More on those 'gutsy' ciggie busters
Monday, August 23, 2010 Confusion surrounds last week's report that pupils at a school in Medway, Kent, have been running up to smokers in the street, shouting "ciggy busters", and snatching their cigarettes from them, while filming themselves doing it.
Having sent a letter of complaint to the local police, Dave Atherton today received the following response from Detective Chief Inspector Michael Morgan of Medway police station:
The school contacted Medway police prior to the event and discussed it with our events manager. We were advised that actors would play the role of the 'smokers' with students approaching them, before taking the cigarette from them and 'advising them' about the health issues.
In addition to this Medway NHS were to also be involved as well as the council.
We did advise the school that to approach non-actors could cause problems and to our knowledge no non-actors were approached. No one has made any allegations of crime regarding this matter, (in so far as no one who was approached has made any complaints).
The school involved police and other agencies in their planning and I believe took on board all our advice and comments. The filming and actions were part of a project the students were under taking and I am told the cameras were clearly visible to all in attendance. This was a deliberate part of the planning as overt cameras and the use of actors would hopefully prevent the people being approached being offended in any way.
If a person who was not an actor was approached and their property taken etc. we would consider their complaint. However, as no one appears to have been approached in this manner, we shall not at this time be taking this matter further.
I am sorry you feel offended by this incident, but I can assure you that it was meant to be a light hearted educational project, with no harm intended.
The fact that the school was using actors makes a slight difference, but it doesn't make it right. After all, what sort of message does it send to children - that it's alright to accost and steal from strangers? Cigarettes are legal, for God's sake!
Anyway, when I told Big Brother Watch's Alex Deane (who picked up the story last week), that actors had been used, he was suitably bullish: "Yes - to START with. They make it clear ... that they moved on to members of the public after doing their 'plants' first."
Interestingly, there is nothing in the local paper to suggest that actors were used. Far from it. According to the Medway Messenger:
Gutsy students from Medway have been snatching shoppers’ cigarettes, in an effort to persuade them to kick the habit. Far from it:
The sixth formers from The Hundred of Hoo Comprehensive School are taking direct action against smokers on high streets around the area, to produce material for a short anti-smoking film.
"Gutsy students"?! Full story HERE.
Meanwhile, if you try to access the "Ciggie Busters" video via the ASI blog (which posted it HERE on Friday), it appears to have been removed "by the user".
Nor can it be viewed on the Medway Messenger website which posted it HERE.
What's going on?
Reader Comments (21)
How far has the Anti-Smoking Lobby spread:-
http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=9623873
This needs investigation.
Medway will support the small voluntary organisations interested in applying for funding from the charity fund for a tobacco-related project. The maximum each group can apply for is £5,000. Kent Community Foundation, a local charitable foundation, is managing the grant programme and supporting community organisations who are inexperienced when it comes to funding applications.
http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=19409172
"it was meant to be a light-hearted educational project..............."
"Educational project" ?
Fine.
So HOW were the 'educational' needs of either pupils or members of the public met by this idiotic stunt ?
I didn't see anybody handing out (for example) free parallel texts of 'Beowulf' to the bemused passers-by.
Which is not to suggest that there are NO lessons to be learnt from this whole, sorry little exercise in (I dare say) 'Community Leadership'.
Or 'Bossiness' in plain English.
Clearly, SOME people simply have too much time on their hands.
And - picking up on Ghenghis Khan's comments above - it's HIGH time that we had a thoroughgoing review of the use of the 'charitiy' concept, with all those lovely tax-avoidance opporunhiities, to forward political and quasi-political agendas, often on behalf of Government itself (albeit at one remove).
If we are not careful, Charity will simply become the New Politics.
But without the debate - or the accountability........................................
(Or the Rasberry Jam)
'Opportunities', of course.
PS:
Have just received the same reply from the Medway Police as Dave Atherton. Identical in every respect.
Naturally.
But at least they were courteous enough to respond - and promptly, too.
Nothing as yet from the Headmistress or the Home Secretary.
Naturally.
All this idiocy is supposed to be educational! They ought to be offering classes at that school re: literacy, numeracy and improving those standards! Don't get me started - this is actively encouraging young people to perform acts of assault (involuntary touching) as well as stealing. I'm disgusted - don't get me started!
