communal spaces, throwing cans or pissing on the grass would be committing an offence, whilst someone sitting on a park bench reading a book, taking an occasional swig of beer from a can was not, until recently, breaking the law.
I suspect that this drip drip erosion of these small but extremely important freedoms has been made possible by the indifference of an educated middle class allied with the disappearance of an aware and activist militant working class, although the latter was never without its own peculiar puritan streak.
Again I suspect that the declaration of alcohol free green spaces has been presented as a civilising measure when in reality it represents the growing power of the puritan lobby, the humourless and priggish brigade of censors, control freaks and would be legislators of all our behaviour who are steadily eroding the basis of a civilised and tolerant civic society.
And so this is the future and we had better get used to it, increasingly we will be prodded, poked and pushed around, all for our own good.
Both stories are so translucent that further comment seems superfluous however at least one point comes to mind. One wonders if our drinker had instead been two local councillors enjoying a bottle of Champagne in the park our PCSO would have been quite so officious.
I feel weary of rehearsing arguments I have already made however again I point out that anyone who is drunk in a park, especially if abusing other users of communal spaces, throwing cans or pissing on the grass would be committing an offence, whilst someone sitting on a park bench reading a book, taking an occasional swig of beer from a can was not, until recently, breaking the law.
I suspect that this drip drip erosion of these small but extremely important freedoms has been made possible by the indifference of an educated middle class allied with the disappearance of an aware and activist militant working class, although the latter was never without its own peculiar puritan streak.
Again I suspect that the declaration of alcohol free green spaces has been presented as a civilising measure when in reality it represents the growing power of the puritan lobby, the humourless and priggish brigade of censors, control freaks and would be legislators of all our behaviour who are steadily eroding the basis of a civilised and tolerant civic society.
And so this is the future and we had better get used to it, increasingly we will be prodded, poked and pushed around, all for our own good.
