common sense vs technical laws

There is a story in the Guardian right now which displays the serious lack of common sense dwindling in humanity.

Three charged with stealing food from skip behind Iceland supermarket

3 men were arrested and charged after being caught taking thrown out food from a skip behind a local supermarket. It amazes me on a number of levels but most of all it amazes me that at no point between the person who notified the police to the 3 men being taken to court has anybody applied a little common sense to the situation.

A man will stand trial next month after being caught taking some tomatoes, mushrooms and cheese from the dustbins behind a branch of Iceland. It is expected Paul May, a freelance web designer, will argue that he was taking the food because he needed it to eat and does not consider he has done anything illegal or dishonest in removing food destined for landfill from a skip.

I also believe he has done nothing wrong. Who is he stealing from? The store has thrown that food out. They have essentially said they no longer want it and it is only going to a landfill site to rot.

Initially arrested for burglary, the three men were charged under an obscure section of the 1824 Vagrancy Act,

So not even charged with burglary. Police had to find a law that fit what these guys did. Hardly seems fair or worth it.

The Crown Prosecution Service ignored the pleas from the defendant's lawyers to drop the case stating that there will be significant public interest and the case should go ahead.

I only agree that the public should know about this and hear how ridiculous it is.

With times as difficult as they are and the cost of living rising through the roof while wages remain the same how is it at all right and just to arrest a man for taking food from a bin to eat which nobody else wants. The food will be wasted.

Where is the common sense? Why are we allowing vague and unjust laws to be created which make our lives more difficult.

This story is simple. 1 man throws excess food away. Another hungry man comes and takes the discarded food to eat, man 1 says no. Even though he doesn't need or want the food, nobody else can have it. The law sides with the 1st man

insanity

reply to post by Silicis n Volvo


Because they have to go through an expensive trial, with expensive lawyers, and then be put in a prison at a cost of about $30,000 (US) per year, all funded by taxpayers, to protect the public from the risk of people taking food from garbage bins. Right.

Yeah, this story deserves public attention. Its just too crazy.

I think sometimes successful people, or at least what passes for such, have an overwhelming need to ascribe their success to their own merits. It gives them a sense of control and a feeling that everything is in order. In a similar fashion, they tend to ascribe a lack of success to a lack of merit on the part of the unsuccessful person.

The truth, that some people are just as hard working as they are, that they are just as noble of character, that they are equally bright and such things, yet aren't "successful" creates a sense of anxiety in them. To alleviate this sense of anxiety, to restore a sense of order to the world, and to justify their own success they need to assign blame to those that are failing to thrive.

The crime here wasn't stealing food per se, rather it was making a whole lot of "successful" people uncomfortable.

reply to post by tridentblue

We had some cases were i live to, no one was sentenced though, but it was cause the stores had put padlocks on the dumpsters and people cut the lock to get to the goods.

After the this was covered in the national news, some one made a sign up petition for stores to remove the padlocks, and they actually listened, and now it's free to empty dumpsters, but you need to leave the place clean as it was.

I live right next to one of those dumpsters on the other side of the road, and daily in the cover of darkness people are dumpster diving, it can easily reach ten or more people a night.

Looks like the UK is pushing the boundaries for a police state too.

As much as I agree that this is a bit farcical, it is in law theft.

Food that is thrown away is gold dust! In the UK it is sorted and will be used as a biomass fuel, if it does make it to landfill then the methane it creates as it decomposes will be used to fuel electrical generators such as the jenbacher gas engines.
A lot of profit from the electricity pumped back into the grid from these waste to energy power stations is used to build wind farms !

Also the government makes a killing on the tax it charges to dump at a landfill, which is very high! So in effect he has deprived the crown of some revenue and also certain companies of some profit however small both might be.

Cinrad
Looks like the UK is pushing the boundaries for a police state too.

edit on 29/1/14 by Cinrad because: (no reason given)

It has been for a while. When you combine the GCHQ with the record breaking number of CCTV cameras and traffic cameras in the UK, the internet monitoring and sat nav's in most modern cars the suits at the top of the UK hierarchy know exactly where everyone is and what they are doing. But that's a different story.

This story is more about the greed and selfishness of businesses and a very flawed legal system.

It highlights problems in society when people have to go and get food from skips.

It also begs the question of just how much food is being wasted every day by large supermarket chains?

We have a saying in England that the Law is an Ass. And prosecutions such as this proves that this old sayijng is alive and extremely well even today.

With the legal aid budget being cut for legitimate defence cases it now behoves our legal beevers to get onto the bank wagon of ensured fees and leaving legitimnate law cases to earn their fees on the ludicruous ones. Nothing stops the money flowing for our legal beevers and how low they stoop will not surprise any member of the public, or it shouldn't!

Its an interesting thing though despite the meanness of the company's involved because if one fly-tips and its proved to by your rubbish you get prosecuted even though you have dumped it. So if you dump rubbish in your bin, then obviously its not public property by still yours. I know many firms use to let their sell-by food go to the back door for those less well off and it seems that that sort of charity must have stopped incase someone sues - again a legal beavers little bit of business eh. And yes I know I have spelt beaver/beaver so what).

Hunger should be addressed at the dinner table, not in a court of law...

If it is addressed in a court of law, starving people for profit should be outlawed.

Reminds me of

"If the people have no bread, let them eat cake." — Marie Antoinette

reply to post by Silicis n Volvo


Don't know about Canada but unless it has changed in the US once it hits the street anything in the trash bin is fair game.
How many people have thrown the wrong thing away and had to pick through the trash to get it back at one time or another?

Example... you throw away a pair of worn out slacks, you realize you left xxx in the pocket (a ring, your credit card, a couple of folded up 100$ bills) of them and someone came onto your property and figured that it wasn't yours anymore valuable or not.

reply to post by Silicis n Volvo

So not even charged with burglary. Police had to find a law that fit what these guys did. Hardly seems fair or worth it.

You sound disappointed.

What they did sounds innocent enough but, if left unchecked, you’d have bums living behind every grocery and restaurant picking scraps. None of that food is edible. If it was safe for human consumption it wouldn't have found its was to the dumpster.

The people who made the laws governing safe food preparation, safe food handling, and sanitation are the same people who don’t want vagrants eating out of dumpsters. Don’t you see a problem with it?