Someone has complained to the Council using the "incitement" line. After all, ripping burkhas off actors wouldn't exactly be seen as harmless, would it?
http://thefrogsalittlehot.blogspot.com/2010/08/medway-council.html
And yes, the "gutsy" Ciggy Busters took down the video on the day it broke. They also took down their Facebook page. The FB page has been saved (can't remember who by now - maybe the guy in the link above), and the video has also been saved by someone, here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heJpxeSHSfY
They've scurried back into the shadows. Not because they're ashamed but because they misjudged how most people feel about smokers. Give it another year or two of State-sanctioned denormalisation though, and they'll be at it again.
I received this Today.
Dear Mr. Filthy Engineer
Thank you for your email regarding the Hundred of Hoo Comprehensive School, Kent and "A Betty Medway." I am a detective sergeant on the Medway hate crime unit, and this has been given to me to investigate further.
I will be making contact with the school in due course, and shall update you once this has been completed.
In the mean time should you wish to contact me directly, my number is 01634 792541.
Yours sincerely
DS 10142 Sallie Baisley
"Betty"?
Jenny -
I had a feeling that the 'educational' bit would tickle you, especially !
Why is it that everything these cretins touch, they somehow debase: Science, Politics, Healthcare, Education..........................?
And be VERY wary of the word 'Foundation': its use in America has achieved a level of sophistication in the wider society, and a depth of involvement in the life of the hapless individual, that Lenin would have envied.
In terms of Public Perception, the demolition of the Berlin Wall was just about the worst thing that could have happened to the 'West'.
But that, of course, is where the Sun sinks.
And all our precious freedoms with it soon, it seems.
A poetic irony I do NOT cherish.......................................
@Filthy Engineer
Please keep us posted.
How do we keep ourselves safe from these bullying thieves?
Is it time for smokers to protect themselves?
I have been robbed at knife point, I ended up fighting with my attacker.
There is no time to think about it when a stranger rushes up to you.
Fight or flight, I did not think I would be the type to fight, but no one knows till
it happens.
After I wack them what happens?
You get sent down Mary. full stop !!
I would like to see the brats of todays socitey flying Spitfires and Hurricanes 70 years ago. Do you think they would be capable ??
Peter J -
The last question you pose is a good one.
I'm always 'humbled' (as many of our vainglorious public figures are apt to say) by the recollection that the average age of the Battle of Britain pilots was just 19 (two years before Voting Age then), whilst that of Bomber Command crew was 23.
But it was our Young Men, too, who won the Falklands back in 1982, against frightening odds, and who today continue to shed their blood and see their friends die in an utterly disgraceful war which is being fought solely to advance the interests of a shadowy but all-powerful clique of megalomaniacs.
Please - tempting as we all are to do it - do NOT tar an entire generation with the same brush.
It's not the young who depress me (and who is there to inspire THEM these days ?), so much as the facile, servile, dare-nothing Hollow Men who pose as our 'leaders'.
Who, for instance, among the Coalition Cabinet could you see emulating Churchill , who in 1915 resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty in the wake of the Dardanelles disaster, and went back into uniform to face the horrors of the front line ?
But there are still plenty of youngsters who would.
There are, after all, plenty who do.
They deserve better………………………….
Correction: 'tempted as we all are etc'.
Heck, it's been a long day.............................
I see BigBrotherWatch have nominated Medway as "Britain's most overbearing authority". They have taken the crown from Labour led Sandwell Council which was said to be “the most bullying, hectoring and punitive of local authorities in the country”. Medway must be even worse.
It is interesting to note that a Tory council has taken this accolade from Labour within months of winning the election. No doubt a sign of things to come.
http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2010/08/the-council-wont-let-you-sell-your-own-car.html
Links within that post to other articles about their bullying behaviour. They seem to be completely out of control and there is not a lot the citizens of Medway can do about it until the next election.
"there is not a lot the citizens of Medway can do about it until the next election......"
When, of course, they'll vote (all 35% of them) for another dose of the same ghastly medicine.
No wonder politicians are scared of using the word 'choice' these days.
Do THAT, and the good folk who pay their salaries might just begin to ask why THEY don't seem to have any.
I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that the ONLY way to restore some semblance of GENUINE 'democracy' - at local AND national level - and to curb the ambitions of the quangocrats and the pocket empire-builders is by resorting at last to the hitherto distinctly un-British device of the REFERENDUM.
That, at least, would energise politics at the pavement level (where most of us live), and shake the public out of its current torpor and stupefying indifference to What's Really Going On.
Worth thinking about, at any rate....................................
Martin V,
You are right about them all voting for another dose of the same medicine. We've just seen a prime example of that in the national elections with a huge majority of voters voting for the same MP's and parties that had spent recent years systematically robbing them and inflicting (or failing to oppose) the most draconian laws upon them. If people keep endorsing these corrupt, power mad crooks and thieves then they really deserve everything they get.
James T -
Somehow, I've always felt that our Politicians despise US much more than WE do them.
I rather think that the evidence is mounting in support of my view.
One thing stands in our favour, however:
At least we are HONEST in expressing our contempt.
I just wish that - occasionally - THEY would drop all the media-savvy bonhomie and "we're-the -listening-party" bullshit.
An Open Enemy always commands more respect than a Treachorous Ally...............
Martin V,
The Tories have been very quick to revert to form with a new cash for access scandal already. They simply couldn't care less what people think, and in a way, why should they? People voted for them in the full knowledge of their corrupt and venal nature. I must admit to being optomistic on hearing all the fine words after the election, "an end to the war on the motorist", "a smaller state", Cleggs "Freedom" website etc, all of which have turned out to be so much hot air.
We must live under the most authoritarian, repressive regime in Europe and there is no sign of any let up in that. The Tories are going to keep us under the cosh for the forseeable future. These people truly are the enemy. I used to live in Germany 15 years ago and thought some of their rules a bit opressive but when I go there now it is like visiting a free country compared to here. How times change.
James -
I absolutely agree.
But it is (here comes one of my Pet Themes) esentially an Anglo-American problem, and not a purely 'British' one.
I have a theory as to why this is so, but this is neither the time nor the place to air it.
I recently read a letter from my Grandfather to my Mother, written back in the Fifties. He had been resident in the States since the War. What I found interesting was a remark of his to the effect that his American friends wre apt to say that whatever 'happened in England' would - sooner or latter - happen in America.
We, of course, are rather used to the exact opposite view.
Nonetheless, if people over here are really concerned about the way things are going, then they should turn their gaze Across the Pond, where one POSSIBLE Future is unfolding with alarming speed. And that future is nothing less than a Police State.
Sadly, this is not the sort of thing that tends to get covered on 'Newsnight' or 'The One Show'. Jordan's breasts, after all, tend to loom larger (as it were) in the Public Consciousness than the slow destruction of our Constitution.
Both the Americans AND the British now live (effectively) in a One Party State, where - by defiition - there is NO effective oppostion within the political system to the Government. And - pending what could be a messy separation - Nick and Dave's Civil Partnership strikes me at least as THE perfect emblem of that condition.
Those large, organised sections of Society that COULD feasibly offer some effective critique of the Government - Academia, the Media, the Unions, Local Authorities - as well as provide an efficient counterweight to its insatiable hunger for total control - are almost entirely mute.
Not surprising, of course - since they have themselves been absorbed INTO the Apparat itself.
And nothing I've witnessed of his activities to date has served to modify my unshakeable contempt for David Cameron (Tony's Lodge Buddy, no doubt).
With his fatuous 'We Have Changed' rhetoric, he has betrayed the hope of millions (including many tradional Labour voters) looking for succour and relief from the creeping Tyranny of the All-Powerful State.
Whatever's in store for us, this is definitely NOT a time to sheathe your sword !
Martin V,
The idea that the people of both America and Britain are being bludgeoned into submission by ever increasing authoritarianism is a valid one. I know someone who works in the UN in New York and she says things are as bad there as here. Apparently the UN building is regarded as a little oasis of freedom and the bar is the destination of choice for those who can gain access. The only place in New York where you can escape the over regulation of everything else and smoke and drink to your hearts content.
I wonder if the EU isn't also a bit of a red herring and convenient excuse for all the rules and regulations that are inflicted upon us by various permutations of the LibLabCon Alliance at both national and local level. If you go anywhere else in Europe they are not subjected to the sort of draconian governance that we have to suffer here. People are generally at ease and see their governments as working with them, not directly against them as successive governments have to us here.
When I was in Germany recently I was staying in a similar sized town to the one I live in here. I asked someone how many people worked for the local council. It was interesting to note that they didn't know and regarded the council as something that just took care of things in the background and didn't really make their prescence felt. After a bit of asking around they came up with 3,000 people. The town was clean, quiet and orderly. We have 10,000 and rising. That's 7,000 surplus people doing nothing but making a nuisance of themselves and causing all the trouble that dogs our daily lives. All under the instruction of intolerant power mad zealots and other useful idiots. Multiply that across the country and you begin to get an idea of the problems that confront us. It will take something monumental to change this state of affairs. Until that happens we can look forward to more of the same we got under Labour from David Cameron.